“As a preface to this post I want to let you all know I am horrible at math and this is a completely hypothetical post”.
Today I was thinking about how many blogs exist? After doing a little bit of research I found out how difficult this question really is to answer. First, I had to find statistics which were up-to-date. The best I could come up with is from April 2007. The State of Technorati shows that Technorati is tracking approximately 70 million blogs. I found a few other sites showing the estimates anywhere from 70 million to 150 million. Wow! What a huge margin of error. For the purpose of this post I am going to refer to the lower end at 70 million.
Blogs, Blogs, Blogs
Technorati is seeing about 120,000 new blogs a day. If you do the math - that is about 1 blog every 1.4 seconds being created. Now, if you’re one who thinks about competition among blogs it doesn’t appear the odds are stacked in your favor. But, if we delve a little deeper into the numbers there still may be hope for us all. There are many blogs that are started and either abandoned, or not updated regularly. So, lets do a little bit of hypothetical math for the purpose of this post. Out of the 70 million blogs estimated to exist I will use an estimate of 20% being “active”. Which gives us a number of 14 million “active” blogs.
Competition Among Blogs
Well, on the competition end 14 million sounds a lot better than 70 million. Let’s break it down a little further: out of the 70 million blogs let’s assume 1 million are about “making money online” in some form. This would be “direct competition” for a blog such as The Rookie Blogger. Applying the 20% active assumption again gives us an estimate of 200,000 “active” blogs about making money. I still think this is on the lower end, but this post is hypothetical anyway.
So, in the “making money online” blogs our competition is even smaller at about 200,000 “active” blogs. Again, when I say active I am going to use the criteria of posting at least once a week and the blog isn’t a splog (spam blog). Now, I know this is still a huge number, but this is a much more optimistic way to look at competition. I don’t think its fair to assume you are competing against every single blog out there. If you want to think about the competition factor it is better to just think about the blogs which post on the same subject as you.
When I first got into blogging I read a plethora of articles stating the blogging market is saturated and you will never make it. When we have a more optimistic approach to our competition you won’t feel as overwhelmed in the beginning. Just keep plugging away and posting regularly. Eventually, you will start to see results. Once again, these numbers are completely hypothetical and are only intended to show a more optimistic approach to competition.
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Interesting figures, I’ve too wondered what the number of consistent bloggers is. Good post ;o)
Well, I think you’re right about the numbers being on the low end. However, if you think of it as a competition, you’re already beat.
This is your blog, so make it your style. There are thousands of make money blogs out there, but if you create content that others are truly interested in, then you’re already ahead of the game.
Don’t try to compete with the big boys, do your own thing and pass the things you’ve learned on to those that will come after you.
Also, networking is essential. Make as many friends as possible and learn as much as you can from them. I’ve learned more in the last year than I did trying to do by myself the 2 before.
It had never occurred to me until this week w/the Bloggy Giveaways’ Fall Ya’ll that there was such a wide scope of blogging and so many who are competing, whether it’s for advertising, cash, or just attention. To date, I’ve only blogged really for family and friends, and anyone who might stumble upon my stuff is welcome to it. I’m a bit sorry that all my blogs are in MySpace format so I can’t even give away in Fall Ya’ll b/c only other MySpacers can comment. I guess that’s the caveat of protecting one’s privacy.
Interesting thoughts.
As I mentioned in my last comment, I think writing about subject matters that attract readers is crucial if you want to get repeat traffic. eMoms had a great tutorial on how to get more traffic and ways to increase your income using your blog.
When I first started blogging, my purpose was to have a creative outlet to express my opinions and thoughts. I have family spread out all over, and rather than email them and wonder if they are really interested, I started blogging and gave them the link. They can check it if they want, or not if they don’t. Now I have a lot of bloggy friends that I track. I read their blogs, then if I like the comments, I track to those blogs. I have met some fascinating people who have really added a lot to my life.
TM
I didn’t want to even think about the numbers. But now that you have informed me of the large numbers involved - I’m scared! My blogs are simply about our life, but I still want people to read them.
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