I was doing a little bit of research over the last few days related to photoblogs. Since I believe photoblogs are a vital part of a photography business plan, I had to see what’s listed out there online, what’s active, and what these photoblogs look like today. To make money for a very very small photography home business, the photoblog needs to be successful and grow, so what’s the chance you’re photoblog is going to be active and continually updated? About 1 in 10ish. Pretty slim. So, before I start talking more about it though, I’ve got to give a disclaimer. The last thing I want is for someone to think this is an official study and start calling me at 4am!
Disclaimer:
These are the results of a very simple experiment and ONLY involves the website: Photoblogs.org
These result are unofficial and only photoblogs.org would be able to verify the number of active photoblogs listed there.
I simply looked at the “random” photoblogs link and continued the randomness by clicking on whatever photoblogs were presented to me.
Okay, I hope that clears things up for a few of you. Anyways, I got the idea to do this because I clicked on a few random listings on photoblogs.org and I got a dead website. The site was either suspended, gone, or resulting in errors. The more I viewed, the more I found that no longer existed. I’ll let you know a few conditions I set up for the experiment.
Categorizing the Photoblogs
Active Photoblogs:
Active Photoblogs were considered to have been updated in August. It was August 13 when I was looking over this information and if a photoblogger had not updated their blog in August, that’s a bit odd and I don’t consider it active.
Semi Active Photoblogs:
These photoblogs were considered semi active if they had been updating every so often in the last few months. I would find a few photographs posted in July or June 2009 and gave them the benefit of the doubt, hoping that life is temporarily 1st priority right now.
Dormant Photoblogs:
As for a dormant photoblog, I considered one in this category if it had not been updated since May 2009. I think I only found 1 photoblog that would fit as soon as May 2009. A lot of these photoblogs had some interesting work on being shown but from 2005? WTF? Checking their About page did not give me any leads as to what happened or if they took their project to another domain. It was like they packed up and left one day. Oddly enough, is that a majority of these photoblogs did seem to stop updating in the month of May (whatever year – 2008, 2007, 2005). I would think that a Photoblog would ramp up and be more active at that point in the year. Go figure.
Dead and Gone Photoblogs:
I already mentioned quickly, but these photoblogs just no long exist period. Dropped off the face of the internet! And It was these Photoblog listings that I became a bit more interested in what’s going on in the photoblog world. I have a feeling that we might find this kind of thing as well if we were to try and look at blogs too. The links went to hosting pages that said the account was suspended, or that the owner ran out of resources to run the site, error pages, weird add sites probably put up by a hosting company. Whatever it was, no photoblog existed anymore.
The Results of my Photoblog Random Experiment:
Dead and Gone: 51 links out of 101
Dormant: 26 links out of 101
Semi Active: 11 links out of 101
Active: 13 links out of 101
Here is a view of a chart that I created to try and illustrate the difference:
The likely hood of clicking on a photoblog that’s active from the random listings is pretty low. Perhaps I was just unfortunate and clicked on the bad ones? I don’t know. Seems pretty weird to me. I was crossing my fingers that the photoblog was going to be active once it loaded. This leads me to ask some questions:
- What do you think is the issue with all the dead and dormant photoblogs?
- Why are so few photoblogs surviving on photoblogs.org? Everyone’s got a digital camera now.
- Is there something you think would help photoblogs achieve better success in the long run?
Please leave your thoughts on this in the comments or hit me up with a quick e-mail. I am racking my brain wondering why!
Scott,
photoblogs.org got started back in 2002-2003 and there were a handful of really great blogs that posted regularly. After a year or two, some of those bloggers posted less or stopped posting altogether. People get busy with other things in their lives and have different motivations for posting.
I had a year or so where I only posted maybe once every other month.
The enthusiasm and drive to post daily or even weekly comes and goes. I’m now back to posting more regularly this past 2-3 months.
I think many of those bloggers from back in 2003 might have moved on to other things. It’s tough to keep a blog running constantly for years and years.
BTW – my photoblog is http://www.zoneix.org
Steven,
Thanks for commenting because this what you mentioned is totally true and very much expected that not all people can continually post to daily photos forever. I am wondering the issues that people face. Moving on to other things is a perfect reason to stop posting your photos there. I just wondered what they moved on to (ie pro photographer with studio or something else photography related?) Even myself, I started a photoblog in the past, and other blogs and I could not keep up with. I am going to write about my story and why that all happened very soon. I am hoping that photographers, or people that love and enjoy shooting photography, can start to look at the ‘photoblog’ as a way to take the first step. It’s no as easy as some people would like to think it is. I see some awesome benefits to photoblogs right now as the internet’s grown so much since those years you mentioned. I’ll definitely check your your photoblog.
What, people give up?? Pffft.
ok, I must admit there have been times that I have considered giving up. An image daily since since 25 July 2005 is no easy feat.
But then it keeps me shooting and, importantly, showing the work.
I know, hard to believe eh? All kidding aside, that’s amazing that you’ve been going at it this long. I wanted to try and cover the photoblogs that don’t get to posting every single day but are on a regular basis. Of the 13 active, not every one of them was posting daily. Posting daily isn’t necessary but at perhaps a clear schedule for new people may help at least to define.
I think one possibility is that the quality shown on some of the top photobloggers is “a-grade” material, which may make some people feel a little, well, little when comparing their work to some really talented folks.
Another issue is that blogging kind of went through a period of tremendous growth – which means a lot of people grabbing land to try and establish themselves online – and then gave up when they realized that it wasn’t an easy thing to do.
I recently started a photoblog for a variety of a reasons (work-related)…but I have no expectation that I would become a top photoblogger because I know where my work would sit against a pro or serious pro-am. I am just doing it as an alternative way of posting something online that some person somewhere might like one of my photos, with no expectation that I am going to get a ton of pageviews and/or make a ton of money.
Note: Since I’ve also been active in online communities a great deal, including blogs, the instances where some random person comes along and rips apart your work is probably a real turn-off for some people (this does happen).
Damon, Thanks for the awesome comment. You touched on a few points that I agree on fully.
As Steven commented, Photoblogs.org has been around since 2002-2003 and I believe soon after that it really took off. People soon realized that it’s not as easy as it looks from those “a-list” photobloggers. It does require dedication, and when you’re only getting zero comments (maybe 1), you lose steam fast.
I don’t believe you need to post daily, but it sure sounds good when you say you’ve never missed a day since 2003. I really think that a photoblog can help bring about other photography opportunities.
I like that you have one and it seems that it’s building your online presence. I think that if a potential employer may decide to google you with some specific keywords about you, it would probably find your work – or hopefully. And it would be something that would represent your creativity and show your consistency to a personal project. Perhaps become and authority in your own city.
I hope that I can soon release an ebook on the issues and ways to seriously grow your presence and business with a photoblog. Thanks for talking about this here Damon
Interesting…I would have thought the active number would be higher
On the surface there seems to be a lot more activity!
A couple of things. First, it is typically pretty difficult for most amateur photographers to get lots of what you called “A” shots from a single shoot and therefore creates more work for the amateur or semi-pro to post photographs. I think it’s a little easier when you’re a pro, and out there shooting all the time, to get multiple images from one shoot that are worthy to show on a photoblog. You can then just upload a few images from one day that count for more than one day of posts. Just a theory about the “it’s really hard to do” situation.
Second, I do think that life just gets in the way. There was a time when I could shoot as much as I wanted, whenever I wanted. A marriage and two kids later, it’s close to impossible to get out and shoot all day whenever and wherever. I don’t resent the changes, it’s just the reality of the situation. Maybe if we teach more baby boomers about blogging we can get some more great blogs going. They’ve got the time necessary to devote to non-professional photography.
Because of the difficulties inherent in shooting and posting often, I present my own idea that allows people to blog without having to shoot every day. But it still gets good exposure and has rising visitor counts every week. I have started a collaborative photoblog that has been posting pretty consistently for the past month. The goal is to get people onto the collaborator photoblogs, but the reality is that a collaborative blog allows photographers an opportunity to blog without having to fill all the space themselves. It’s the working man’s photoblog in a lot of ways. I hope for the sake of my business model that the collaborative blog is a happy medium for the non-professional photographer to keep on postin’ without the pressures of posting every day or week.
Just some thoughts. Like the blog, Scott. Keep pressing forward for the photoblog community.