Bloggers quitting what they call a demanding task with few rewards

This Crain's story started off with Jim Harbison who blogged about art and design and found that the people he showcased got all the rewards and he got very little so he quit.

There are about 31 million blogs in the United States, a number expected to swell to 34 million by the end of this year. But Mr. Harbison is part of a small but growing trend of blog quitters. Last year, the number of blogging teens and adults ages 18 to 33 declined, in the first reported drop in blogging, according to Pew Research Center data.

Some have simply switched to another blog-like medium, say, Twitter or Facebook. Others have faced unpleasant facts about blogging. It's cheap to do but usually doesn't pay. Having a platform may be fun at first, but building a following takes much more work than simply typing and posting.

And millions of them go virtually unnoticed, despite the occasional breakout sensation like the humorous “Stuff White People Like” and the Julia Child-inspired “The Julie/Julia Project.”

When “people see these, they say, ‘I can do that—it will be easy,' “ says Raanan Bar-Cohen, vice-president of media services at San Francisco-based WordPress, which hosts 16.5 million blogs. “If you're looking for fame and fortune, blogging has as good a chance as any medium,” he adds.

But new bloggers misunderstand what the venture is really all about. “The best bloggers are good at highlighting, snipping and curating,” Mr. Bar-Cohen says. All that draws “the feedback that is as or more important than the actual posts.”

You know as long as there is information out there to share, there is no reason for me to quit. I have no family yet and I have the time to blog. I also would use Twitter to supplement my posting and people have been know to Retweet my posts. Also while do have a Facebook account I prefer to keep that for more private purposes for right now than anything else. As you see I do have some FB widgets that show which posts are being shared or liked by FB users.

All the same, while I wish this blog could get more traffic or even comments it's not that big of a deal to me. It has taken off at moments and even better I have been seen on much bigger blogs than this one. Still this blogging thing is still considered a hobby and if the hobby can be more useful then there's my satisfaction right there.