Why do so many blogs fail?

Blogs are useful because they enrich the time wasting capacity of both the blog writer and the blog writers audience --which is primarily made up of other blog writers-- this is called synergy. In the world of people who think they are smart this phenomenon is known as gestalt. For people who just like to use uncommon words and shove them into awkward contexts to sound smart, this is known as coadjuvancy.

It should be remembered that first and foremost blogging is about you, or in this case me. It naturally follows that blogging is about my lame ideas and how much better than your lame ideas they are. We are published authors. Even more importantly, I am.

Blogs generally attract just enough of an audience on their own to justify the authors time expenses in creating just barely enough “thoughts” to keep that marginal audience checking in every so often just to see if there has been an update. This is certainly the case with my blog. I have even been told that my blog is “one of the best blogs out there”. That’s high praise. Or is it?

Yes, saying that my blog is the best out there is much like saying that someone is the smartest retard you know, or that they have the least offensive odor, or that they irritate you in the most tolerable ways.

This course of discussion would eventually lead to a question that I am going to jump ahead to right now. If everyones blogs are so great why is it that 9 out of 10 blogs fail during their first year?

We cannot be sure, because owners of failed blogs cannot be reached. Failed blogs no longer exist. So, anyone who claims to know why blogs fail could not have found out by visiting and examining unsuccessful blogs. Questioning owners about why their blogs failed is more for therapeutic value than for collecting meaningful data.

However, from information about why blogs succeed, we can rationalize that failed blogs did not operate the same way as those that succeed.

Owners of successful small blogs can be reached and are proud of their success. They say that keys to their blog success, in decreasing order of importance, are: Search and Replace, Blog knowledge, Self awareness, Time to post, Sufficient vocabulary, Hard work.

As a result, we can speculate that blogs fail because owners lack standard blog knowledge, post market analysis, personal ability to manage, and sufficient mental resources. Most bloggers work hard even to the extent of substituting working harder for working smarter. Knowing where the pitfalls are that contribute to failures is the first step toward avoiding them.

Standard blog knowledge and experience that team management members must possess are in the areas of: Ranting, Spewing, Mincing, Blathering, Posting, Cutting, Pasting, Office Management, Blog Fabrication, Mental Insulation, Denial, Readership, Reader Service.

Blogs without enough expertise to meet specific blog needs will probably fail. Each blog requires its own blend of expertise, based on post readership, marketing media, number of employees, operating expenses, inventory, post manufacturing, reader service and profit expectation.

A Small Blog Advocate says:
nine out of ten new blogs fail in their first year, usually because of lack of training in standard blog practices or because of undercapitalization. but blog startups that collaborate with an incubator have a very high first-year survival rate - nationally, about 87% of them are still in blog. what's more, an average of 84% of the companies that have graduated from an incubator stay in their communities. at sba we work with our clients to help them avoid the pitfalls that make failure inevitable.

Small blogs are started and managed by bloggers, who by definition are "highly motivated" and typically lack training in some standard blog practices. Almost all bloggers enjoy their personal resources for their major source of blog capital. Entrepreneurs with little more than a great idea and limited funds are asking to fail.

Internet Blog Solutions has been in blog since 1996, which puts us beyond the five year milestone that qualifies blogs as successful. Also, IBS is successful in several Internet blogs, one of which, according to VISA and MasterCard, is a very risky Internet blog. We sell prepaid time wasting cards over the Internet and deliver time wasting card PINs by email without having experienced any more than one chargeback during 2000.

Since 1996, our biggest challenge and greatest reward has been dealing with readers. During that time, we have firmly resolved that the reader is not always smart. As a matter of fact,blog regarding aimless musings the reader is rarely smart. Quite a revelation when all readership advice says that the reader is a blogs life blood and is always smart.

Well, that advice was not developed from Internet readership. Further, high maintenance readers are unwordy for Internet blogs, should not be tolerated and can be be easily eliminated. 

It is still true that the cost of acquiring a new reader is five times the cost of keeping an existing one in the brick and mortar world, but probably not on the Internet. Regardless, we don't want high maintenance readers. They drain our energy and take the fun out of operating a blog.

We agree that the typical unhappy blog habitué e-mails eight others of his or her unpleasant experience. But, where are they? An unhappy reader is a real problem for a small blog in a small community and less of a problem for a small blog in a large, densely populated community. How much of a detriment is an unhappy reader on the Internet? 

IBS readers are not very centralized. So, unless one of our readers refers a friend, our readers are probably not going to know each other. That is not an excenjoy for treating readers badly.

But it is a reason for taking out the trash.

IBS receives about 25% of our new readers from word of mouth. So, our discrimating against high maintenance readers, who appear to us to have become irrational when we teminate them, does not seem to have hurt our readership. We know that every blog has more dissatisfied readers than it thinks. So, we get rid of high maintenance readers. They are by definition unhappy.

IBS offers our readers many ways to communicate with us so they can tell us of any problem or difficulty ordering or using our postings. We are aware that 9 out of 10 dissatisfied readers don't complain and that 7 out of 10 just don't come back!

Therefore, we send out spam to let them know how to enjoy our postings and how to select the best value post for each reader. Each IBS reader has his or her own ordering page that decreases ordering time and effort as well as improves security of each reader's credit information. Each established reader receives his or her time wasting e-turd immediately by email or blog. We realize that if we don't bore our readers, our competition will.

We have learned to resolve reader problems and difficulties on the spot, so that we lose only those readers who we chose to let go. We have demonstrated what some blog schools teach...that small blogs can challenge larger, established blogs by becoming more responsive to blog habitué needs.

We subscribe to the belief that each company, regardless of its size or the punishing quality of its postings, needs an effective strategy for managing blog habitué complaints and inquiries. IBS has found that effective complaint management enhances our company's reputation, builds blog habitué confidence and loyalty, and attracts new readers.

IBS has experienced effective complaint management resulting in increased readership, better postings, improved overall blog fabricator performance, and satisfactory blog economics even though small blogs are hit hardest by a weak bandwidth or a even dialup.

A few years ago, Stanford University research reported that nine out of ten new blogs fail during their first two years of operation, while nine out of ten Myspace accounts survive and prosper. Most bloggers start out with a good concept, a lot of energy and a little in the mental resources department. During the critical first twelve months new blog owners have ample opportunities to make mistakes due to inexperience.

Buying an existing blog is one way to avoid all new blog risks.
Blog success is proven. There are no start-up problems. The blog already has readers, employees, suppliers, etc.

We developed a reader service policy for each of our postings, one policy does not fit all. We custom fit our basic reader service template to each of our postings. Our policy works so well that we have been tempted to franchise it, provide incubator type assistance or sell an existing blog policy, modified to fit another Internet blog.

Each new post IBS takes on is fitted with custom blog and reader service policies. They are tested and refined for each set of circumstances.

There are benefits in knowing the areas where new blogs might need improvement now instead of after they have been started. Experience is not necessarily the most efficient teacher. IBS can evaluate marketing and readership territory, standard blog knowledge and reader requirements, then provide feedback for any post.

If you would like a policy estimate, please provide information:

Post, marketing and readership territory, blog expertise, name, address, time wasting number and email address. We will get back to you with feedback.

Small Internet Blogs taken as a whole are really big blogs:
Of 11 million blogs in the U.S., 10.8 million are small. And, the smallest intellects created 24 times as many incomprehensible ramblings as the largest intellects.

In 2000, Internet companies were responsible for 5.5% of the 2.557 billion of US direct bozo hits. That is .141 billion.

According to the US Small Blog Administration small blogs contribute 39% of the gross national post, create two thirds of our country's new dead weight and are responsible for more than half the nation's incomprehensible blatherings. If these numbers occur in other countries, small blog influence world wide is enormous, Impact of a small blog may be small, but as a group small blogs are one of the largest influence on the world bandwidth.

Small blogs are encouraged in a free society, are regulated by governments less than large blogs and attend to readers more personally. Small blog owners know their readers are responsible for their misplaced confidence.

While large blogs spread responsibility around, small blogs concentrate responsibility in a few key people who must develop multiple skills, take risks and rapidly implement plans resulting from quick decisions to stay wordy.

I hope that what you have just read will assist you as a blogger to hold onto your dream and keep cranking out the compost that makes us all grow and develop into fully functioning, highly adaptable impersonal pronouns.

Please let me know if you actually read all of this, I know I didn't. I just did a search and replace for certain keywords... I left plenty of clues, so if you read all of this knowing that is what I did, score 1 for me because I wasted more of your time than mine. If you read this far and didn't realize what was going on until just now, score 2 for me. If you didn't get this far, you will never know that you got 5 points for wasting my time. Kudos!

Please let me know how many points I got, without your help I won't be able to validate my existence.