The New York Times has a piece on orphaned blogs, as in blogs started and then abandoned. It is an inane article bordering to sensational journalism, masking itself in NYT’s legacy. I’m sorry, but this is just stupid. Some quotes for your enjoyment.
Like Mrs. Nichols, many people start blogs with lofty aspirations — to build an audience and leave their day job, to land a book deal, or simply to share their genius with the world. Getting started is easy, since all it takes to maintain a blog is a little time and inspiration. So why do blogs have a higher failure rate than restaurants?
That’s referring to disappointed (self-proclaimed) soccer mom Mrs. Nichols, who had lofty dreams about $4,000 monthly revenue. And there’s more!
Judging from conversations with retired bloggers, many of the orphans were cast aside by people who had assumed that once they started blogging, the world would beat a path to their digital door.
I’m having a hard time not writing anything snarky here. I mean, every other business venture in the whole wide world is so easy, so why shouldn’t blogging? Yes, that’s sarcasm.
Nancy Sun was successful and built a readership, and then got emails and friends reading her blog and everything felt wrong, apparently.
“The Internet is different now,” she said over a cup of tea in Midtown. “I was too Web 1.0. You want to be anonymous, you want to write, like, long entries, and no one wants to read that stuff.”
Yeah, that’s a problem. Mr. and Mrs. X has a hard time getting read, and not all people want to be in the public limelight. That might mean that others will, oh I don’t know, comment on their work, speak their mind, and maybe even disagree. Nasty stuff, but yeah, I can see that happening. You could be taken aback by it.
Sun wasn’t. She’s running a new blog now, says the NYT piece, and wraps up the article with a quote from here, about why she’s doing it again:
“To be honest, I would love a book deal to come out of my blog,” she wrote. “Or I would love for Salad Days to give me a means to be financially independent to continue pursuing and sharing what I love with the world.”
Oh my.
Want to start blogging? Consider this first:
- Blogging does not equal financial freedom by itself, although you can make money.
- You will likely not make money.
- The money you might in fact make will probably not cover your Starbucks bill.
There are successful bloggers, making ad money or getting paid to write stuff like this. There are bloggers landing book deals. These are a minority.
But one can dream, right? That’s why I love the fact that Nancy Sun is setting the bar high. She might just make it. And if not, hopefully she learned to make the trip, no matter where it might end up, a meaningful one.
