Why are 95% of blogs abandoned?

Would love to hear anyone's thoughts on Postary or blog abandonment in general here! Thanks in advance guys!

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. :-)

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.

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!

And if you want to blog without any strings attached (not even twitter), there's http://instablogg.com