So you’ve had enough, you’re fed up with blogging, and you’re just going to give it up, maybe even delete it. Fair enough, but here’s some things to consider first.

Changing Your Mind

With a few exceptions, if you delete a hosted blog like one from Blogger, it’s gone for ever. All those posts, comments etc. completely gone. It’s a lot of time and effort to just throw away, even if it hasn’t worked out the way you expected. Give yourself the chance to come back to it three months later, you never know how you will feel about it then.

Domain-nappers

If you delete and abandon your Blogger blog, I know for a fact (as I’ve seen it many times) that your old domain will be grabbed almost instantly by a variety of unsavoury types from spammers to sploggers and all sorts in between. I’ve seen blogs deleted in a fit of pique, only to be occupied hours later, usually covered in ads and sometimes worse.

Also be careful if you’ve bought a new domain and/or moved from Blogger to Wordpress not to abandon your old domain. There is a popular blog I read whose old blogspot address has been taken over by someone just posting paid reviews, and who ranks at number 3 for searches on the blogs name. Far better here, to leave a post re-directing people to your new address.

Why are people so eager to take over old blog domains? For the existing Page Rank, search traffic and existing backlinks. You may not think this matters, but if you decide to return to the online world in the future, it could have an adverse affect on your reputation, not to mention that all those people who linked to you in the past may now be linking to a now disreputable domain.

Spam

If you just walk away from your blog, the chances are  that the comments will quickly fill with spam. I have seen blogs that I used to read regularly, come to a halt like the author just disappeared (who knows?) and within a matter of weeks, link filled spam started to appear on the blog. Given that more people are employing DoFollow these days, it pays the spammers even more to carry on doing this. Again, you may not care now, but if you do decide to come back to the blog months later, there’s every chance your domain will now be tainted as a spam producer, making the job of restarting all the harder.

What to do?

I’m not going to blame anyone for quitting blogging. It is hard work and it can be disheartening if you feel you’re not getting anywhere - I’ve had days where I’ve written something I felt to be quite good, yet no-one comments, stats seem to be going downwards and you wonder what the point is. The best advice here, is to stop looking at your stats and just keep going, but if you’ve really had enough, there are two ways you can approach it.

1. Mothball Your Blog: If you want to give yourself a chance to come back, don’t delete anything, just shut it down carefully. If you’re on Blogger, engage full comment moderation and consider setting your blog to ‘private’ so that no-one can access it. If you’re on a hosted blog like WordPress, put up a post explaining that you’re taking a break, shut off comments, and make sure you leave your security plugins activated, like Bad Behavior etc. If you’re not bothered about people reading your old posts (although that would be beneficial for the future) consider putting up a static HTML page on your domain, explaining what’s happened. Check the expiry date on your domain as well, so you know when you have to renew by, should you return.
2. Sell Your Blog: Easier with a hosted blog on it’s own domain, than one on a free host, but, all but the most personal of blogs have a value of some kind to someone. Blogs with age, backlinks and PR have a value, and far better for you to sell your blog for a few dollars to someone of your choice, rather than hand it to a spammer for free. There are plenty of places to do this, not least by putting up a post on your own blog, or using sites such as the Digital Point Forums. Don’t expect a fortune, but anything’s a bonus. Be clear whether the sale contains rights to the content (it usually should) and consider how personal to you some of the posts are-you may need to delete or edit some of them, before offering for sale.

A sad subject perhaps, but a realistic one, with the key message being don’t waste what you have already achieved. Give yourself a chance to start again, or make some cash out of it, but don’t hand your hard work over to a spammer.