I am going to show you the characteristics of a dying blog. As a frequent bloghopper, I come across many types of blogs and I have seen blogs that are dying, which means the blogger is not going to post anything of high quality or even not thinking of posting any more. The blog will soon die off with the expiration of the domain and hosting package.
This has proved to be frustrating for visitors like us because we have placed so much trust in the blogger and giving the linkbacks which sooner will become broken links because the blog died off just like that. These bloggers sometimes don’t put up a notice or sell their blog off but instead, the blog will just die off just like that. Today, we’ll be looking at the symptoms of a blog before it meets the end of life.
Missing without Notice
Some bloggers have a long break, maybe due to a blogging break or some personal events. It will be best if a blogger can pre-write a series of post and time-stamp them to be posted sparingly over the period of leave. Prior to that, leaving a message regarding your leave and notify your readers about the upcoming posts. This will not only show that you are honest towards them but also, when they don’t see a response from you, they know that you are on a leave.
If someone is leaving a blog he owns, he tends to leave the blog unattended and no posts will be posted for maybe one or two weeks. To me, these blogs are as good as dead.
Downgraded Style of writing
Inconsistent quality of post might be seen as a common thing in a blog but a continuous slide is not something good. Changes in the uniqueness might also cause some problems. If a blog has been producing articles that is unique and independent from the entire buzz but suddenly has a change by starting to blog about what others are blogging. I won’t say that this will directly leading to a death but this might indicate that the blogger has lost interest in the topic or he has no more creativity in producing posts.
Unmaintained Blog
A theme might have some coding errors and sometimes downtimes caused by webhosts will cause errors on a blog. A blogger who cares about the blog will take remedial action immediately rather than letting the problem recur. A spoilt blog will make readers lose interest in your blog. If you came across bugs in your own blog and your readers had told you about it, try to get a fix immediately by getting proper support or restoring your blog to the previous backup. If not, it might be considered as dead.
Downgraded Style on Blogging Approach
If a blog is live and alive, you can feel it. You can see movement and changes around or within the blog. When a blogger, who is used to replying his readers or frequently interacting with other bloggers but all of a sudden, everything stopped, will this sounds fishy to you on the blogger’s blogging approach? Passion might again be the issue but sometimes attitude problems such as starting to get arrogant because of success or having discovered better income sources compared to blogging might be the reasons for a blogger to slow down on blogging.
Increased Spelling and Grammatical Error
Posts for the sake of posting will highly likely have the trend of increased spelling and grammatical error. When a blogger starts to post for the sake of posting, the blog is moving closer to death unless the blogger immediately buck up. When someone starts to take their articles posted lightly by not proofreading for errors in spelling and grammar, the sign of laziness and loss of productivity will be shown right on the blog.
Not Responding to “Where’d you go?” Mails
You are lucky if you have readers who are concerned about your idle status and decided to drop you a message about your absence. If you don’t reply to them, this also means that you are going to leave your blog forever. As a blogger, when such message comes in, I can tell you that your blog is in a critical situation while suffering from severe blood loss (loss of visitors) and might leave for heaven anytime. Thus, replying to these readers is extremely important if you have no plans of discarding your blog.
Caught Up With Crimes and Ethical Issues
Do you remember about the $2,500 blog competition scam by Ashwin Khanna? Take a look at his blog now. Dead! Why? His name and blog is no more than a junk on the blogosphere or even the Internet. Do get yourself caught up with crime and controversies that is bad enough to get you blacklisted in the minds of bloggers. The price to pay is huge. Even if your blog is not dead, it will be buried alive by the blogosphere.
Rounding Up
The characteristics will be proven useful for a bloghopper and a blogger. For a bloghopper, I don’t think you want to have broken links on your blog and waste your efforts planting backlinks on a dying blog. For a blogger, I suggest that you must avoid having the characteristics above so that people will leave your blog, thinking that you are committed to the blog any more.
{ 1 trackback }
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
I really “like” what ashwin khanna do….a great example of a dying blog
when i was blogging, i usually have a hiatus period……… blogger’s block you can say……
weird thing is, still people visit my blog ……. during hiatus period…..
Thanks for helpful info!
I got the first symptom. Anyway I hope my blog will be there for a very long period
@ dott-com
He is a great example of a great death.
@ kljs
This is because you might have search engine traffic or maybe they just like you.
@ 宝茹
You are welcome. Just subscribe to my RSS Feed or come back often. I will have more in the future.
@ eches
Your blog has some authority which I don’t think it will die off easily.
The sad thing is that sometimes really Hig Quality Blogs rated very well die. One such blog is http://emergic.org It wasn’t much of a colorful blog and is minimalistic in appearence. It was rated highly but for one or more reasons, the blog is now pretty much dead(Rajesh Jain the author, was supposed to be back in September)
I took a look at the blog and if it was me, I would have presumed the blog as dead when I look at the big gap between July 2, 2007 and July 31, 2007.
One I feel very unworthy is that he writes really really well. It is a lost for his readers I guess.
He had some viral infection back then… but well, Never say never, good stuff should never die!
This reminds me of the Ashwin Khanna’s competition. Come to think back, I am really silly to believe in such competition…
I have a blog that I only post once a week… I also have a blog that I only blog when I’m inspired to, and that may take 3 weeks before the inspiration comes. Hahaha!
Anyway, it’s a blog that I write mainly for myself.
Wayne:
Nah, no body likes me… I am anti-football people, people shun me like the plague….
Yep, I have blogs I have not touched since 2005. I’m going back to them and reviving some of them. Those were niche topics I was interested then but have not had time to post.
I’m putting in the dates of last updates into a spreadsheet so as to make sure I update all my old blogs at least once in a while.
Purpose is of course an ego thing. To maintain my ‘presence’ on the net. Also to scrap that random Google Adsense revenue
@kljs – Speaking of hiatus and still getting traffic, I’ve had software development blog on hiatus for about two weeks while I was working on my post blitz on OpTempo. It still gets about 400-500 hits a day on weekdays from search traffic though.
@ Derek
I always respect good writers but writers come and go. It’s common, maybe there are some that are better than him now perhaps?
@ yung .
You joined his competition?
@ Valen
If you are writing for yourself, it is fine. The worst thing is that even you are writing for yourself, there are some who love to see the writings.
@ kljs
Nah, just kidding, I forgot when was the last time I watched a football match even though last year I was playing football like mad.
This statement will make me dislike you as well… How can you don’t like football?
Blogging change things. I like you because you blog, we share the same interest!
@ Andrew
I hope you don’t mind I call you Andrew because I am in a hurry here.
Before I start a blog, I tend to pre-write about 30 articles so that even when I don’t have anything to write about then, I can use the articles and sometimes, make myself inspired my them.
@ Frank C
That is crazy dude. Your blog must be targeting Google traffic right? Although all the stuffs inside sound Greek to me, the cleanliness makes me think that it is a good blog. Also, the Alexa badge tells me that it is getting traffic.
A couple of new blogs of mine are showing these signs, but luckily, my main blog has no problem
Hi Wayne
You’re right, VBNotebookFor.NET gets most of it’s traffic from Google, the rest coming from my forum posts and sigs. It ranks high on a large number of long tail, “How do I” type searches.
Great tips. I hadn’t thought about this before. Usually, I just move on when something looks dead, but you really got to the bottom of the reasons why I notice that a blog is dead.
@ Sumesh
Try to keep your blogs alive after you have started them. I am trying hard…
@ Frank C
Wow, how I wish I can have lots of Google traffic…
@ Ed Kohler
Thanks. These are all based on my experience. I wondered those bloggers planning to leave their blog to death will kill me or not…
Some blogs are bound to be abandoned… that’s life. But I just wish it would be clearer sometimes. I’m tired of people posting every 6 months or so !
Really good post. I love the littl epic at the top
I was lucky to find a funny pic like that. We can’t predict, some bloggers just leave their host and domain for expiration just like that which I don’t like.
Thanks for commenting on my blog.
Another great summary Wayne. LOL at ashwin! After a stunt like that, I doubt he will ever reclaim his internet presence.
Actually he might be doing something, with just different name. He is so stupid, if he is so creative with a link fraud, why not try out money fraud?
Still cant believe someone would hold such a scam. What happened to his blog? Did ashwin just tear it down?
It’s still there but it is left to rot. It will be gone after the hosting expires I guess. Making a comeback will be very difficult after such a BIG THING!
No new posts from Wayne Liew for quite a while, is his blog dead?
I completely agree with you on the point on pre-writing some post to be published some time later when you are busy. It helps to sustain the readership for that period for time.