It’s a t-shirt I’ve always wanted. It said, “In dog years, I’m dead.” I’m starting to think the same thing applies to blogs.
Today is the 10th anniversary of this blog. Certainly, it’s not the oldest blog out there and it has changed focus over time. But it seems to have outlasted many. How long do most blogs last?
One of the most widely cited statistics comes from an Australia-based analytics firm. It reports,
Several studies indicate that most blogs are abandoned soon after creation (with 60% to 80% abandoned within one month, depending on whose figures you choose to believe) and that few are regularly updated.
The ‘average blog’ thus has the lifespan of a fruitfly. One cruel reader of this page commented that the average blog also has the intelligence of a fly.
In its latest State of the Blogosphere report, Technorati said 60 percent of the bloggers responding to its survey were “hobbyists,” defined as those who “blog for fun” and report no income from blogging. Believing I fall into that category more than someone who makes or supplements their income by blogging, how does this blog compare in terms of longevity? The largest number of hobbyists have been blogging two to four years but there is a steady decline between there and more than six years of blogging. That is consistent with the prior year’s report, which showed only 21 percent of hobbyists had been blogging for six years or more.
What does it all mean here? As you may have noticed, the number of posts on the blog have decreased. It now consists largely of book reviews and Weekend Edition. And while there’s been an average of four posts a week since the blog started (just more than four a week), this year that has dropped to about two posts a week.
So, while the blog is not dead yet, its joints certainly are creaking.
Life is what it makes you.
Mason Cooley
You are my favorite blogger!