Only 2 years ago (2008) people started to get their own domains in droves as advertising poured into the blogging world. It seems that most of those people have also left as the money eventually settled into quality blogs. I bet every other blog you run into (especially on free blogging sites) has either been abandoned as evidenced by the date of the “last post” or shut down altogether if it had dedicated hosting simply because that cost real money. While this is good news in some respects to clear the web from the useless clutter, it also makes me wonder if blogging is in fact dying.
I suppose there will always be new blood that comes along but doubt the same surge occurring. Truth be told, some gates or walls should be thrown up. For the current ease of publication on the web also means the total disregard for quality. Perhaps that is why there are more and more sites that are providing platforms for writers who truly put in an effort. You can now even get free web hosting for your own URL so that you won’t be lumped in with all the other nonsense in free blogging sites.
The business model for these services is simple. If you have your own domain name, you probably are serious about your blog or site since you took the time to find one available and then pay for it. Even if you’re not serious, giving you the free hosting adds to the links back to my service. Free marketing if you will. If you’re serious and good, you’ll definitely want to upgrade your service at some point and that’s when I can start making some cash.
The model also helps the non-techies from having to deal with the domain hosting riff-raff: companies who oversell their bandwidth, their disk space, and have no back-up systems available.
Sounds much more solid than just throwing up a free blogging site. The only exception is whether there is a big enough market that does want to blog and eventually spend money on keeping their blogs. In other words, we’re back to the same question, “is blogging dying?”
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