You can find plenty of articles about blogging failure and why so many seem to. But you need to decide what failure means to you.
The other day during breakfast, I stumbled on an article about blogging failure. Luca Tagliaferro wrote the article, which he titled, “What is the percentage of blogs that fail? And why do they fail?”
He starts right off with this fact:
Out of the over 60 million new blogs that will be created this year, more than 80% of blogs will fail in the within 18 months
Luca Tagliaferro
Oddly enough, he links the second half of that statement to a Forbes article about 80% of businesses, not blogs, failing within 18 months. I suppose, if you consider your blog to be a business, you could attempt to connect the two. But the Forbes article isn’t about blogging.
Without a specific percentage, Neil Patel similarly writes about blogging failure, asking why most bloggers fail. He says this:
For every successful blogger that’s out there pushing the benefits of blogging, there are also many, many bloggers who have failed.
Neil Patel
I have heard the stat that refers to an 18-month lifespan for the average new blog. After that year-and-a-half, some sources have suggested, the majority of new blogs will have stopped publishing new content. The bloggers will have moved on to something else or just quietly given up.
Is that your definition of blogging failure?
Imagine someone starting a blog to demonstrate their expertise and knowledge in a particular subject. Then imagine a business stumbling onto that blog and reaching out to its writer. The writer makes a connection and gets a job offer. If the writer wanted to establish himself as an expert in his field and gets a good job out of it, can you call the blog a failure if he stops it to focus on the new job?
Several years back, during a job interview, one of the prospective managers accidentally copied me on an email to her colleagues. In that email, which I wasn’t supposed to see, she actually complimented this site and my writing. When we met, she had realized that the email had come to me as well as her colleagues and apologized. But she again complimented me on my writing and the “professionalism” of my site.
That was a nice surprise. But I ended up not getting that job. So would you call this blog a failure because — though I don’t include this blog on a resumé — they went with the other candidate?
When I started this blog, it was on America Online’s “Journals” platform. Back then, because AOL Journals was a small but tight-knit community, people commented on each others’ blogs often. When I left AOL shortly before AOL left the blogging community and its remaining bloggers in a lurch, the commenting largely stopped.
Some people, I quickly realized, saw a lack of comments as blogging failure. They assumed that if no one was commenting, no one was reading. Well, that’s not exactly true. Google Analytics clearly disputes the notion that no one reads this site. I grew the number of visitors last year and hope I will again when I look at the end-of-the-year totals.
But if you measure “success” by comments, you might think this blog is a failure.
Others equate success with money. If you’re not bringing in a second income — or maybe even a first income — from your website, they argue, you’re not doing it right. Well, I don’t make money with this blog. The little bit of revenue generated from Google Analytics in a year’s time doesn’t fully cover the cost of hosting.
By that definition, this blog would be a failure.
On the other hand, in February, I’ll mark my 20th anniversary as a blogger. So if Patrick’s Place represents a blogging failure, it’s certainly a long-running failure.
It’s a matter of perspective
No two people will describe a blogging failure or a blogging success the same way. In fact, it’s hard to put a finger on any one mark of success that everyone will agree on.
I once heard a blogger say she’d stopped posting to her blog because she’d said “all there was to say” on her blog’s particular topic. I doubt that’s true. There’s always something to say on a general topic. But her blog sat dormant. By some definitions, especially the ones who think regular posting is a requirement, her blog failed. She certainly wouldn’t agree. I don’t necessarily agree, either, although I think she could have found something to keep saying if she tried.
Elegant Themes, for example, came up with a list of 13 traits that it thinks successful blogs share. Benchmark came up with a list of 10 metrics one can track to measure success.
While the traits and metrics can be helpful, neither article spells out a specific definition of success. Even a blog some might not consider an overwhelming success might have all 13 of the traits and its writer may well track all 10 of those metrics. The blog may be growing toward success without having reached it.
But when does that growing blog reach the point at which it slides out of the “work-in-progress” category and into the “successful” category?
Entrepreneur published an article titled “7 Lessons I Learned From Selling a 6-Figure Blogging Business.” I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t call a blog you could sell for a half-million dollars a success. But that’s only if money is your primary measure.
I started this blog in 2004 as a creative outlet. I wanted to have a place to write, a place to grow my writing skills and a place to talk about things that were on my mind. In that respect, this blog continues to be a success. That’s true no matter what definition you apply to success or failure.
It has to be your definition, not someone else’s
You have to decide for yourself what consitutes either on your own blogging journey. If the blog gives you what you want and what you need, that counts for something.
If you’re going to spend your time comparing your blog to someone else’s, you’re going to face disappointment. But that’s true in all aspects of life, not just blogging.
Some of us, no matter how hard we might try, won’t build a $500,000 blogging business. But some of us, while we’d like to have that kind of income, wouldn’t be as happy doing the things that are often necessary to build that kind of business.
So while some might call our efforts “failure,” we might call our satisfaction in doing it our way “success.”
That should never be something you allow someone else to decide for you.
