When should you stop and quit?
Have you ever hear people saying try and try harder until you succeed. Well lets say you do succeed, then what? Or how about you are a complete failure then what? Should you keep going? I hate people who tell me Syed, try harder and you will do better. It might work in some cases, but in other cases it is a waste of time.
In this post, I will tell you that blogs are not suppose to last forever. There are blogs of all sort of subjects and niches. When you start a blog, you must create a work plan. How do you want to see this blog in three months, six months, year, and two years. You must always set a deadline during this plan. So I will stop blogging after two years of its launch. Ofcourse you don’t have to stick with this deadline because you analyze it later on the time.
So you have a very successful blog that is earning you over 10k a month. You love writing on it, and you are happy with the audience and attention you are getting. After two years when you were suppose to stop blogging, you don’t have to. Instead make a new plan that sees your goal and make another deadline. If for some case, you don’t reach your goals, and it turned out to be an extreme failure, then you know that it is time to stop and move on.
Specially when you are on a very specific niche. Lets say you wanted to make a cooking blog. You have 90 recipes to share. Well then you post once every 4 days with a good recipe, all the delicious looking pictures, maybe videos and so on. But after you are done with your recipes, you can stop blogging. Leave this blog be online, so you have user interaction, but your goal was done. Think of it as a book, you can’t keep going on and on in a book. You have to end your story some where.
Not all blogs are suppose to last forever. There is always a deadline. Even very popular blogs stops publishing content. Reason is that blogging takes a lot of time. When you are writing for a mass audience, you want to make sure that you write well. You want to make sure that you give them the absolute best article. Which can potentially distract you from other project of yours. So a deadline is always necessary.
Now there is nothing wrong with being a quitter. Because it doesn’t make a you a loser. It makes you a loser, if you quit without starting. As long as you tried your hardest, then don’t consider that attempt as a failure. It was just an attempt that didn’t work.
When you don’t have any more content to write, or if you think that the content you are writing is not worthy enough, then you should re-evaluate your plans again. You can even take the whole blog down once your goal is done. Not all blogs are started or run solely for monetary purposes. People have motives behind their blogs also. So follow your dreams, but remember dreams can be altered, or changed in anyway that you want to. Because your imagination can come up with infinite possibilies. So if one dream fails, there is no need to waste more time to drag this failed attempt. Instead think of something else.
Hey, I am Syed Balkhi, The guy who is behind Balkhis Inc. I entered the industry back in 2002 not knowing a single thing. I barely spoke English at that time. In the past six years, my language barrier has been eliminated. Aside from English, now I also speak html, and php. Along with the languages I have also managed to master a few arts. Art of web-designing started when I first entered. Messing around with photoshop, I learned how to create my first web design. Now I founded a web designing firm Uzzz Productions. After running numerous amount of websites in various niche, I have mastered the art of web-development. Now I am compiling a resource of what I already know, and what I am learning on this blog. This resource is to help me if I ever need a guide to look back to, and it is help my fellow webmasters.
If you are successful then you it is best to stop when you are having greatest results
. That’s said, but it is true, as nothing last forever.
What? If someone is making a ton of money with the blog, why would that person want to stop? The only people who are failures are quitters. Blogging is nothing like a book. It is a journal like a diary. I’m sorry but I really have to disagree with this post.
Read the post carefully. I say make a plan and set deadline. If your goals are met, then you can re-evaluate and make a new deadline….
So you are saying that all blogs must last forever …. I am sorry to say that Journals and Diaries end too.. Most common, Teenagers keep diaries… through their teenage years…. then they move on once they grow out of it.
You are saying only failures quit??? I would argue with that point and say that smart people quit… Learn from the stock market. You know this company is going to fall through, would you rather pull your money out now, or wait till it fall before you pull it out. No if the company is doing really good right now and you are making a lot of profit out of the deal, you pull out right now …
It would be stupider to wait for your own demise.
Blogs are online publications and are very different from diaries or journals. Blogs are used as publications and ways for companies to spread the word about there content.
Selling stock is a lot different then closing a blog. If you sell stock you are most likely moving that money to a new thing. So if you close down your blog because you don’t have enough time because you are focusing on something else that would be fine.
Yeah, blogging can be like a journal but even a journal has an ending eventually. Also not all failures are quitters, you only fail when you don’t try or give it your all.
It is always best to have a plan going into any kind of venture and that plan should include deadlines to evaluate where the project stands and how to proceed.
Not sure that I agree though that the best time to quit is when the going gets good. Even good things can be made better.
That is just one of the options Bruce. The real idea behind is that once you reach your deadline, you have two options, you either re-evaluate and set a new deadline, or you get rid of this business and start a new one…
Yep I see what your getting at. I tend to get sucked into projects and am very reluctant to let them go.
That’s a pretty interesting premise you’ve given. I have to admit that if, using your example, that was my purpose, I’d probably rather create a website, have a different recipe on each page, and go from there. Of course, that means you have to put it all together up front, but so be it, because then one could optimize and monetize the entire site and that would be that.
The only reason you should quite posting on your blog is when you don’t have the passion to post or lack the time to post.
Planing is great advise, and you should always have an exit strategy as any goo business person should tell you. Running a Blog is not different. A book author is a great example, they may finish with one story but usually they don’t stop writing they just make a new character and new story to write about. Because nothing can last forever.
Wow Syed, i had trouble even getting my head around that mixed up post, lots of jumbled information there.
First you use the word try a lot, nobody unless they are having some fun tries anything in my school per say, you either do or you do not, to try is giving yourself an out or an excuse per, well i tried it and it did not work per say.
So rule one if your serious do not try anything but do it, next this word failure keeps popping up, and there seems to be some stigma attached it, to clarify failure is a positive thing, in that when you do something (not try and do something), as part of that journey you will get things wrong, this is not failure it’s learning, and from that it induces improvement.
There is not one successful honest person who has not made mistakes / failures, and often more most will make many before succeeding, people need to learn it’s OK to pass through these so called failures, if you don’t know what is wrong or does not work you can not improve.
next the word quitter comes up, you are not a quitter if you can see a project or part there of is not going to work and scrap it, you are a clever person, the stupid person is one who makes an error and does not fix it or find alternate ways.
Lastly dreams don’t fail, the people behind the dreams fail, they lack the balls to get up and go again if knocked down, how many as kids had big dreams and when we get older we fall into a comfort zone and say to our selfs, who was i kidding i never really wanted a big home or a nice car its all to hard now, i am happy with my little cottage and work hack car, they sell their dreams short, on their dreams
get of you backside remove the word try from your plans and live for your dreams, other life is a slow process of dying.
‘try harder’ isn’t always the correct solution, but ‘try smarter’ inevitably is the way to go.
Like in any other activity, periodic review for course correction is necessary in blogging too. You are right in that before a blog becomes too stale, it should change. It need not be dropped. If you have a group of loyal visitors, you would know what would appeal to them, and your course correction to feed what would appeal to them, should suffice. Without such change however, it is better to drop the blog and start afresh.
Wow is it really possible to earn 10k a month from a blog??
[...] » Balkhis will no longer have new posts. I QUIT A few days ago, I explained the reasons when you should stop and quit. I wrote that post, so you guys would be more understanding when I break this news to [...]
I wish I could earn 10k/month from a blog =) I could really quit after that =)
So weird, because I was thinking of this today. What am I going to do when it comes time to finally end my blog? Will it just trail off and die slowly? Who knows.
I absolutely agree with Saed that it is necessary to set new goals if the old are achieved,and one goal can not be for ever,If one can earn 10k/month from a blog/that does not mean he will earn such money for ever,because everything changes-the situation,the traffic,the market,the life of the blogger and his feelings.
I absolutely agree with Saed that it is necessary to set new goals if the old are achieved,and one goal can not be for ever,If one can earn 10k/month from a blog/that does not mean he will earn such money for ever,because everything changes-the situation,the traffic,the market,the life of the blogger and his feelings.
Syed
others often have tons of “great” advice they preach but don’t actually practice. I say go with your hart. If you’ve decided that you’ve achieved all you can in this field, find a new,more challenging one. Because if you don’t, you might get stuck here and belive me, I know how bad being stuck in a rut feels.
Quiting posting ? Custer was a pussy, you sir are not ( tell me the film for 10 bonus points ), In the darkest hours on the planet, people need leaders to shine the torch.
I don’t think you should eve plan to take a blog down. You should plan for it to be as big as possible and work towards those goals.
I dont usually comment, but after reading through so much info I had to say thanks
I firmly believe that there is no end to blogging until the time when the niche that you have chosen no longer exists. Now this is practically impossible. Now of there is a product in the market, there has to be news related to it and people looking for something on that.
It all depends on how well you identify and anticipate things in the market. If your judgement is right, then there’ll be no end to blogging.