Scour all the problogging blogs on the blogosphere and you will find out that one of the greatest advices that they give to their readers is to consistently post on a timely basis. Simple enough, if you want your blog to be continuously visited, all you need to do is to make a post from time to time.

So, the blogging equation holds true: No new posts = Dead blog.

But what if you can’t really post anything due to some inevitable circumstances? What would happen to your blog? Would it immediately pass away after a few days of not posting?

As you all may have probably observed, I had been in Blog Hiatus mode for over a month. As expected, the lack of activity in this blog has greatly affected its status in terms of ranking, traffic, and readership.

So what are the effects exactly and how could we prevent it? PinoyBlogero enumerates each one and shares his own experiences.

Effect on readership
What do you expect your readers will do if you don’t provide them with anything to read? Obviously, they will leave your blog and look for others. However, depending on how loyal they are, expect them to come back every once in awhile.

This is where your relationship with your readers comes in. Treat them right, answer their questions, listen to their comments, and give them what they want and you will earn their trust and respect.

Establish a good relationship with your readers, that is the key.

If you fail to establish any interactions with your visitors, then it wouldn’t take much time for your blog to be abandoned.

Effect on traffic
You may think that the effects on readership and traffic are the same, but you are wrong, because even without readers, your blog can still have the capacity to have traffic. Namely, from search engines.

Obviously, your blog’s traffic would drop considerably if you don’t post anything on your blog. However, depending on how “visible” your blog is and how “interesting” your articles are, expect search engines to continue sending traffic to your blog.

Fortunately for PinoyBlogero, there are a number of articles that were ranked high on certain keywords by search engines, therefore increasing the chances for me to receive continuous traffic even though I don’t have new posts.

The main key here is: SEO (Search Engine Optimization). A little SEO on your blog would do wonders.

Effect on feed subscribers
The great thing about feed syndication is that subscribers cancel their subscriptions only when they want to.

I don’t know why, but even with my one month absence, my feed subscribers still stayed around 90 plus without any difference from the time I left it. I guess people are just really lazy to cancel their subscriptions or they do not know how to yet (Believe it or not, a lot of people still don’t know how to unsubscribe to feeds, especially on those direct-to-email feeds).

One good advice: if you are going into blogging hiatus, be sure to inform your readers that you are going to be away for awhile. This would keep your feed readers from unsubscribing because they know that you will come back… Just don’t let them wait too long.

Eugene Villar shares: In my observation, the most common reason why people unsubscribe from feeds is if the feed is providing too little value for the volume. People unsubscribe if the feed contains too many posts that the reader couldn’t keep up, or if the posts become uninteresting. This is good for bloggers on hiatus because too infrequent posts is rarely a reason for unsubscription, especially if the blog has a high value. Maintaining a blog in a feed reader is practically free so the problem is more on the deluge of posts and not the deluge of feeds.

Effect on Blog monetization
With less traffic, it is obvious that a blog’s income would drastically fall, especially if you rely too much on those CPC (Cost-per-click) advertising like Adsense .

You may want to try out other forms of income through blogs like those advertisements that pays you if you display their ads on a monthly basis. By doing this, even if you go into blog hiatus from time to time, it wouldn’t hurt your blog income that much.

Effect on Blog growth
Every single blog post that you put on your blog signifies every step of your blog’s growth. Even if your blog still has some traffic and feed readers waiting for you to come back, it is inevitable that its growth would come to a temporary halt.

The only way to stop your blog from dying is to continue posting quality content again.

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There you have it. If you guys are planning to go into blogging hiatus mode, keep in mind that such an action has consequences that would greatly affect your blog’s growth.

Happy Blogging!

Ever experienced going into blogging hiatus mode? What are the things that happened to your blog when you came back?

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