Decision ‘08

Blogging Vacations

No, I’m not taking another one (I just got back, and after my huge, um, ‘deposit’ in Vegas, I can hardly afford to go anywhere for a while), but there is an interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal about what happens when bloggers go on vacation. The short answer? They lose traffic:

In the height of summer-holiday season, bloggers face the inevitable question: to blog on break or put the blog on a break? Fearing a decline in readership, some writers opt not to take vacations. Others keep posting while on location, to the chagrin of their families. Those brave enough to detach themselves from their keyboards for a few days must choose between leaving the site dormant or having someone blog-sit.

The choice is easy for me: I don’t make my livelihood off of my (meager) blog earnings (in fact, on an hourly basis, I think I make about $0.000001 off of blogging), and I don’t have the sky-high traffic levels of the bloggers the Journal article follows. Still, I can tell you that, even for a smaller site such as mine, the story is quite true. My daily visits fell by about 40% for my mere three days off, and they’re still not back up to where they were. It takes a couple of weeks to get back, it seems, on average.

All of which is to say: thanks for reading! And don’t go away - I need you!…

3 Responses to “Blogging Vacations”

1 miriam Says:
August 31st, 2006 at 10:14 am
It happens to me, too. Curses!
2 nettie Says:
August 31st, 2006 at 5:42 pm
My blog is really nothing when it comes to traffic, but I too am still working on gettting it back up after being back over a week. Still, I don’t regeret the decision to go unplugged- it was refreshing.
3 Mark Says:
August 31st, 2006 at 8:34 pm
Yeah, but Nettie, you always get such nice comments…your comment to visitor ratio must be the highest in the business…