How many readers/referrers does a blog need to be a success?
step one was the concept of nano audiences
What is below the water line are the literally millions of blogs that are rarely pointed to by others, since they are only of interest to the family, friends, fellow students and co-workers of their teenage and 20-something bloggers. Think of them as blogs for nanoaudiences.Nanoaudiences are the logical outcome of continued growth in blogs. Assume for a moment that one day 100 million people regularly read blogs and that they each read 50 other peoples’ blogs. That translates into 5 billion subscriptions (50 * 100 million). Now assume on that same day there are 20 million active bloggers. That translates into 250 readers per blog (5 billion / 20 million) - far smaller audiences than any traditional one-to-many communication method. And this is just an average; in practice many blogs have no more than two dozen readers.
Well, what I think of is my life maybe six or seven years ago. I had 3 kids in 3 schools, I was getting communiques from the school (usually on Wednesdays, the Wednesday Weekly the Scoop the...) there were newsletters from my hobby affiliations.................
a mess of paper to read, keep if necessary, transcribe to calendars, respond to. How much more efficient to have (maybe a paper trail) but surely an electronic trail.
Na-no, Na-no 12/05/03 - 10:27 AM - Like observers from another planet, some commentators have taken our idea of nanoaudiences as a sign of the failure of blogs. I can almost see them writing, "Most e-mail messages only have a single reader. Clearly, e-mail messages are not going to change the world." Yet again and again people tell me that e-mail has changed their lives -- they hear regularly now from old friends, who - without e-mail - would no longer be communicating with them. An e-mail message with an audience of one can still be a success on the author's terms. Similarly, blogs with a dozen readers are often successful on their authors' terms.Blogs are far more of a social phenomenon than many commentators want to address, and people socialize in groups of all sizes. Blogs are a great communication method for sharing anecdotes, stories and links; blogs join the personal communications arsenal of cell phones and e-mail. I encourage those commentators interested only in circulation numbers to sit on their heads and see the blogosphere in a new way. "This is Mork calling Orson… Come in, Orson…"
Lessee. Typepad has a $5.00/mo option. Let's say it costs me about 50 cents per one page to communicate via snail mail (that is, I send a piece of paper to one person). Man, if I have more than 10 readers (5.00/.5) I am way ahead.
Congradulations on your typepad site. As for your post, you are correct about "nanoaudiences". Being right about every issue I comment on, (LOL), I find it very frustrating. Best of luck with your site.
Posted by: The Populist | Saturday, December 06, 2003 at 08:41 AM