Blog Tipz

This isn’t a “happy” post – it’s about determining when you should call it quits in terms of a single site/domain that you no longer want to keep updated. There are many reasons why you should do this, and there are a few best practices for shutting a site down, but we’ll get into them at a later time.

If you are currently running a single blog, I’d say that never is a good time to shut it down. Even if you decide to stop posting, it is a good idea to keep it “up” and use it as a way to reflect on where you’ve been and how you got there. You want to maintain at least one site in your portfolio. You could always come back to it at a later point.

Is Now A Good Time to Shut Down My Blog?

I want to say that there is a clear, defined answer to this question, but there really isn’t. You have to look at several variables and events that are happening in your life to determine what is the best time to “shut down” your blog.

Here are a few reasons for shutting down your blog, at least temporarily.

1. You no longer have the time to publish new, innovative articles to your site.
2. It is becoming difficult to maintain a level of traffic and readership, due to not enough ideas and inspiration coming to write the content.
3. You received attacks from other people and have lost all desire to continue publishing for people who are hurting you. This is more common for larger blogs, and those that focus on rumor-based posts.
4. Blogging isn’t working for you and is preventing you from achieving your goals.
5. You will be away from your blog, either traveling or moving onto new things, so it will be impossible to continue blogging.

Consequences of Shutting Down Your Blog

Shutting down your blog, especially after publishing to it for a number of years, can be a hard thing to do. You are leaving your audience, the people who helped make your site popular, and the income, if you were making any money from your site.

Turning points in your life can cause rapid shifts in what you enjoy doing, and what you have time to do. Blogging is something that people can become addicted to, much like Twitter and other social networking services. Before the Internet existed, we were all communicating face-to-face or through phones, which still offered a sense of “being present.” Now, you might never see the people behind the blog, the social profile, and never get to experience that communication form.

Just as soon as you become addicted to blogging, you could become tired of it, looking for better ways to promote yourself online, publish content for others to enjoy and read, and the ultimate fact of the matter is that this can be a challenging decision for you, if you did previously enjoy blogging.

The three biggest things you lose are: constant input from your readership, the traffic (which could have brought you income), and the idea of sharing your thoughts with others.

Benefits of Shutting Down Your Blog

Now, there are some benefits to shutting down a blog, and this might appear impossible, but shutting down a blog could lift some burdens off the shoulders of some.

1. You now have more time to focus on what is most important in your life.
2. You have more money to spend elsewhere, especially if your hosting and advertising/promotion was costing a lot each month.
3. You can learn from any of the mistakes you made and use them in the future, a year or more down the road, when you are ready to return to blogging and making an impact on the web.

Conclusion

Again, this is a topic that you shouldn’t really have to look into, but is certainly one of the more important options when it comes to managing your blog and getting the most out of it. You have to shut it down properly, and for the right reasons. Your readers will miss visiting your blog, and the only way that you can leave on a parting note is by explaining yourself, and your reasons for abandoning your site.