Are there too many design blogs?
With the sheer number of design blogs currently on the internet, specifically those relating to graphic design, it’s worth questioning whether there are still benefits to be had from starting a blog or if there’s just too much competition now to make it worthwhile.
I’ve been a graphic designer for over 15 years and like to keep up with as much design related news as possible, so amongst other things I like to read design blogs regularly as I find them a great source of information and the discussions in the comments can be really insightful into current thinking. Recently I decided to leave the security of a full time job and enter the world of freelance graphic design. Knowing that I needed to set up a website to promote myself and my work, the idea of starting a blog seemed like an obvious choice – one which could have many benefits, such as allowing me to write about topics I’m passionate about, connect with like-minded people and give me exposure as a designer.
This all seems well and good, but if the purpose of the blog is to bring in regular visitors to the site, including hopefully a few clients along the way, then it’s important that the site can be found. Now, there are several ways a site could be found online, amongst them are search engines, links from other sites or being mentioned on social networking platforms such as Twitter or Facebook. Over time with hard work promoting the blog, I would imagine it is possible to get noticed, gain visitors and as this continues and the site is linked to and visited more often, it should move up the search engine results.
A small selection of the many graphic design related blogs currently online.
But, after several years of more and more graphic design blogs appearing online, have we got to a stage where there are just too many of them. A recent search for ‘graphic design blog’ on Google resulted in over 42 million entries. Of course this doesn’t tell us how many actual blogs there are, I would guess at several thousand, but who truly knows. The problem as I see it, is that there are only ever a certain number of potential visitors/readers/clients available, with the majority of them only visiting the top few dozen sites, leaving the rest struggling to gain any visitors at all. One possible alternative, in the unlikely event that all blogs were equally findable, would be for these visitors/readers/clients to become so thinly spread amongst all the graphic design blog sites out there, that no one site can really gain any benefit.
Let’s not forget content, it’s often said that ‘content is king’, so if a blogger were to write good enough content that people want to read, then that should keep visitors coming. But of course, they need to know of that blogger’s great content before that can happen, bringing us back to promoting the blog. But there’s another problem, almost every topic has been covered in some shape or form already. Therefore a new angle on the subject would need to be found, but then again, not everyone has read everything out there, so perhaps being unique isn’t necessary all the time, as long as you aren’t repeating your own content. Also, it’s quite common to read a blog and see an article about ‘X’ and then a day or two later see ten other blogs write about ‘X’ too, I’m not saying the other ten blogs simply copied the first, it could of been coincidence or maybe they were just inspired by the article, nothing wrong with that. You could argue that the subject being covered isn’t the only factor as to why people read an article, it could have as much to do with who wrote the article, making it difficult for new bloggers to get attention when the established ones are out there with huge followings.
Now, as you can see I have gone ahead and started a blog myself, but I would love to hear your thoughts on this, do you think there are too many graphic design related blogs already or would you like to see more designers encouraged to start one for themselves – is there room for all or can benefits only come to the popular few. Please share your views by adding a comment below. PG
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I was thinking this very morning that the number of design blogs and “top 10″ lists was becoming a full time job in itself.
Some absolutely great thoughts here, Paul. I currently manage a design blog and have to argue that there will never be “too many” design blogs. I think sometimes we forget what a blog should be about. Famous design-bloggers like Chris Spooner or David Airey are popular because they blog about personal design experiences.
Every designer is different and so every design blog should be different. I think that is the REAL problem: to many design-bloggers try to emulate smashing magazine or other popular blogs.
We don’t need less design blogs, we need more original content.
Perhaps you and your readers would be interested in reading The beginner’s guide to blogging about design – it touches a little more on some of all this.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Best Regards!
You are quite right with your opinions here, Paul. There are many design blogs out there and some are popping up just as I speak. I think, as long as you are a designer, or at least if you claim to be one, you will definitely have a unique quality which differentiates you from the other designers. So, once you are able to channelize that uniqueness into producing great content, you remain a good designer and successful blogger too.
Starting a blog is the first step in entering into the social media. It will take quite some time to learn and adopt; and even though, you want it or not, you need to attract visitors to your blog. Fame and money are just a part and parcel of this process. So, the trick here is to try out different things, experiment with various articles, and see which suits both you and your visitors the best.
As you said, the topics we can think of have already been written by someone before, so that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t share our suggestions on it. As long as both you and your readers are loving what you are writing, you are in business. I hope I made sense with that :)
Well, good luck with your blog, Paul. I’m sure you will do great :)
Fiaz :
There does seem to be a new “top 10″, “top 50″, “top 100″ every other day Fiaz, but these types of articles do tend to attract the most readers, so until that changes I think this trend will continue.
Preston D Lee said:
Yes, I do agree Preston that everyone can bring something unique to a blog, if they choose to that is. As you say, it can be a problem if people emulate popular blogs; I don’t see any issue with learning from and being inspired by them, just add your own elements to it, so that your personality can come through.
Richie said:
Great point Richie, the experimentation is something I’m looking forward to – seeing what types of articles suit me best and are most popular with my readers. It will be interesting to see how my blogging style develops over time. And thanks for your kind words, they are really appreciated.
I’ve often become overwhelmed with the amount of design blogs out there myself. When considering doing my own blog, I had the same thought as you, Paul, but the truth is that there is no one with your voice. If you have something to say, then say it. Maybe someone’s listening and maybe not, but your not going to find out unless you put yourself out there. Glad you took the risk.
Lula :
Thanks Lula, it’s interesting how many people probably go through the same thought processes we did. Hope your blog is going well.
Hi Paul: I was thinking the same thing this morning, and had commented on a similar article yesterday on drawar.com, and subsequently retweeted an older related article and wrote a short new article late late last night as well. Before I state anything else, I’ll reference the articles:
(older one)
http://bonfx.com/top-10-annoying-graphic-design-bloggers/
(new as of early today)
http://bonfx.com/10-ways-to-make-your-graphic-design-blog-irrelevant-in-12-months/
Since there are so many new blogs and lots of existing ones, you need a strategy to write that capitalizes on your true strengths. I assure you that your strength is NOT “10 great wordpress themes”, so don’t go there as a principle, though you might find an exception. What you need, however, is opinion.
Don’t bother – and I mean this – don’t bother writing or posting much of anything you aren’t passionately going to write about. It’s a path that will fail.
Opinion is niche. You need to find readers and potential clients that fit both your skill and your outlook. You want to work with people that fit how you work best.
For instance, you might be really funny. At all costs, you must integrate your salacious wit into most, if not all, of your posts. This will become your voice.
Find your voice through your opinion. If you are going to do a “top 10 designers” list, do it by all means, but find a spin of opinion on it and try and find a way to work that into the title.
Ok. Now take all that and do one more thing: learn to write short and sweet articles. Elaborate, but not too much. Get in and get out.
Apply the above principles and post as much as you can. Life goes in waves, so maybe one month you have 10 articles and the next you have 4. That’s OK. Just keep writing, follow the basics of SEO, and let the articles accrue. This is a marathon and not a race.
We just crossed our 100,000 unique visitor “goal” recently, having started the blog last Fall. Anyone can do it, just be unique and work hard.
I do think there are too many blogs, which is why I read this article. It resonated with me. So why give “hints” about how to do a design blog? I think, and am quite certain, that there are too many lame design blogs, and not enough great ones. So, if I can help someone out a little bit, then great, especially if they are going to make me laugh, or inform me, or correct me, or whatever. I got help from some prominent names, and all I’m doing is passing it on.
Love the design here, btw. Keep it up.
It really boggles my mind at how many design blogs are out there. I realize my own personal blog is similar to countless others, but I find it satisfying still. There are also so many roundups! I like a good list of tutorials, or inspiration, but when 90% of the articles out there are just roundups of other articles, they start to lose their purpose. Just my $0.02
This is an awful truth. Numbers of design blogs are over-whelming.
Everyday you can see the same old tweets until you get sick of it regardless of its practical usability and loses its value by over-twitting. I’m not saying that it is wrong to share something you find it useful and valuable for sharing but it just felt like spamming it. Further more, the eyes has been blurred by the “10 most”"20 most” or those “top10″”top50″ or any numbers that will make you feels like “really?” and then go and have a look and start to share about it again – just for that particular article.
Bloggers who shares those things no doubt can drive traffics to their sites, but of my silly opinion is that, they are more like becoming a collection hobbyist and start to make their blog a virtual museum-alike site, no?
As of designers, i guess mostly they choose where to go. They have agendas of where to look for the information they need but i guess even most of them might had been mislead as well by the over-whelming ever-changing seo listing in Googles or others.
Let’s nail to the bottom line – Design. How many SEO company or web developers are working hard to get their own site or client’s site which is design related to be on the top ten while searching design related words? Who will win in this race? How many of them are students and how many of them are pros? Which of them has been in the field for more than 5, 10, 15 or 20 years?
Some individual in this world are good at expressing their minds with words that catches attention while some are only good at have them drawn out. Does the words in the blog shares the true experienced or just a smart hand on the keyboard with a brilliant mind to blog what people would like to see?
I don’t know. Teach me more please…i’m a noob.
Douglas Bonneville said:
Thank you for the great advice Douglas, I appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts on this subject. I especially liked what you said in the above quote about skill and outlook, something that I’ve never really given much thought to in regards to clients.
And, congratulations on crossing 100,000 unique visitors, that’s a fantastic achievement and I bet the experience you’ve gained over that time has been invaluable.
Ryan Cowles said:
I agree, especially when many seem to feature the same exact roundups. I do tend to avoid sites that mainly have these types of posts. I like discussion and opinion in what I read, rather than just list after list.
Duncan McDuncan said:
I think this is what many people that run blogs find frustrating and relates to what you said about “top 10″ lists. They want to write interesting, opinionated posts, but are competing against blogs that post “top 10″ list after list, which do seem to attract more visitors, so feature higher in search engine results. Therefore, just to compete they post some “top 10″ lists, hoping that the visitors they bring, will stay long enough to read some of their other types of articles.
I think you nailed it right there. Discussion is key. I can find resources anywhere, but good discussion is more of a rarity. I would rather read thoughts and critiques of designs, with in depth comments and discussion than just a list of links.
WAY too many lists. I’d say there are too many blogs and not enough bloggers, just list gatherers! In depth discussion is what blogging SHOULD be about. However, it’s extremely tempting to just go straight for the link bait and put out a “150345 Absolutely Gorgeous Thingy-Ma-Bobbers that you MUST Have” post. Those make me gag.
I can tell this is going to be a great blog Paul. Not only do you respond to your visitors, but you have high quality visitors. Notice that all of the comments here are insightful and thought provoking: None of the “Thanks, good article, now gimme my backlink!” crap that you see everywhere.
Looking forward to reading more Paul, keep up the originality.
Joseph McCullough :
Thanks for your kind words Joseph, I’m pleased you like what you’ve seen so far and hope you continue to in the future.
I agree, there are too many list gatherers and not actual bloggers. I think it’s fine to do the occasional list as they can be quite useful, but many sites seem to have nothing but lists which means they are not offset by other types of posts. And as I’ve said in a previous comment, I like discussion in the comments section of blogs; list posts don’t really encourage that, people tend to just say “Awesome list!” or “Really useful, thanks.” – which makes them pretty pointless in reading.
Interesting. It never occurred to me to distinguish between blogger and list gatherer, but I think that is the key.
Bloggers routinely put together great lists. List gatherers put together retakes on the same tired lists and don’t offer any extra value. How many lists posts have you seen where you think not only was that a great list, but were drawn in by some dash of personality or other interesting topics in a sidebar? I think it’s 1 out of 50 lists (that aren’t already from trusted sources like Smashing Mag or Noupe or whatever).
What the community could use is a moderated forum of lists, a kind of running cream-of-the-crop.
BTW: What template are you using? I love it!
Douglas Bonneville said:
This is true, and I am not inherently against lists. Like someone mentioned before, if the list is a compilation of things that are extremely specific and/or hard to find, then the list is very useful.
Some lists I might look at would be:
“10 Examples of the Golden Ratio in Contemporary Design”
“5 Helpful C++ Pointer Tutorials”
“6 uses of PHP output buffering”
@ Joseph :
Funny you should mention that. How odd. Check out this article just posted an hour or two ago on the “golden” ratio and web design:
http://thewayofbeauty.org/2010/06/07/using-st-boethius-for-better-web-design/
The article references this other article you might read:
http://www.electriceloquence.net/articles/beautiful-classical-proportions
@ Douglas :
Hahah, excellent! Well thank you very much for the articles. I’ll be sure to give those a good read.
Douglas Bonneville said:
I’d like to believe that the most useful list posts appear higher in search results, but sadly I don’t think that’s always the case. Your idea sounds interesting, if done right it could be a great resource, maybe you should consider starting the forum yourself!
I designed the template used for this site myself, so really appreciate the compliment. I’ve never done one before so I’m pleased with how it turned out. It was also my first time coding HTML and CSS, so it’s been a great learning experience.
This was your first template? Did you start with one and mod it or did you start from scratch? I’d love to read a post about your experience or hear more one way or the other about it.
Your site has that Helvetica mojo working for it.
Thanks Douglas, that’s a great idea for a post, I’ll have to get on to that. It was started pretty much from scratch, so quite a bit of work for a first timer.
Nice post Paul. Followed your link on Joseph’s blog (he posted above) to see if I would find another low key design/developer blog. Gladly I did.
There can never be enough design/dev blogs. I only follow about 8-10 of the ones I think are top notch, but I have more fun, and learn more, by following the less known people. Mainly because they are more in the trench of design warfare than the elite few. We are actually doing things for real clients, rather than living through our popularity.
Even though it might seem like there is an insane amount of them out there, and there are, think about how many actually survive. I’ve been doing mine seriously since…around January. Coming up with things to write about is not easy sometimes, and if the person isn’t really into it, chances are, it won’t survive. I tend to look for people who have a decent amount of posts over a good period of time. That will let me know they are sticking around.
There can never be too many, because of how many die out. Luckily there is always another with motivation to create one I’m willing and interested in reading. I just found one here!
It’s possible. There’s certainly a lot, with a lot of them posting very similar content to each other, as for whether there’s too many, I’m not sure. If people have things to share with the design community, they should share it. But that can be done by guest writing for other blogs. As for starting one, I was considering it but decided against it because of how many blogs there are already.
@ Jeremy Carlson :
Thanks Jeremy, I’m really pleased you found my blog of interest and hope you continue to enjoy the articles I post, which I’m aiming to do at least once a week.
It’s true what you said about the survival rate of blogs, I’d love to know how many actually die out in the first year. I’m still pretty new to blogging, but even with my limited experience I know how much work it can be, so I’m not surprised people give up on them. A long term view has to be taken and as you pointed out, the person has to be into it or they simply won’t last. For me, receiving comments is the biggest motivation; to hear what someone else thinks on a topic I’ve posted and for a discussion to develop, is one of the best aspects of blogging.
@ Ogvidius :
I do understand why you chose not to start your own blog, as you know from my article I was in two minds myself but I’m glad I have. I’m enjoying the whole process and regardless of how successful it may or may not turn out to be, I think the experience will teach me a lot.
You have a great site by the way, with excellent samples of work. So if you were to change your mind and start a blog, I for one would definitely be interested in what you had to say.
@ Paul Galbraith :
Thanks! Maybe one day, when I have time, I will do. Your website is great too, by the way. Just stumbled across it today and it looks like there’s some really nice stuff on here.
Hi Paul,
I agree with Preston and Douglas. The design blogs we are seeing are more of ’10 popular wordpress themes’ types. The amount of original content is still very low. And so, you must be happy that all these sites are working for you, listing your content on those ’10 great things’ lists besides google and all. All you have to do is, share your personal experiences and your original work which will not be very tough for you because you are doing this for the last 15 years.
Other than that, with so many things going on, readers are becoming content specific rather than author specific. So rather than looking for loyal visitors, you have to give the versatile content which may win a larger audience. With time, you may convert them into loyal visitors. So again, content is the key.
I feel this because I am also regularly in search of good design articles.
All power to you.
Wish you best of luck. :)
@ Aviral Mittal :
Aviral, thanks for your kind words. You raise an interesting point on the whole subject; how being featured in these top ‘whatever’ list posts can benefit a blog, even ones that don’t post lists. So regardless of what we might feel towards the amount of list posts, at least they can help drive visitors to blogs that focus more on producing original content, allowing both types of blogs to benefit.