iamned.com

Five reasons why blogs fail

The success or failure of a blog ultimately falls on the blogger. Many times I have noticed that a blog that at one point had a lot of potential ‘die’ due to the negligence of the blogger. Traffic and comments steady declines and updates become increasingly infrequent. The most common causes for blog failure are as follows:

1. Failure to update the blog frequently and consistently

This is one of the leading causes of blog failure. If you don’t update your blog on a consistent basis readers will grow impatient and bored and eventually forget about your blog altogether. In order to RETAIN readership it is imperative that you update frequently and consistently. I simply can’t stress this enough. If you are too time constrained to write content yourself hire a content writer to fill in. While a paid writer won’t be able precisely duplicate your writing style, it is better than not writing anything.

 2. Boring, regurgitated content

Ideally a blog should be a platform to cover less mainstream topics that ‘traditional media’ overlooks. Quality, unique content stirs discussion and debate. It’s the job of the blogger to engage the reader, and writing compelling, thought provoking content is crucial to retaining and building readership. Copying stories from AP and pasting them in to your blog or scraping content while appending ‘+ digg + furl+ add to facebook’ buttons at the bottom is a surefire way to bore readers, as is writing content-less 2-4 sentence posts. Instead, offer readers an original perspective and make sure your posts have substance.

3. Failure to deliver on promises

If you make a promise to unveil a ‘killer app’ or a groundbreaking tutorial, but fail to deliver readers will probably get irked. While you will probably be forgiven if you offer an apology, over time failing to live up to expectations and commitments can be very detrimental.

4. Over monetization

While is is understandable that bloggers want to make money for their efforts, a line must be drawn where advertising becomes excess and intrusive. For example, running auctions ads, three adsense ad blocks, and a dozen text links ads ‘blocks’ would probably be excessive. By overdoing advertising you dilute the CPM value of your individual ads while muddling your blog. Instead of coating your blog with ads, charge more money for only a few ads so you make the same amount of money, but with less intrusion.

5. Censoring comments, disabling comments

Censoring comments or disabling comments all together defeats the purpose of of a blog, because blogs thrive on active engaged readership. If you have a fragile ego and are sensitive to criticism blogging probably isn’t for you. Inevitably someone will flame you, drop spam, but you have to take it in stride.

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