When I was reading The Barb Wire today Tamara was ruminating that she’d started writing the blog a year ago. That brought me up short. I went back to figure out when I’d started writing Equine Ink and it was on March 9th, 2008 starting with this post: Goldilocks and the 31 Saddles. By no means do I want to steal her thunder here — I just think there was something in the air (maybe winter!) that got us both writing an equestrian blog.

It’s hard to believe that an entire year has gone by. I vividly remember trying to figure out how to make WordPress work (the blog almost didn’t happen, but I figured if every 15 year old in the country could create a blog, I could master the technology); those first weeks when no one read my blog at all; and how exciting it was when I started getting a few views a day. I still check in several times a day and it gives me a thrill to see whose reading.

For a blogger to maintain a blog for a year is a triumph over statistics. According to Caslon analytics:

Several studies indicate that most blogs are abandoned soon after creation (with 60% to 80% abandoned within one month, depending on whose figures you choose to believe) and that few are regularly updated.

The ‘average blog’ thus has the lifespan of a fruitfly. One cruel reader of this page commented that the average blog also has the intelligence of a fly.

The Perseus report noted above indicates that 66.0% of surveyed blogs had not been updated in two months, “representing 2.72 million blogs that have been either permanently or temporarily abandoned”

As for readership, the Perseus report also notes that “most blogs have no more than two dozen readers.”

I didn’t start out with a blog in mind. My dream was to create a product review site for equestrian products and this year I did launch the Beta version of Equine Products Review. Equine Ink happened while I was waiting for EPR to launch and it really took on a life of its own.

Not only have I enjoyed writing Equine Ink, but I’ve really enjoyed discovering other equine blogs. I never read horse blogs before I started writing my own. Now, I’ve found many that are inspirational, make me think, or make me want to pull out my camera and take better pictures!