Will Taking A Blog Break Kill Your Blog ?

Hello There Loyal Readers ! With only two new posts published in the last three weeks and nothing new for the last sixteen days you would be forgiven for asking "Were is that charming charismatic Irishman that writes Spice Up Your Blog gone?".

For the last eight months or so i published a new post almost every day.However a combination of taking 2 weeks off in Sunny Spain and switching Internet service provider on my return i have been on an Internet diet.

Now that we are back and i have every intention of picking up were i left off with lots of new posts with tips and tricks for your blogs i thought it would be a good idea to see how this break has effected Spice Up Your Blog.

Before logging on for the first time in 16 days i was interested in how the break effected the stats.



Will taking a Blog break effect the number of visitors ? - I think this is the natural first question.If I'm not adding fresh content surely the numbers will go down?.In fact the numbers are almost exactly the same as they were when i took the break !

The main difference is the number of return visitors has gone down, we can put this down to the fact that most return visitors are subscribers and followers who are updated when there is new content.On the other hand the number of new visitors has increased.I think we can put this down to the strong archive (Spice Up Your Blog has over 130 posts)and the work i have done to make the archive rank high in search results (80% of visitors to this blog are from Google).So although i am not adding fresh content people are still finding the archive posts in search results.

Will taking a blog break effect the number of subscribers ? - Today the feedburner gadget in the sidebar tells me there is 120 Rss subscribers (That gadget jumps up and down constantly so I'm not sure exactly how accurate the results are but they are a ballpark figure).When i took the blog break Spice Up Your Blog had 89 subscribers, so even though their was no new content the subscribers jumped by 31.Not bad i hear you say, but would the number be over 150 if i hadn't taken the break ?

Will the blog break effect AdSense earnings ? - I took a quick look at the AdSense reports and the figures are almost identical to the numbers before the break.

Comments and Contacts

The main worry i had when taking a blog break was the fact i wouldn't be there to reply to comments and emails from readers.In the last 16 days there have been over 50 comments and lots of Emails via the Contact Me form.I have spent the last hour replying to as many comments as possible so if you asked a question you should get a reply today.

Break Rather Than Quit

One of the factors that can lead to many bloggers quitting is basically because writing to their blog starts to feel like work !

The initial fun and excitement of doing something different and writing a blog becomes a chore and you feel pressure to add content.Spice Up Your Blog is a long term project and i have no intention of quitting but at times i do feel as though I'm writing a post just because i feel I Have To add new content.My father used to say "If you have nothing good to say just say nothing" and i think this is something to take on board when blogging.

Remember you can get all these tips sent directly to your email and stay a step ahead.Its a quick and easy service Provided for Free by Google.Just fill in the Email form below the post.
If you need extra help on this or any tutorial just leave a comment, I love comments and feedback so this Blog is Do-Follow - when you comment here it helps Your Blogs Google rank !

I enjoyed the break and I'm really excited to be back with lots of fresh ideas.I guess the point behind this post is if you find yourself loosing the passion for your blog don't be afraid to take a break.Your blog will still be there when you get back and as shown in the stats above so will most of your readers.

What do you think ?

I'm really interested in your thoughts on this subject :

Have you taken a blog break and did it effect your blogs stats ?

Do you sometimes feel pressure to add content to your blog ?

Have you anything else to add or any extra questions ?

Let us know !