Back in the sixth grade, a friend and I started a newsletter for our company. In the first issue, I did a cartoon and an article and he did an article too. Mind you, the articles were very short. We published about 15 copies of that first issue. By “publish,” I mean that my mom typed 14 copies, as which point she got tired of typing. I believe that I typed the first issue, and then drew the cartoon on 15 different copies. Such was the state of publishing in those dark ages.

Eventually, my friend was fired (or quit) and the newsletter became my company’s main product, which I continued throughout junior high and high school and beyond. And, despite my efforts and also praise and compliments from readers, it never really grew larger than 15 copies. (In the seventh grade, I had a computer and printer, which made publishing so much easier…)

I guess things I do reach a certain level and then stop growing.

I still publish that newsletter once a year, but the subscriber count is usually down to just me. But, I do it for the sake of continuous publication in the hopes of perhaps one day reviving it. Though sometimes it seems that hope is like chasing windmills.

Alas, I think my blog may have reached its peak as well. It seems to have leveled off in numbers of readers. And, right now, I have more RSS subscribers than I have visitors who come to the site. Not that that’s a bad thing, but the numbers at both seem to have reached a plateau. On top of that, my Technorati rank has pretty much stalled out too.

Even my “Web Trek” did not bring in the readers like previous viral stories have done. One reader even Stumbled the post (THANK YOU!), but even that did not bring in the numbers that Stumbles used too. I’d say it was roughly half the number of visitors that past Stumbles have generated.

Even a semi-political rant didn’t bring in the numbers that such a post would have in the past.

Perhaps all things reach a point of diminishing returns, where the investment no longer pays off. Perhaps I’ve built the largest audience I can sustain, and that’s just where it’s going to stay, with maybe a few people coming and going.

Maybe it will still continue to gain readers, but at a snail’s pace.

I’m certainly grateful for all the new friends I’ve met through blogging, many of whom I mentioned the other day. And, I’m pleased to see that many are still growing their blogs, and some that were way behind me in rankings have now far exceeded me.

I’ve been posting my monthly blog income for a couple months now, the most recent being here. But, I never really anticipated this blog being a big money maker, though I’m certainly not against the idea. While it’s disappointing not to have made much at all, it’s not a disappointment that I’m not making a few hundred a month on it. I have plans for other projects which I had hoped might be able to achieve those levels.

But then, if I cannot build a large audience for this blog, what hope do I have for building a larger audience on other projects?

Believe. Act. Achieve! That’s the mantra around here. Perhaps if you don’t believe enough, then any amount of action isn’t going to achieve results? Or, perhaps I just haven’t believed enough?

At any rate, my immediate focus will have to be on finishing the “extreme” makeover on my eCommerce website. After that, I will have to re-examine all my other planned projects and probably make some tough decisions.

Which may be difficult. I think aboulia may be contagious, spread through the blog ethers through some as-yet-unknown mechanism.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Blogging. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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