I sometimes check out a listing of wine websites to see where I stand with the top guys - vanity really, but even though I have been drinking wine for 42 years I'm still human.
You can see the list of top 100 wine websites at http://www.cellarer.com/best-wine-websites I am about 50 on the top 500.
One of the websites I decided to check out from the Cellearer's list was Goodgrape.com
It's a blog, and if you look at it it is one of the best. But the latest post, on 6 December says that the owner has decided to put the site into hiatus. The workload is too high. Unfortunately blogs rely on (almost) daily feeding so the blog has had a catastrophic drop in traffic, see the graphic below which is taken from Alexa.
This was the state of play on 2 Jan 2012, less than a month after the last post. What will the traffic be like in 3 or 12 months.
All of the work that has gone into the blog resides in archives, and the value of the site to readers and the author will be lost. If the same amount of work and skill had gone into a website it could have been left unattended for a few months with little erosion of web traffic, and teh author would have maintained most of the income.
The bigger picture
One of the problems of the web is that it creates what Tom Friedman calls Electronic Herds. People see what they think is a trend and social media mean that the trend is amplified into a mad rush. This happened with blogging about a decade ago.
Many wine writers, good and bad, were attracted to blogging as it was free, or nearly so and it gave editorial independence. Only a few blogs managed to attract a serious audience.
The essential problem with bogging is that the items are arranged chronologically, rather than logically. A well designed website leads its readers through material in a logical way, blogs attempt this with categories and tags but they don't really work. Search engines tend to send traffic only to the latest posts.
People used to look for information in text books and references, rather than a plie of magazines. Now they look in websites rather than blogs.
You can see an extended discussion about why websites are better than blogs for most businesses in these articles.
http://bitly.com/uCwxiA Blog or build
http://bitly.com/tamTEQ Wordpress vs SBI
OK blogging has it's place. this is a blog but it is embeded in my main website. But the moral of the story is don't rely on Blogging as your main game.
Hi I came across you on Linkedin, I agree that unless you blog on a regular basis the readership goes down quickly, however, we blog at www.winegifts4u.co.uk/blog to help with SEO on our www.WineGifts4U.co.uk. The advice you gave to Emily there are many reasons why prople blog, ours is to help us with sales on our websites.
Posted by: Asgar | 03 January 2012 at 22:32