Bloggers Missing In Action
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During the past five months I have found an interesting new world: the world of blogging.
It’s a world full of ideas, inspiration, and interesting people from all over the world. People you have never talked to but who you know better and on a deeper level than most of your co-workers or random acquaintances. You read their thoughts every day and you might even get into lively commenting and e-mail discussions with them.
When they stop blogging, it’s like you suddenly lost a friend.
And unfortunately that’s not a rare event in this blogging world.
Today I want to point out two blogs that I have been missing lately: William Profet’s One Job Two Salaries, and The Young Capitalist by Graham Lutz.
1. William Profet: One Job Two Salaries
On June 22nd, 2007 William Profet started his blog with an intriguing theme: How to double your salary without even telling your boss. William first created the blog to sell an e-book with the same name, but his blogging soon grew into something more interesting and valuable than just book marketing. William’s bold style and strong ideas brought him a fair amount of visibility and the valuable information he provided kept us coming back.
Here are some of my favorite picks from William’s posts:
- 5 Ways To Break The Office Dress-Code for Fun
- Tomorrow Will Never Come
- The 12 Steps to Self Respect
- Top 7 Clues That Your Boss Is An Alien
The last post at One Job Two Salaries is dated on August 3rd. No goodbye notes, no signs of William burning out. Before August 3rd, William had been posting almost every day. And then, all of the sudden the posting just stopped.
So, what happened? Is this a long break or the end of One Job Two Salaries? Or did William actually only plan to post for a short while to publicize his book in the first place?
2. Graham Lutz: The Young Capitalist
My friend Graham seems to be a victim of a intensely busy life.
Graham started his blog on July 17th with a story in which he tells a bit about his life and the reasons for starting the blog. Maybe his start was a bit sudden but right away he started publishing interesting and valuable content on entrepreneurship, building a business and doing the kind of work you really enjoy.
Graham’s blog has had a few short breaks along the way so I haven’t given up my hopes for a new post from Graham just yet. The last post so far is from September 16th, a bit more than two weeks ago. Given the fact that before this break Graham has been pounding out a new post every day or at least every second day this already makes me wonder what’s going on with the blog.
In Graham’s case I know that he’s been busy building his businesses, so that explains what is going on. However, only time will show if Graham will still return to blogging. I hope he does because I’m sure there are more people than just like me who enjoy reading Graham’s thoughts.
It’s a sad fact that many people give up on their blogs before they can see the rewards from them. When the reader base doesn’t grow as fast as it could it’s easy to start thinking that no one is interested in your content. But the reality is that even if you only have a dozen of readers each of them is reading your blog because they find it valuable.
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October 3rd, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Hi! Those are really good tips, nice article! I really enjoyed reading it. I’ll be checking your site more often ;)
Limitless
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Uh oh… I have been worrying a lot about how busy I have been lately and haven’t had time to post much (although I have some amazing posts in mind i haven’t gotten around to writing them).
It’s quite hard to keep it up and thats why we all look up to you for doing such a good job at writing quality articles day after day.
But I promise i’m not missing in action - so if you consider writing about me or how i’ve slowed down my posts dont!! i’m coming back, and strong i promise.
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:33 pm
p.s. i just noticed those feedburner stats! good job, i remember when you were stuck at 100 for a while, way to break through
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:31 pm
I think it’s always better if you just concentrate on doing the blog primarily for yourself and forget about the readers (that’s not meant to sound as harsh as it does, though). I know I wouldn’t have carried on blogging from when I started in around 2000 if I always thought I had an audience that I needed to please. Then again, my readers amount to about 20-30 people so it’s not really much, but it has still been enough to build interesting social networks and make connections in interesting ways.
Then again, I’d imagine if someone is primarily blogging because he feels like he has important things to say and gathers a crowd of readers (like I’d imagine this blog is doing), then obviously the readers become a much more important aspect in the whole blogging. But it does come with a baggage. Miss your blogging schedule for a while, have unnannounced pauses, drop the quality and style of your blog posts - people will move on and forget the blog.
So it’s definitely a double-edged sword. I’ve seen loads and loads of promising bloggers burning out and quitting just due to it not being fun anymore and feeling more like a job than a hobby. For me it is and has been a hobby, a way to keep a sort of weird diary for myself and also slightly improve my writing. And that reminds me of something, so pop up to me at the office and I’ll show you something that you might find interesting ;-)
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:49 pm
Sometimes people start blogging just to give vent to some feral, but well defined thoughts and when they feel they’ve said whatever they wanted to say, may be for the time being, then they stop blogging. I’m not a great blogger so people hardly noticed when I didn’t blog for even six months. This is something I plan to change this time :-).
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:56 pm
Have you read the One Job, Two Salaries book? If you have, is it worth getting?
His blog entry about self respect made me a bit sad. My skills nor talents get much use currently.
October 4th, 2007 at 7:38 am
Limitless: Thanks for stopping by!
Rashid: That’s good to hear! I enjoy your blog a lot and I hope you’ll be around for a long time still. Thanks for the support, and I’m looking forward to your new posts!
Reko: I guess it all boils down to what you want from your blog. If you want to use your blog as a kind of an online diary, then I agree with you.
My wife and I have a blog like that (www.oivalaine.net) which is mostly dedicated to our son but also has stories about our lives in general. I have been surprised to notice that that blog gets about 100 daily visitors because it’s a blog that we mainly created for ourselves.
However, with this blog I have different goals, and thus my methods also need to be a bit different. This blog is about sharing my thoughts with lots of people and also positioning myself as a “real” writer. That’s why with this blog I try to keep up a consistent pace of new articles coming out (hopefully with a consistent quality as well) and constantly find new readers.
Then as my reader base grows I hope to get freelance writing (blogging, copy writing, etc.) gigs from people who know me through my blog.
As you see, to me the function of this blog is something between a hobby and a job. The passion of a hobby definitely needs to be there but still I also see it as a side job, and therefore am willing to actually “work” on it too.
That’s something that I guess each blogger needs to decide for themselves: how “professional” they want to go, and whether they want to keep blogging as a great hobby or make into a “job”.
Thanks for the great thoughts, Reko - and I’ll make sure to pop by your desk later today ;)
Amrit: I’m sure someone noticed. But good luck with your “second coming” :)
Lynoure: Yeah, I read it. It was OK, but kind of shallow.
I can basically summarize the book in just a sentence: Work half of the day for your employer and the second half on your own businesses. The first half should be really efficient so that you get as much done as before so no one will notice that you aren’t really working the whole day ;)
To me that’s an interesting thought, but maybe a bit too extreme to try out ;) That’s why I enjoyed the blog actually more than the book.