Celebrating six months of blogging?

It just occurred to me yesterday that my six-month anniversary of blogging is coming up soon, so I should figure out some way to celebrate.

I posted my first Blogger post on February 18, 2005.  That makes my six-month anniversary August 18, 2005.

So, how should I celebrate?

Wait a minute... why should I be celebrating??

I've put a huge amount of work into my FIVE blogs and gotten next to nothing in return.  Sure, I've made a few good contacts, but I was doing that with email and my five web sites before I even started blogging.

In fact, since I could have been doing things that might have been more productive during the past six months, my lost opportunity cost is quite high.

I won't say that it's been a complete waste of time, but I can confidently say that it has not been a productive use of my time.

In conclusion, I've resolved to pull the plug as of my six-month anniversary date (August 18) and re-focus all of that effort into what hopefully will be more productive pursuits.

The blogs will remain intact (thanks to Blogger being "free") and I will continue updating my web sites, but I won't be posting to blogs anymore as of August 18.  I would also expect that my posting will diminish greatly in advance of August 18th as well.

I'll also cease commenting on the blogs of others and also take my two blog aggregator pages (BlogLines and NewsGator) off my browser Favorites list since monitoring the blogs of others has also been a very unproductive use of my time.

I'll continue to maintain my web sites, but the blogs will simply drift away.

I'll continue to post my daily stock market column on my finance web site, but I'll save myself the five minutes a day it took to attend to posting a link for the column on the blog.  I'll also save the time I used to waste every time Blogger would have difficulty processing email posts.

I don't think it's anybody's fault that my blogs have been so spectacularly unsuccessful, but the fact that so few people respond enthusiastically to anything I write tells me that I simply don't have a large enough audience to justify my level of effort.

If I were running a larger business it might make sense to assign someone to be the blogmaster and just think of it as a cost of doing business, but being a one-person business, having financial difficulties, and struggling to find work, etc. simply eats up enough of my time that I need to find ways to reclaim more of my time.

Blogging is a hobby or even a "joy" for some people, but for me it was always intended simply as a business tool.

I've been running Google AdSense ads on my blogs, but the resulting "revenue" is not enough to buy a cup of coffee -- once a month.

I do reserve the right to change my mind, but I can't even imagine what miracle might inspire me to do so.

C'est le vie.

-- Jack Krupansky