kirukkal.com

The blog was the perfect bluff for a self-conscious writer like me who yearned for the spotlight and then squinted in its glare.

Blogging had been the ideal run-up to a novel, but it had also become a major distraction. I would sit down to start on my novel only to come up with five different blog entries. I thought of them as a little something-something to whet the palatebecause it was easier, more immediately satisfying, because I could write it, and post it, and people would say nice things about it, and I could go to bed feeling satisfied.

Practically every blogger I know has taken their site down at some point-for personal reasons, for business reasons, for boredom reasons. It’s no different from the way we have to turn off our cell phones or stop checking e-mail so that we can actually focus on something.

Sarah Hepola‘s article on slate, This Is My Last Entry, is a very honest reflection of what goes on one’s mind while bringing down the blog. Needless to say, its a must read.

There was an interesting discussion[uid/pass] between Jason Calacanis of Weblogs Inc and Alan Meckler of Jupiter Media on today’s WSJ.

While Jason was quoting some amazing stats on how people can make money through blogging, Alan was shooting back with some nice theory. I tend to agree with Alan for the most part. Here is what he had to say –

Take MySpace — I read yesterday in the N.Y. Times that they have 50 million in the community. Every member can launch a blog with little or no difficulty. Blog growth is and will be huge. But again, while a very select few of the blogs will make significant money, most will never be worth anything because their information is worthless and therefore they will garner few monthly page views.

Blogs are fun for someone who wants a pulpit and does not care about making money. Blogs are really the “diaries” of yesteryear. Social historians of the future will have a field day mining blogs for nuggets of the mores of present day civilization. But in terms of making money from blogs, I doubt they will be anything more than an interesting subset of Internet ad revenue.

P.S. Interesting to note that my spell checker does not recognize “blog.”

Blogs are really diaries or microcosms of what is happening in millions of ways in daily life — ranging from special interests to business specialties to whatever. Obviously there is money to be made with blogs, but very, very few will bring in more than a few hundred dollars per year.

I’m shouting here, I agree. I agree.