Not only is good writing hard, but technical writing is even harder. I have a blog with a few articles on technical topics, but it takes a lot of time to write, edit, and make sure everything is correct. To put something up at the quality level I want ends up taking too much time and interfering with working on my projects.
I started blogging about five years ago, more or less in the manner you describe. Wrote an excited post or two or three right away, then maybe another in a week or two, and then... slowly stopped. Then a year later picked it up again, and then stopped.
I tried a variety of blog tools. I first had a blog at MIT, then when they killed that service, I tried several of the hip new services like Tumblr, Typepad, and Posterous. I stuck with Posterous the longest, but most recently moved to Wordpress running on my own virtual server. Along the way, I've kept some of my favorite posts from abandoned services, and deleted others that I no longer felt were worth sharing.
But why not write consistently? In my case, I suppose I feel like I frequently have nothing original to add to a topic. There are lots of things I could write about, but why should I, when somebody else already has?
Does it make sense, though, that a blog ought to be held to the standards of original research and contributions to a topic? It's a blog, not a doctoral thesis. So maybe that doesn't make any sense. What, then, should be the purpose of writing, if not to create brand new thoughts?
Expressing who you are and what you know may be reason enough. I would rather hire a consultant that had displayed their knowledge of their field through writing than somebody who just posted a list of skills they had, and I'm more likely to find somebody who can do a particular task if they have written about it than if they had just done the task and posted it on GitHub.
Blogging can be useful to market yourself as a consultant, to market your products you are trying to sell, to make new acquaintances on the web, to build stronger relations with people you already know, to help you improve as a writer and as a thinker... there are all sorts of benefits to blogging besides making original contributions to exposition of a topic. And even though I realize this, I still get stuck a lot on the non-originality thing.
I imagine that a lot of people do.
And then, there are people who just try blogging, realize they don't like it or have other things they'd rather do, and never delete the first post. That's a lot easier to explain, and probably accounts for way more abandoned blogs. :-)
> there are all sorts of benefits to blogging besides making original contributions to exposition of a topic. And even though I realize this, I still get stuck a lot on the non-originality thing.
Part of the problem is that many people see blogging as a teaching tool alone. More often than not, it's a conversation starter too, and the blogger ends up learning a great deal of new information in the process.
And even if you wish to be only a teacher with your blog, there is also a bit of Dunning–Kruger effect at play here. You think, what's the point of me explaining X? Everyone knows about X, probably better than me. Others wrote about X.
In truth, you'll find that more often than not plenty of people don't know about X. The way you'd describe and explain X may actually lead people to acquire a new prospective on the subject.
Really like the insight you made about conversation starting. The problem is that most people won't believe they can actually attract the audience needed to create a fertile conversation on their blog.
Philosophically speaking, doesn't this boil down to having something meaningful to discuss? Otherwise you're just generating web noise but we're all guilty of that.
A very good point. I share a lot of puzzles and tech-notes on my blog. It might appear as a teaching tool to some but for me it is a great learning tool. An idea, a problem or a solution to a problem might exist in our mind in a confused form. But once we have to put it down in words for a larger audience, one has to re-think of the whole idea, problem or solution in a manner that can be expressed to a larger audience. This usually involves re-learning the idea in a simpler way.
In other words, I end up learning a lot in order to maintain a blog. The D-K effect won't bother one if one accepts the fact that a good blog helps you learn as much as it helps your readers learn. It's more about learning together rather than one person trying to teach other.
95% of blogs are abandoned for the same reason 95% of projects never materialize, which in fact is the same reason 95% of life changes remain new year resolutions: Procrastination.
The Postary announcement states:
Postary - the simplest way to share posts with no strings attached, no obligations and no expectations. Postary reduces the Blog Lifecycle down to step four: if you are inspired to say something, then just post it and share it with the world
Similarly to suggestions for product landing pages, you do not state how Postary will help me with that, i.e. how the procrastination factor is dealt with. Is there gamification? E-mail reminders? Where is the cheese? Expand on that "simplest way" to sell the idea on me.
Additionally, I will not click-through the "Write a post" button since it requires a Twitter account. Why do I need to login to Twitter, assuming I do have a Twitter account, if you haven't convinced me that there is a reason to waste a couple of minutes of my time?
To sum things up, what differentiates you from, say, Blogspot, Tumblr, Wordpress et al? I can "just post it and share it with the world" over there too.
I agree on the Twitter thing - open this up to anyone, let them grab a login with Twitter if they want, have a secret admin url if they want or have no editing ability at all - if they want.
Correct me if I'm wrong but you are essentially offering what Google+ and TwitLonger.com offer already. When a person is inspired, they can post and share with their friends a longer post, with no strings attached.
This will undoubtably work for some, and if you market it properly, you may create a spot for your service; but I'm not sure this is the cure to the 95% of blogs are abandoned problem.
A traditional blog is a lot more work, but it can provide you with an unbelievable degree of rewards and benefits. I think many of these benefits will be lost for those who opt to use your service, at least in its current incarnation.
In my book on technical blogging (http://pragprog.com/book/actb/technical-blogging) I provide a different antidote to abandonment syndrome. I suggest a careful plan and road map that can lead virtually anyone who follows the steps to succeed early on.
Careful planning, knowing what to write and when, learning how to deal with writer's block, and achieving a degree of success early on, all contribute to eliminating the abandonment problem.
Who would abandon a blog that is read by thousands, it's making them money, and helping them further their career? Not many, I suspect, despite the weekly effort required to achieve such goals.
Regarding, TwitLonger and Google+ - yes, the distinction is not strong. We've built a POC but want to add features that make each post more "special." Because we're divorcing posts from blogs, each post can look different :)
I hear you on the antidote, but I'm not sure it will work for most people. In fact, many people don't have an "expertise" to share and are looking to post thoughts about non-work-related material.
You forgot two points in your lifecycle:
- Irregular posts apologizing for not posting more often.
- Various defeated remarks about "not being read by anyone, anyway".
At least, that's how my personal blog (and a few I tried starting) went, in addition to what you already mention.
I think that it's an awesome ideas, the same way services like "twitpic" offer hosting of free-floating images without the need for a hosting, you offer free-floating blog posts without the setup. I like it!
Yes, but you forgot typical blog post #6 or #7 titled: "Hey guys, send me some topics so I can write about them", which usually predates a permanent 404 by about 10 working days.
Glad you like it. Feel free to pimp it/use it whenever you want :)
Anyway - if we can find the time, we may release new features in the near-term that will make it even more interesting! Or we might just procrastinate and not do anything...
I've abandoned several blogs. No, I'm not happy about this.
Why abandon a blog that I've put a great deal of time, even years, into?
For me, it comes down to few things, but mainly a work vs reward measuring. Doing a good (or even decent) blog takes a lot of work. I'm honestly not the best writer in the world, and creating a blog that's on topic consistently and creating that amount of rich content is just hard.
I found my traffic was always good if I could blog at least 3x/week, but really 1x/day was the very best. Even if you're doing that by sitting down and queuing up content for the week, that's a lot of effort (generally an entire day) just to blog consistently.
What I always wanted to do, was to get together a group blog with 5-10 friends, which we could all contribute to on some semi-consistent topic (like Mashable, Techcrunch, etc but smaller in scope and goal). Then each person doing 1-2 things a week would be totally sufficient and keep things interesting.
Yet, the reward for this was always pretty low. I didn't like putting ads on my site. Amazon referral links were pretty good on occasion, but if you don't have a product oriented blog (or huge traffic) it still barely paid for hosting. So 1 day/week (15% of your time) for that much coming back to me was pretty low.
This is a great concept... I think where it could differentiate itself is by aggregating posts by topic. If I'm searching some topic on the web, I often come across blogs that are out of date or orphaned, and they might provide me with some of the information or links I am looking for, but not all.
If Postary lets me find several such blogs on its site, organized into blog threads by topic, then it fills a need on both sides: the author gets to broadcast to the web without the pressure of maintaining a blog site or Twitter feed, etc... and the reader is able to find information or commentary on a topic of interest.
It could be almost like a message board, instead of thread topics there are topics (several of which might apply to any given Postary post) and instead of responses to that topic, a threaded view of Postary posts. The threaded view would be composed on-the-fly and would vary depending on what you search for.
To make it more interesting and engaging, each Postary could have the option of being maintained as a blog if the writer so wished... and further, each Postary could allow comments from readers.
So you could post your thoughts about Haskell the day you discover and get really excited by it; and that could be tagged under topics like Haskell, programming philosophy, programming tips, etc. If somebody searched Postary for Haskell, they would see your post along with all others on the same topic, plus comments, plus follow-on posts (if any) by the same author. Threads could be auto-composed based on any number of criteria (newest first, most-responded-to first, etc.)
In this way, the site could serve both the "web archaeology" and "latest and greatest info" niches of search, and could create a lighter, less pressured form of engagement with authors and readers. Isolated, sporadic posting by authors could be organized into a coherent, constantly-updated site on any number of topics.
Because I realized that 99% of what I want to write about is textual flatulence to the rest of the world, and I got tired of the narcissism inherent in that 99%.
I do keep 3 bloggy things, but 2 only get updated with useful info, and the other is where I mumble about my personal life (which no one but me cares about generally).
It could be as simple as 95% of people expected some sort of reward for blogging. This could be ads from traffic, comments saying how smart you are or just tons of hits to stroke your ego.
I have a half dozen blogs for different things, my favorite is this one where I post my crazy ideas so I stop myself from actually implementing them and can come back to them later if I still like the idea a week/month later http://ideasfrommydreams.blogspot.com/
In the six years I have had it there has been a total of 3301 page views and maybe five comments and I am ok with that because that isn't where it provides me with value. If comments or page views mattered I would have abandoned this blog years ago.
Ha! That blog is an awesome idea. So may ideas left to die (or...live on?) - I can completely relate...believe me. If you ever wanted guest contributors to THAT, I think there are probably a few others who can relate who read HN.
Hmm interesting idea. If anyone is interested in guest blogging on a blog with such "high traffic" shoot me an email. Or I could spin up an ideaplanet (like http://planetqt.org/) to aggregate blogs of such caliber.
I do wonder how many Moleskines are sold today that have more than a few pages used, if that?
Blogs and diaries are a great example of what may be a bigger trend: people often begin projects with high hopes, but due to a lack of a clear vision and/or an overestimation of their long-term motivation, it fizzles.
I like this idea, I've had a thing or two I wanted to write on, but didn't want to setup a blog. I've actually thought of building something similar myself.
So, excited about this website, I clicked on "Write a post". Oh, you want to tie to my twitter account. Nevermind.
I plain old don't want to use my twitter account for this, or be forced to create a throwaway account on a completely unrelated service just to have a throwaway account for yours. And all because you can't be arsed to do any real auth, or allow users to post without accounts at all, which given the nature what you've built makes a whole, whole lot of sense. If I want to have to to make an account as a prerequisite to posting a one-off blogpost, I'll go get a blogger account.
I don't care if you promise a whole huggy bunch not to do anything with my twitter account. I don't trust you and I sure as hell don't trust your website's security.
95% of just about everything people try out gets abandoned - relationships, hobbies, jobs. We all have a limited capacity for what we can spend time on in our lives. The only difference with blogs is that (at least for the free ones like blogger/tumblr/posterous), there's no incentive to take them down and they don't decay / disappear on their own.
It's like wondering why 95% of dates don't lead to marriage.
Exactly. Imagine for a moment how many novels started were never finished. How many brushes were left to collect dust after a few paintings. Or ab-rollers that never produced any six-pack abs. Or gardens abandoned after a couple salads.
The more amazing number here, in my opinion, is that 5% of blogs stick around. That seems incredibly high for a broadly popular pursuit. Even a 1% follow-through would strike me as a far better success rate than most common human endeavors.
I think a lot of blog abandonment is a consequence of shifting priorities.
I started my most recent blog back in 2008 to keep track of the projects I was working on and to build a body of work that I could present along with a resume.
A lot of the content I tried to capture was original work I had done; some of it was writing about something I had learned and tried to apply to a proof of concept.
I went with a monthly format and for awhile this worked out well, but as soon as summer would come around- priorities would change and content wouldn't resume until November.
I've gone through that cycle the past four years and this past year I simply haven't had the motivation to stick with it due to projects at work draining me of my enthusiasm and deciding that there are better ways to spend my time than constantly parked in front of a computer.
I'm sure that I'll find myself updating it again. I think if I still had the motivation and focus I did when I was younger, I would be able to stick with it. But when blue skies and mountain calls you, you got to answer.
I agree with your diagnosis of the problem, but not sure about your solution. People start blogs because they want their own space to share their thoughts. If they wanted to share their thoughts on someone else's site, they'd comment on a post, use fb, or a million other things. I think you're missing a key piece to why ppl start their own blogs, because it's theirs and they have the freedom to do whatever they want, they have a sense of ownership. I signed up for your service but I won't use it because I want my own space. I'm starting a blog and will probably follow the path you laid out, but at least I'll have my own space.
Very spot-on description of the mania-to-blah mindset that does in 95% of blogs. I'd also add to the mix:
1) Unrealistic Expectations. Most people have no idea what "success" really looks like for a blog. They assume that, if six months have gone by and they're not getting 100,000+ followers, they've failed. Another unrealistic expectation is what I'd call an overly generous self-assessment: the blogger in question overestimates how much gas he has in the tank on a particular topic. He may get a few great ideas in his head one day, then build a blog around them, then find himself struggling for material on the third day.
2) Lack of Patience. Building a successful following is rarely an overnight journey. Some blogs take years to find their footing, and years more to find their audiences.
3) Insufficient or Non-Strategic Marketing. As folks in the startup world are well aware, you really need to think outside the box -- and occasionally go totally wild -- to get attention in today's crowded marketplace of ideas. You've also got to be clever about building credibility, connections to the right influencers, and paths outward from those influencers to broader audiences. By contrast, most hobby-bloggers take a "write it and they will come" approach -- hoping naively that people will flock to their blogs as if called to them by magic. Or they'll blast notices out to all their friends and family, rather than taking a careful inventory of who might actually be interested, who might be very interested, and who might be so interested that she'll tell her friends (or, conversely, who might not give a flying you-know-what). It's counterintuitive to think that starting out by telling fewer people is preferable to shotgunning everyone you know. But the shotgun approach seldom works. Start surgically.
As it turns out, probably 90% of the work of building a successful blog takes place outside of the blog. Writing great content is the easy part (and it's not easy!); getting folks to notice is the hard part.
I was a very active blogger in my native language at some point, but I had only like 50 subscribers and maybe 300 page views in a good week.
I then switched to English and wrote only a dozen of articles or so. One of them was hard to write, basically a HOW-TO article who's implementation I had to write and test before I wrote the article. I also work full-time for a living and it took 3 days to write that article (a really long time for most bloggers).
Enough to say that a single well-researched article was more valuable, bringing in more subscribers than my previous shitty blog on which I talked about shitty things in a fire-and-forget style. And this was also kind of depressing, as if you want to be a successful blogger, you need hundreds of these good articles that take a lot of effort to write.
The way I see it - it's the same as with software development - 80% development / 80% polishing / 80% marketing.
Not everyone has a style that's suited for short or less thought out posts. I get about the same engagement with 500 words and 50, so I don't worry too much about it unless it's something controversial.
2) Lack of Patience. Building a successful following is rarely an overnight journey. Some blogs take years to find their footing, and years more to find their audiences.
I would add one more point: most people don't fundamentally have a writer's disposition. Writing is hard (if it weren't, we wouldn't have so many professional writers, books on writing, and classes on writing). Having something to say and the means to say it is hard. Having something to say, the means to say it, and the desire to write it is even harder. And so on.
I appear to have that disposition, to the point where I wrote about it some here: http://jseliger.com/2011/02/26/on-blogging-altruistically-or... and wrote about why most people probably drift to Twitter and Facebook: they're easier. If you're not fundamentally blogging for yourself, and because you want to write regularly, you're probably not going to "make" it, for whatever value of "make" you might use.
It is much easier to say something on here, facebook or Twitter because it can just purely be the thought you are having.
Once you want to translate that into a blog you really have to flesh it out and ideally read other sources and reference them. We you don't have to but I feel less comfortable just putting something down as opposed to really getting into the idea. Unfortunately all this takes time making me less likely to start it in the first place.
edw519 has mentioned this a bit, very prolific poster that is very well regarded on HN and has a lot to say but struggled to really do it in the blogging medium.
I have a blog I posted fairly consistently to for 2 1/2 years. I just checked the stats and in that time I have had a total of 1,530 hits. Total. And for my efforts I have earned $2.35. The reason I abandoned my blog is very simple. It never got any traction and I have bills to pay. Perhaps when I get a decent exit I'll give it another try but until then, I have bigger priorities.
I wish more bloggers knew that they could auction off their blog if it's got a bit of traffic and collect a check, rather than abandoning it and letting it die.
Glad to see this idea finally come to fruition - I tried getting this exact same thing off the ground last year with no success, but hoping you'll be able to succeed where I failed!
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 144 ms ] threadI tried a variety of blog tools. I first had a blog at MIT, then when they killed that service, I tried several of the hip new services like Tumblr, Typepad, and Posterous. I stuck with Posterous the longest, but most recently moved to Wordpress running on my own virtual server. Along the way, I've kept some of my favorite posts from abandoned services, and deleted others that I no longer felt were worth sharing.
But why not write consistently? In my case, I suppose I feel like I frequently have nothing original to add to a topic. There are lots of things I could write about, but why should I, when somebody else already has?
Does it make sense, though, that a blog ought to be held to the standards of original research and contributions to a topic? It's a blog, not a doctoral thesis. So maybe that doesn't make any sense. What, then, should be the purpose of writing, if not to create brand new thoughts?
Expressing who you are and what you know may be reason enough. I would rather hire a consultant that had displayed their knowledge of their field through writing than somebody who just posted a list of skills they had, and I'm more likely to find somebody who can do a particular task if they have written about it than if they had just done the task and posted it on GitHub.
Blogging can be useful to market yourself as a consultant, to market your products you are trying to sell, to make new acquaintances on the web, to build stronger relations with people you already know, to help you improve as a writer and as a thinker... there are all sorts of benefits to blogging besides making original contributions to exposition of a topic. And even though I realize this, I still get stuck a lot on the non-originality thing.
I imagine that a lot of people do.
And then, there are people who just try blogging, realize they don't like it or have other things they'd rather do, and never delete the first post. That's a lot easier to explain, and probably accounts for way more abandoned blogs. :-)
Part of the problem is that many people see blogging as a teaching tool alone. More often than not, it's a conversation starter too, and the blogger ends up learning a great deal of new information in the process.
And even if you wish to be only a teacher with your blog, there is also a bit of Dunning–Kruger effect at play here. You think, what's the point of me explaining X? Everyone knows about X, probably better than me. Others wrote about X.
In truth, you'll find that more often than not plenty of people don't know about X. The way you'd describe and explain X may actually lead people to acquire a new prospective on the subject.
In other words, I end up learning a lot in order to maintain a blog. The D-K effect won't bother one if one accepts the fact that a good blog helps you learn as much as it helps your readers learn. It's more about learning together rather than one person trying to teach other.
The Postary announcement states:
Postary - the simplest way to share posts with no strings attached, no obligations and no expectations. Postary reduces the Blog Lifecycle down to step four: if you are inspired to say something, then just post it and share it with the world
Similarly to suggestions for product landing pages, you do not state how Postary will help me with that, i.e. how the procrastination factor is dealt with. Is there gamification? E-mail reminders? Where is the cheese? Expand on that "simplest way" to sell the idea on me.
Additionally, I will not click-through the "Write a post" button since it requires a Twitter account. Why do I need to login to Twitter, assuming I do have a Twitter account, if you haven't convinced me that there is a reason to waste a couple of minutes of my time?
To sum things up, what differentiates you from, say, Blogspot, Tumblr, Wordpress et al? I can "just post it and share it with the world" over there too.
The difference I guess is that we tried to create a blogging service that isn't a blog you need to maintain to feel good about.
Needs more explanation on what the service does, perhaps a tour. Let me see how it works then if I want it, I'll link with Twitter.
This will undoubtably work for some, and if you market it properly, you may create a spot for your service; but I'm not sure this is the cure to the 95% of blogs are abandoned problem.
A traditional blog is a lot more work, but it can provide you with an unbelievable degree of rewards and benefits. I think many of these benefits will be lost for those who opt to use your service, at least in its current incarnation.
In my book on technical blogging (http://pragprog.com/book/actb/technical-blogging) I provide a different antidote to abandonment syndrome. I suggest a careful plan and road map that can lead virtually anyone who follows the steps to succeed early on.
Careful planning, knowing what to write and when, learning how to deal with writer's block, and achieving a degree of success early on, all contribute to eliminating the abandonment problem.
Who would abandon a blog that is read by thousands, it's making them money, and helping them further their career? Not many, I suspect, despite the weekly effort required to achieve such goals.
I hear you on the antidote, but I'm not sure it will work for most people. In fact, many people don't have an "expertise" to share and are looking to post thoughts about non-work-related material.
At least, that's how my personal blog (and a few I tried starting) went, in addition to what you already mention.
I think that it's an awesome ideas, the same way services like "twitpic" offer hosting of free-floating images without the need for a hosting, you offer free-floating blog posts without the setup. I like it!
Anyway - if we can find the time, we may release new features in the near-term that will make it even more interesting! Or we might just procrastinate and not do anything...
postery should integrate pastebin as a backend! And then usenet. Or email.
Why abandon a blog that I've put a great deal of time, even years, into?
For me, it comes down to few things, but mainly a work vs reward measuring. Doing a good (or even decent) blog takes a lot of work. I'm honestly not the best writer in the world, and creating a blog that's on topic consistently and creating that amount of rich content is just hard.
I found my traffic was always good if I could blog at least 3x/week, but really 1x/day was the very best. Even if you're doing that by sitting down and queuing up content for the week, that's a lot of effort (generally an entire day) just to blog consistently.
What I always wanted to do, was to get together a group blog with 5-10 friends, which we could all contribute to on some semi-consistent topic (like Mashable, Techcrunch, etc but smaller in scope and goal). Then each person doing 1-2 things a week would be totally sufficient and keep things interesting.
Yet, the reward for this was always pretty low. I didn't like putting ads on my site. Amazon referral links were pretty good on occasion, but if you don't have a product oriented blog (or huge traffic) it still barely paid for hosting. So 1 day/week (15% of your time) for that much coming back to me was pretty low.
If Postary lets me find several such blogs on its site, organized into blog threads by topic, then it fills a need on both sides: the author gets to broadcast to the web without the pressure of maintaining a blog site or Twitter feed, etc... and the reader is able to find information or commentary on a topic of interest.
It could be almost like a message board, instead of thread topics there are topics (several of which might apply to any given Postary post) and instead of responses to that topic, a threaded view of Postary posts. The threaded view would be composed on-the-fly and would vary depending on what you search for.
To make it more interesting and engaging, each Postary could have the option of being maintained as a blog if the writer so wished... and further, each Postary could allow comments from readers.
So you could post your thoughts about Haskell the day you discover and get really excited by it; and that could be tagged under topics like Haskell, programming philosophy, programming tips, etc. If somebody searched Postary for Haskell, they would see your post along with all others on the same topic, plus comments, plus follow-on posts (if any) by the same author. Threads could be auto-composed based on any number of criteria (newest first, most-responded-to first, etc.)
In this way, the site could serve both the "web archaeology" and "latest and greatest info" niches of search, and could create a lighter, less pressured form of engagement with authors and readers. Isolated, sporadic posting by authors could be organized into a coherent, constantly-updated site on any number of topics.
I do keep 3 bloggy things, but 2 only get updated with useful info, and the other is where I mumble about my personal life (which no one but me cares about generally).
I have a half dozen blogs for different things, my favorite is this one where I post my crazy ideas so I stop myself from actually implementing them and can come back to them later if I still like the idea a week/month later http://ideasfrommydreams.blogspot.com/
In the six years I have had it there has been a total of 3301 page views and maybe five comments and I am ok with that because that isn't where it provides me with value. If comments or page views mattered I would have abandoned this blog years ago.
Blogs and diaries are a great example of what may be a bigger trend: people often begin projects with high hopes, but due to a lack of a clear vision and/or an overestimation of their long-term motivation, it fizzles.
So, excited about this website, I clicked on "Write a post". Oh, you want to tie to my twitter account. Nevermind.
Hahaha, no.
You asked for permissions to * See who you follow, and follow new people. * Update your profile. * Post Tweets for you.
This is a no-no for me. I believe you can specify that you want read-only access, which would solve my problem.
Why In the first place?
I plain old don't want to use my twitter account for this, or be forced to create a throwaway account on a completely unrelated service just to have a throwaway account for yours. And all because you can't be arsed to do any real auth, or allow users to post without accounts at all, which given the nature what you've built makes a whole, whole lot of sense. If I want to have to to make an account as a prerequisite to posting a one-off blogpost, I'll go get a blogger account.
I don't care if you promise a whole huggy bunch not to do anything with my twitter account. I don't trust you and I sure as hell don't trust your website's security.
It's like wondering why 95% of dates don't lead to marriage.
The more amazing number here, in my opinion, is that 5% of blogs stick around. That seems incredibly high for a broadly popular pursuit. Even a 1% follow-through would strike me as a far better success rate than most common human endeavors.
I started my most recent blog back in 2008 to keep track of the projects I was working on and to build a body of work that I could present along with a resume.
A lot of the content I tried to capture was original work I had done; some of it was writing about something I had learned and tried to apply to a proof of concept.
I went with a monthly format and for awhile this worked out well, but as soon as summer would come around- priorities would change and content wouldn't resume until November.
I've gone through that cycle the past four years and this past year I simply haven't had the motivation to stick with it due to projects at work draining me of my enthusiasm and deciding that there are better ways to spend my time than constantly parked in front of a computer.
1) Unrealistic Expectations. Most people have no idea what "success" really looks like for a blog. They assume that, if six months have gone by and they're not getting 100,000+ followers, they've failed. Another unrealistic expectation is what I'd call an overly generous self-assessment: the blogger in question overestimates how much gas he has in the tank on a particular topic. He may get a few great ideas in his head one day, then build a blog around them, then find himself struggling for material on the third day.
2) Lack of Patience. Building a successful following is rarely an overnight journey. Some blogs take years to find their footing, and years more to find their audiences.
3) Insufficient or Non-Strategic Marketing. As folks in the startup world are well aware, you really need to think outside the box -- and occasionally go totally wild -- to get attention in today's crowded marketplace of ideas. You've also got to be clever about building credibility, connections to the right influencers, and paths outward from those influencers to broader audiences. By contrast, most hobby-bloggers take a "write it and they will come" approach -- hoping naively that people will flock to their blogs as if called to them by magic. Or they'll blast notices out to all their friends and family, rather than taking a careful inventory of who might actually be interested, who might be very interested, and who might be so interested that she'll tell her friends (or, conversely, who might not give a flying you-know-what). It's counterintuitive to think that starting out by telling fewer people is preferable to shotgunning everyone you know. But the shotgun approach seldom works. Start surgically.
As it turns out, probably 90% of the work of building a successful blog takes place outside of the blog. Writing great content is the easy part (and it's not easy!); getting folks to notice is the hard part.
I was a very active blogger in my native language at some point, but I had only like 50 subscribers and maybe 300 page views in a good week.
I then switched to English and wrote only a dozen of articles or so. One of them was hard to write, basically a HOW-TO article who's implementation I had to write and test before I wrote the article. I also work full-time for a living and it took 3 days to write that article (a really long time for most bloggers).
Enough to say that a single well-researched article was more valuable, bringing in more subscribers than my previous shitty blog on which I talked about shitty things in a fire-and-forget style. And this was also kind of depressing, as if you want to be a successful blogger, you need hundreds of these good articles that take a lot of effort to write.
The way I see it - it's the same as with software development - 80% development / 80% polishing / 80% marketing.
I would add one more point: most people don't fundamentally have a writer's disposition. Writing is hard (if it weren't, we wouldn't have so many professional writers, books on writing, and classes on writing). Having something to say and the means to say it is hard. Having something to say, the means to say it, and the desire to write it is even harder. And so on.
I appear to have that disposition, to the point where I wrote about it some here: http://jseliger.com/2011/02/26/on-blogging-altruistically-or... and wrote about why most people probably drift to Twitter and Facebook: they're easier. If you're not fundamentally blogging for yourself, and because you want to write regularly, you're probably not going to "make" it, for whatever value of "make" you might use.
Once you want to translate that into a blog you really have to flesh it out and ideally read other sources and reference them. We you don't have to but I feel less comfortable just putting something down as opposed to really getting into the idea. Unfortunately all this takes time making me less likely to start it in the first place.
edw519 has mentioned this a bit, very prolific poster that is very well regarded on HN and has a lot to say but struggled to really do it in the blogging medium.
Your tool combined with my wondering led to this trolltacular literary masterpiece. http://www.postary.com/twitter/Detrus/abandoning-a-post
It's more bare bones (really bare bones, heh) and allows anonymous posts.
Hmm, even I abandoned posting there, though I'm not much of a poster in the first place.
[1]: http://kodig.com/
Most people don't have either when it comes to blogging since there aren't really instant rewards for blogging and no pain if they don't blog.