The 95% Failure Rate Among Blogs
Of the 133 million blogs launched in the past six years, only 7.4 million have been updated with content in the past 120 days. And that may not be the worst of it, according to Technorati CEO Richard Jalichandra: “There’s a joke within the blogging community that most blogs have an audience of one.” Uh oh, ChasNote readers, don’t make me another statistic!
Full report in the NY Times Mexican Gold trailer .
UPDATE: Andy Lark at The Daily Lark also posted on the same story, and I added this comment:
“As I was reading the NYT piece in the style section, I was struck by the tone — ‘blogging is largely a failure, a joke’ — set against the statistic that there are more than 7 million active blogs. Sure, most of them aren’t successful business ventures, but they must be succeeding for their authors (and perhaps readers) on some level. Seven million mini success stories ain’t bad.”
Why is this surprising? Blogging is like any hobby: most of the people who take it up are going to abandon it, in favor of some other hobby. I write a couple of blogs, and enjoy my 25 or so daily visitors, and don’t allow myself to stress over when I last updated.
Totally agree, Lori. It’s good advice for those who aspire to be money-making “pro” bloggers too: Do it because you love it. If it turns out you’re also making money, wonderful, but that way you’re not sadly passing the days waiting for the IPO that isn’t — in the blogging business, just like every other business — that likely.
Chas, I agree with Andy’s comment. Seven million mini success stories is not bad at all. If you have a voice and you are able to express yourself, than who should say it is unsucessful.
LoL
nice piece Chas
Hopefully none of us wind up as one of the “audience of one”
[...] 95% of blogs fail. [...]
Thats an impressive figure