Burnt Orange Report

Vince and Kos on the future of blogging

By Byron LaMasters

I wonder if I could get a front page story out of the Dallas Morning News if I shut down BOR? Just kidding, there are no plans to do so, but both Vince Liebowitz and Markos Zuniga were profiled in a Dallas Morning News story on Friday - Markos because Daily Kos is one of the most popular blogs out there, and Vince because he shut down his blog, the Free State Standard last month. I'm not sure whether I should take it as a relatively decent article about the future of (political) blogging, or a subtle attack by the mainstream media on blogging as the title reads: "Elections over, blog popularity wanes: Politically oriented sites lost cachet (and cash) once campaigns ended". Hmmm, well judge for yourself:

A few part-time computer geeks parlayed their blogs into full-time gigs, attracting advertisers and loyal followings. Merriam-Webster anointed blog –short for "Web log" – its word of the year.

But with the election over and much of the country suffering political fatigue, traffic has slowed to a crawl on some blogs.

October was the heady heyday, with nonstop news and plenty of advertising to go around. Now, some bloggers are left wondering whether the success of their sites was a passing politics-fueled fancy.

Since Nov. 2, business has tumbled nearly 40 percent for BlogAds.com, which sells advertising for about 500 Web sites. Blogs, formerly updated around-the-clock, sometimes sit idle for days. And a few Web scribes are calling it quits, saying that they and their readers are pooped.

"People got tired of politics," said Vince Leibowitz, a blogger from Canton, Texas.

The communications consultant had a good thing going with his accounts of Lone Star State news and politics. He had reliable readers, he'd sold a few ads for the site and some of his posts were viewed as many as 4,000 times.

But after the campaigns shut down, so did his blog, called Free State Standard.

One of my posts on BOR got a brief mention as I asked our readers where to go next. It was an insert to the article:

Burnt Orange Report: So what next? ... I'm open to ideas. Let us know what you'd like to see in both the immediate and long-term future of BOR in comments. Thanks.

Not surprisingly, I wasn't the only one unsure of what is next with blogging. I think that those of us who have been at this whole blogging thing for awhile, and do it primarily as a hobby will stick with it. It's nice to make a little bit of money on the side, but that's not why I do it.

I'm actually quite pleased with how things have evolved in blogging since the election. Our traffic is obviously down from October, but for most of November / early December, traffic leveled off at about the level that I had in August and September, which I was pleased with. Last week and this week will probably be slow in traffic because of the holidays, but I expect things to pick up with the start of session in two weeks.

I think the key to blogging is this. If you want instant fame and profit, blogging is a waste of time. You can't expect that a political blog will maintain it's October-of-an-election-year traffic and profitability over the long term. However, if you blog because you really enjoy it, then it's a good hobby to stick with for awhile.

Here's what Henry Copeland of BlogAds said in the Morning News article:

Henry Copeland, founder of BlogAds.com, also recognized that the pace of the political season could not continue.

Business was brisk in the weeks before the election, he said. But once the candidates called it quits and the campaigns stopped buying ads, sales fell 30 to 40 percent.

Mr. Copeland said he knew at the time that the sky-high sales numbers in late October would be fleeting.

"The good news for us is we got a lot of free press out of the political season," he said.

And Mr. Copeland still says that blogs are a growth industry.

In a few months, "their traffic will start climbing again," he said. "There are going to be new, weird stories for bloggers to cover."

Agreed. I plan on being patient, and continuing to blog, and if I'm lucky, maybe uncover some vast right-wing conspiracies.

Update: Greg has some thoughts on the article as well.

More thoughts from Kevin, Pegasus News and The Media Drop.