What Will Make You Quit Blogging?
Perhaps you declare yourself a blog addict after writing 1 or 2 entries a week for more than a year. You gain a number of friends, subscribers, readers, influence and authority. Readers crowd on each topic you post. Your posts are quoted everywhere, from the popular to the mere copy-pasters. You’ve created three or four more other blogs of different niches, and you now start earning real money. You’re in the elite circle. You’re now enjoying stardom in twitter, Facebook, and in whatever latest social media available.
Quit Blogging
But then you pause for a minute and ponder. “What will make you quit blogging at this point in time?”
Or perhaps you just write for yourself anonymously, carrying an alias that would raise the hair of anyone hearing the name uttered. You dislike popularity, blog metrics and social media. You simply write your thoughts like your blog is your diary with or without readers. Blogging is your passion. Writing is your forte. Your blog, as you proclaim, is your outlet for living. Then suddenly you announce your retirement.
In July 2008, a famous Internet entrepreneur and blogger, Jason Calacanis, announced that he quit blogging. Jason is the CEO of Mahalo.com, a human-powered search engine, and was the co-founder of Weblogs, Inc.
In the Philippine setting, Jehzeel Laurente, the very influential blogger behind www.jehzlau-concepts.com, announced the other day that he quit blogging. No further reasons were given, except this intro statement he posted. “Every beginning has an end. Everything once cherished fades and dies. Everything we fought so hard for, in the end just withers away. This is my farewell blog post to all my avid readers. I don’t want to quit blogging but I need to. My blogging journey will just end anyway, so I’ll end it right now.”
Though I don’t want to delve deeper into the issues behind the decision of those two famous bloggers, below are some of the reasons why people quit and leave their blogs behind:
1. Death – That’s too obvious if we consider the death of the blogger. But what if that is the death of someone the blogger loves and adores so much? I know of a blogger who quit after the death of her firstborn. It was like her soul was totally consumed after the loss and that she could not continue maintaining the site anymore because of too much pain.
2. Prolonged sickness/Health reasons – There are sicknesses which will make it difficult for someone to blog again. Blindness for instance.
3. Work and Offline business – Responsibilities pile up just as you are on your blogging peak. A promotion, a new challenge, or a new project. Or maybe your business is enjoying exponential growth that you no longer have time for blogging.
4. Growing Internet business – Some netreprenuers started with blogging. But as their business grows, they need to put more time on where the money is. It is not really in blogging where bloggers make large sums of money. It is still in the entrepreneurial side like affiliate marketing, search engine marketing, internet marketing, search engine optimization, business process outsourcing, etc…
5. Family – Your spouse doesn’t understand what blogging is. Your kids are growing and they long for your presence. To blog or to spend time more with family? Of course, you know where you stand.
6. Trolls and online attacks – You made enemies because of a single post. Trolls hound your blog and destroy your reputation. You want to stand your ground. Friends listen, but the ill-informed cometh and leaveth, pinching a little of your flesh and stabbing your soul. It hurts. Should you click the delete button and just fade away from the blogosphere? Some did.
7. Boredom – You blogged because you’re bored. You quit blogging because you’re bored. It’s that simple.
8. Tired of chasing money online – Because you failed in your quest for making money online, you now think it’s more profitable to sell balut instead. Or perhaps you suddenly found yourself banned from a PPC program you worked hard to earn more money.
9. No more time – There is still time for everything, but you rather spend it sleeping and resting.
10. Shift of hobby – You considered blogging a hobby. Then came Farmville, Farmtown, Mafia Wars and other Facebook apps, which consumed all your waking hours. A hobby is simply replaced by a new hobby.
11. Lack of internet access – The management at the workplace suddenly changed its internet usage policy. It’s your sole access as you don’t want to spend and only want the freebies. Your home doesn’t have a signal for either smartbro, sun or globe. You no longer have any access to the internet. Your passion died too.
What do you think my friend? Is quitting from blogging at the back of your mind right now?
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Ceblogger is a CPA trapped in his cubicle while his mind wanders outside watching the world, and exploring possibilities his mind conceived.
January 25th, 2010 at 5:38 pm
na-ah. i haven’t conquered the philippine blogosphere yet. hehehe…
January 25th, 2010 at 7:11 pm
You can start your quest of conquering it now. hehe.
January 26th, 2010 at 3:01 am
Musta na? People come and go in the blogosphere… who knows, a blogger could declare he’s quitting but he could just be making another blog with a different alias… I personally know somebody who did this.
As they say, once a blogger, always a blogger.
I haven’t thought about quitting yet… if that would happen, it would be for a very valid personal reason. These days, I have been busy and sometimes I’d neglect to update my blogs but for me it’s just taking a break from the blogosphere… I will still be back even after many months of not making a post.
Aside from making a post, I consider visiting friends’ blogs and commenting on their posts as part of my blogging activities… and this is one online activity I miss the most whenever I get too busy with my offline life.
January 26th, 2010 at 10:20 am
hi carey, there are some who’d like to follow the footsteps of Michael Jordan and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Retire and unretire. whatever reasons, that is theirs to decide and to handle.
you’ve been to many places na ah! I can see that in your travel blog. Very nice!
January 26th, 2010 at 3:30 pm
For me maybe, death, deteriority health, physical incapacity (blindess and amputation) and maybe extreme boredom…
Echos chenez lang yung kay jehz, eheheh! Tingnan mo, may post yan ulit in the coming days or weeks. May niluluto lang daw ang lolo mo…eheheh
January 26th, 2010 at 5:52 pm
jehz and his other sites will still be around, i guess. he may just focus on being a netreprenuer.
January 26th, 2010 at 9:50 pm
I’m not discounting the likelihood of me quitting blogging. But I’d do it not because of FarmVille addiction. Just now, my crops have rotted away. I let it be. I don’t care about it anymore.
Same with Elmot – blindness. Or loss of this writing hand. But who knows? It maybe something banal and peposterous. Like having no money to pay for webhosting. That’s sad, but it can happen. LOL
January 26th, 2010 at 10:16 pm
Thought-provoking post! I can’t imagine quitting blogging at this point. However, I can see all of the reasons you listed as ones that might get me in the end. But the one biggest reason that would cause me to blog is that I would be overwhelmed with the perception of what others want me to be blogging about, instead of using blogging as a personal means of expression. Even then I wouldn’t mind as long as I was actually getting paid for it. But since I am not, the only reason I would quit right now is if it started to feel more like a job than an adventure.
January 27th, 2010 at 7:29 am
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February 1st, 2010 at 2:49 pm
I often worry that I’ll be too sick for a while to blog. I think I’d go crazy without it. Now that I have my laptop the likelihood of that happening doesn’t sound very good though. Even if I were in the hospital there’s free wifi! Did you know that there’s even a plugin for closing down your blog when you die? It allows you to write a goodbye post and provides all of your hosting and affiliate info to your next of kin.
February 11th, 2010 at 6:56 pm
Nice post. I guess the only things that will make me quit blogging are the deadliest reasons as: Blog host crash and if there will be a much more higher state of being other than the internet.
February 12th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
I think it’s because people are shifting to what they call as Micro-blogging – snippets / shoutouts /profile updates in 1 or 2 sentences – like twitter and facebook. It’s still blogging but not the same as the traditional form.
I read a survey about this in the newspaper and people are definitely shifting to it especially with the rise of internet access thru mobile phones – mobile blogging na and IN! Sadly for us here in the Phils, medyo mahal pa din to avail of this service.
My friends in Japan and SG are all doing it.
February 13th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
when there’s no inspiration… kahit madaming gusto i-blog kung walang motivation and inspiration, walang blog,… talking about my recent experience, hahaha!
February 18th, 2010 at 6:58 am
Another way of losing interest in blogging when you ran out of “pretentions” that either you are earning or loving it. Hehehe.
That is why I know you’re still blogging despite your hectic corporate life because you simply love it… Not much about the money eh… So how’s the US$2.00/day earning with adsense? Should have increased a dozen fold already.
March 2nd, 2010 at 7:54 am
What a great post; very thought provoking. Strange as this sounds coming from me (you don’t really know me, but I’ve been fairly prolific), I’ve been thinking about this lately myself.
I have 3 blogs. Only one of them gets any real visitors at all. I got into blogging to promote my business, and have expanded since then. I’ve found that though I like blogging, and like visiting other blogs, I do spend a lot of time doing it, and frankly I’m starting to get tired. Not necessarily of blogging, but tired of things across the board.
Every once in awhile I ask myself if I’m getting enough out of all of my blogs to compel me to continue. I think it’s a fair question, and like the people you mentioned in your blog, every once in awhile we all probably come to that same question.
Not giving up now; just interesting to read this as I’ve been thinking about it.
March 2nd, 2010 at 9:17 am
To me, it’s probably family. I mean, I’m still single now but one day when I get married and start to have kids, I might not have the time anymore to blog and stuffs
Oh well, let’s worry about that later
March 4th, 2010 at 8:58 am
Hmm.. I was wondering that too. At first I thought Jehzlau’s departure was a joke – I’m still waiting for the punchline. :p
I would probably quit when I’ve got no more time to blog. Or I might not quit at all? Who knows about these things really?
Right now I blog less often than I did last year – a sure sign of waning enthusiasm. Or maybe it’s just a phase and soon I will be blogging like crazy again.
March 7th, 2010 at 2:06 pm
number 8 seems to be the reason most bloggers quit. Making money online isn’t easy. It takes patience.