Ask HN: Has attracting a blog audience become harder?

I've noticed video blogging becoming more popular. Unfortunately, I find it more difficult to deal with as it requires wearing headphones and is also very slow. There's one popular YouTube video presenter whose work I sometimes look at and I always end up feeling that I could have read the same content in less than half the time.

Oh man, I used to be an RSS junkie for webcomics of all things. I don't read any of those anymore, but I assume they're doing ok with Patreon.

It seems with the wealth of blogs out there people either gravitate to those with the greatest quality or unfortunately, to those with the worst quality. The former in order to learn from the best the internet has to offer and the latter in order to just disconnect from this difficult world and embrace the pleasures of dumbness and the absence of cognition. Those in the middle will have difficulties and if one of them has mightier goals, he'll be sad seeing the disconnect between his ideal and reality daily.

I used to create blogs with hopes of gaining 'financial independence' because I idolise those many and reproducing gurus gallivanting around the net space, those who told me it is possible despite the disclaimer "only if you work under an unspecificied amount of hard work". But I'm tired of trying again and it is probably my fault that things didn't pan put well. Right now, I try to write like I used to; I write because I love writing even if my skills are abysmal at best.

Though, aswering your question, it's indeed getting more difficult but escalating difficulty is all that happens when the rack and pinion of progress and keeps moving.

I've had a blog since 2009 (https://www.thenaterhood.com/blog). My personal network (classmates at the time) were, and still are, my biggest officially subscribed base as far as what I'm able to track with minimal effort.

I've been posting much more regularly this year - once a week, versus periodically, as a way to vent some of my frustration with the current state of affairs. Otherwise, I've been doing pretty much the same - post it then tweet it, Facebook it, and LinkedIn it. Being regular I've seen has drawn more attention than anything in the past. With a once a week post, I have more re-shares and more clicks than I have before. Part of it may also be that I'm doing less of just spouting things into posts, but doing a lot of research and linking out to my sources.

What's interesting about having an audience though, is that they seem to be harder to track these days. Most of my personal network uses adblock, ghostery, or other similar extensions to stay off the radar, so their visits don't show up. I know they're happening since I use trackable links when I share and the number of clicks is far and away higher than the number of visits Google Analytics logs. It also seems people are less likely to give out an email address or subscribe to a blog feed since it pops up on social media. I used to get the periodic new email subscriber, but I haven't had a new signup in years now.

Even for myself, I don't "subscribe" to blogs anymore. I hate seeing an unread count and all that which most feed readers provide because it feels too much like an inbox. Give me a list of headlines and let me decide what I'm going to read. In light of that, I periodically check in with blogs I read by directly visiting the site.

Same here... I then moved to Bloglines, which was also closed down eventually. (Or maybe it was the other way around? Not sure which one closed down first.) I now use feed.ly, but I really don't read blogs as much as I used to.