The Marathon of the Blogging World #1

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The Blogging world is like an enormous marathon. It’s not a sprint, but a cross country endurance race.

There are around 100 million runners in this race. Every day, new runners are joining, but they are forced to start at the beginning. Every day, all day, these people are running against each other. But because it’s an endurance race, they aren’t angry with each other, and there isn’t too much rivalry, because you respect the other’s ability to run with you. Everybody wants to win, but they don’t typically have hard feelings.

There are many different types of running styles. Some do the slow but consistent approach. Not a lot of sprinting, but no water breaks. Others prefer to go in spurts, sprinting for as long as they can, but then slowing down because they got tired. Some runners just seem to have no end of excess energy, and just keep sprinting and sprinting. Everybody watches them go by and wonders how much longer can they keep it up. They watch them, jealously waiting for them to slow down, so that they can take the lead again.

In this 100 million man marathon, there are many different packs of runners. Based on how much time they’re able to sprint, and when they joined the race, they are in different groups. You have the pack leaders like Matt Cutts, Problogger and Seth Godin, who have been running for years. They joined the race early and have a huge jump on everybody. Then you have the second group, with the DoshDosh and Daily Blog Tips.

Close behind you find the third group – Gary Conn, John Chow, and Tyler Cruz. Following them there are hordes of others, running and running, fighting each other to move up into these groups. These blogs have been running forever, but some have slipped up. Some like DoshDosh have stumbled – they have gotten tired and tapped out. Now he’s trying to make a comeback, can he catch up again? There are hundreds of blogging clambering to take his place, trying to step into the second tier.

Of these millions of blogs, very few have remained active. Very few have been able to run the race for long. 90% of these blogs have faltered after only three months of running, most even sooner than that. Only about 15 million blogs have remained active, and are still running.

The amount of runners are growing every day. There was a 30 million growth in runners this past year. But only 2 million of those new runners continue to run the race. None seem to be able to have the endurance. None have the motivation, ambition and drive to keep them running.

Matt Cutts, Problogger, and Seth Godin, have already reached their end. They are guaranteed a metal, they’ve already achieved the success they were seeking when they started blogging. They can see the finish line.

But the new bloggers, they can’t see the finish line. They dream of what it’ll be like, but few have the prowess to keep themselves running for it. They don’t have the commitment. They don’t have the energy to start off sprinting. Most of these blogs start off at a jog, telling themselves that they’ll ease into it, and start sprinting once they’ve gained some momentum. Once they’ve achieved some success they’ll start sprinting to maximize on it. But the success never comes, they just join the pack of jogging bloggers, and never get any ambition to start running.

Gradually, they get frustrated of their lack of success, and fizzle out. Few can keep themselves motivated through the rocky terrain at the start of the race. They haven’t gotten used to this arduous task and so they struggle. Few have the insight to look behind them. If you look behind you, you’ll see the millions of racers behind you that are trying to catch up with where you are. This can give you motivation to continue, to chase the people ahead of you.

This is the first in a two part series on this topic. The second portion will be published in a few days. Stay tuned.