Is there anybody (else) out there?

Chris Bowers over at MyDD notes the latest Pew Internet and American Life Project poll and the fact that blog readership seems to have hit a plateau. Obviously, a trend where your readership is flat in a growing, ever-changing medium like the Internet could be very devastating.

The blogosphere isn't exactly self-supporting. Many bloggers have sites that they created for free, but sites with larger readerships require more maintenance and more money to operate. You have to have something unique to attract then keep visitors coming back. Even if you don't spend a lot of money, like me, blogging can cut into the time you spend working or being social. There is a price to be paid somewhere along the way.

If we aren't attracting new readers, then there is no incentive for advertisers to buy space on our blogs. There is no incentive for journalists to take note of us. Basically, blogging becomes a closed-loop system where most of the people reading blogs are doing it because they also write a blog and they just recycle the same old information. Nobody takes notice unless it is one of the A-listers who mentioned it first.

We mentioned the NY Magazine piece on blogging earlier this week and I think it can help us decipher the results Pew gives us, and maybe show us a path to buck this trend, if there is indeed one.

I'm not going to argue the Pew results. They know what they are doing and their methododlogy seems sound enough. I'm sure the results reflect an accurate cross-section of America, so let's start there. According to Pew and just about everybody else, blog readership peaked at about the time of Hurricane Katrina. As Bowers notes, DailyKos' readership was greater than that of the entire conservative blogosphere.

But looking at the power trend from NY Mag, we see that the readership for B- and C-list bloggers combined is greater than that of the entire A-list. Looking back at my own traffic over the last 6 months, I see that my traffic has actually increased dramatically since then.

In fact, my readership has been on a regular upward trajectory since I started. This time last year, my readership was less than 1/4 what it is now. A year before that, well I don't know because I was too inconsequential to be tracked. Once I did start keeping track, 10 hits in a day was a success to me. Now, anything less than 300 and I wonder if I was funny enough or wrote enough.

The circumstances play an important role, too. During 2004, blog readership went through the roof because people discovered a new medium where they could read and comment on a presidential election. Elections had become boring affairs because there was no interaction with the common citizen. That changed with the blogosphere where interaction is the order of the day.

Once that was over, some people thought blogs would go the way of the dodo, but we found new relevance in the fight over Social Security privatization and with state legislatures and a host of other little niches. The tsunami tragedy also fueled the blog craze since many people were able to give first-hand accounts of what happened and share photos from their cell phones so that people around the world could see the devastation.

Likewise with the bombings in London where many of us first learned of it and first saw pictures on blogs. Then, when Hurricane Katrine, and to a lesser extent Rita, hit, people flocked to blogs for more personal, first-hand accounts and pictures.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was an upsurge in traffic this week as people were surfing looking for the latest info on Cheney-Shot-A-Man-In-The-Face-Gate. My uptick was small, but noticeable, while I'm sure those blogs that have covered it more extensively saw a much higher bounce. I think, when something happens, people have started turning to blogs in big numbers to find out what happened.

The number of blogs has continued to climb as well. When I started blogging, there were less than 8 million blogs in the world. Today, there are over 20 million. Readership may not be rising because there is greater and greater competition for any and all new readers. The danger of the closed-loop system comes into play here. When people discover these new blogs, they are usually just copies of larger, more well-known A-listers. That turns people off, since they like new, original content. For every new clone-type blog, the blogosphere loses a reader, or at least I'm guessing at the ratio. To have that original content, money has to be spent and blogging is still just a hobby to many.

Lastly, the curse of the niche market. There just aren't a lot of new people intersted in politics. In fact, there is a finite number. You can whittle that number down some more when you factor in age, since older people are less likely to be active blog readers or writers. You can draw in new people, but blog readership tends to be a word of mouth advertising sort of thing, so you can't attract any newer, larger groups without being mentioned somewhere else that is more noticeable. I like to think that my blog is more diverse than just politics. You can find movie and book reviews, and you can read about my personal life. I think that has contributed to the little bit of success that I've enjoyed.

How do we reverse the trend toward stagnant readership? I'm glad you asked.

As per the NY Mag piece, we see that we are moving into the age of the blog empire media moguls. We've seen that with some of the larger A-listers. They are able to make money from advertising and they raise significant amounts for candidates, so they will stick around. But I think you will see the power curve flatten out a little more between the A-listers and B-listers. Local community newspapers have already begun hopping on the blog bandwagon and I think it won't be long before you see them hiring some of the local bloggers in their area to cover specific beats.

Also, the Denton's of the blogosphere will be more willing to take a chance on investing in B-listers to fill some of those smaller niches. Wonkette is great for reading about national politics and occassionally something specific in your area, but imagine if there was a well-funded blog that covered things just in your state? And with mainstream media support, or the support of a blog empire, there will be original content and thus higher readership. There will also be more focus on advertising to raise readership and sell ad space, making some blogs more successful.

Diversity in topics will also increase readership for some. Nobody is going to go to PoliticalWire to read movie reviews, but I've seen plenty of hits from Google searches for movies I've reviewed. There will always be a place for the small niche blog, but for B-list blog readership to grow and become a viable investment, some will have to branch out.

There will also have to be some understanding of what success really means to each blogger. When I was first starting out, I remember seeing my stat counter read 100 hits in a day for all the coverage I gave to the Alamo Drafthouse traveling roadshow presentation of Fahrenheit 9/11 in Crawford. After it was over, my traffic dipped back down to the teens everyday, but that didn't stop me from bragging about it to my colleagues at the Trib. Now, that is not nearly good enough for me as I began working toward the kind of traffic enjoyed by blogs like Pink Dome and Burnt Orange Report.

If I could make a living from blogging, I think I would. I want to sell a lot of ad space to prove it is a viable money making venture, then become a salaried blogger. That's my goal. But if you are a small Texas blog that specializes in barbecue, you have to understand that you are not going to get a book deal. Likewise, for the small business owner, if you are thinking about advertising on blogs, you need to realize that it would be a waste of money to buy space on a blog with a high readership. But that small blog with 100 regular readers in your area charging 10 bucks for ad space is a great investment.

Blogging is still evolving. Whether it supplants traditional media all together or merely compliments it, remains to be seen. What is certain is that it's not going anywhere and as it changes, I think more people will come under its influence. This is merely the beginning.

Comments

[Fragrance]

heheh nice post bro....