Hari's Corner

Humour, comics, tech, law, software, reviews, essays, articles and HOWTOs intermingled with random philosophy now and then

Back foot drive is now closed

Filed under: Site management by Hari
Posted on Tue, Jul 24, 2007 at 11:27 IST (last updated: Wed, Oct 29, 2008 @ 22:40 IST)

I have nothing new to say about cricket so I decided to get rid of my (near) dead blog, Back Foot Drive which I had started a few months ago (url now invalid). Even at the time of starting it, I was quite tentative and knew that I might discontinue it at some point. Maintaining a niche blog is quite a difficult task, particularly if one lacks intense and long-term passion about the subject. I neither had the expertise nor the motivation to compete with other niche blogs in the field and so I thought "what's the point in keeping a dead blog clinically alive?"

The last update was end of April (April 28) and I hadn't really felt too keen on continuing to write about cricket (as I mentioned just recently). It takes a lot of effort to find an audience for niche topics, particularly when an independent, unaffiliated individual is in direct competition with an array of established websites with paid columnists writing about the same subjects. I was neither an expert analyst nor a blindly passionate fan of Indian cricket to continue writing about day-to-day events in the cricketing calendar. The politics of cricket also gets a bit stale over a period of time and I knew I wasn't really writing anything a whole lot different from hundreds of other newspaper columnists and online journalists.

It was an interesting experiment while it lasted and I got a good look at a blogging tool which I'm not really familiar with (blogger.com). It was also an easy way to set up an experimental blog without too much effort. So all that effort wasn't in vain and I at least found out that niche blogging is not for me, at any rate! :)

10 comment(s)

  1. May the soul (of backfoot drive) rest in peace

    Comment by Shrinidhi Hande (visitor) on Tue, Jul 24, 2007 @ 21:05 IST #
  2. It is probably resting in google's archives at the moment! :razz:

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Tue, Jul 24, 2007 @ 21:12 IST #
  3. I guess sooner, INDIAN CRICKET TEAM will also be closed down! :!::?:

    Comment by Logesh TamilSelvan (visitor) on Tue, Jul 24, 2007 @ 22:28 IST #
  4. At least it's time for the senior members to seriously consider retiring from the game, Logesh.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Wed, Jul 25, 2007 @ 08:00 IST #
  5. [...] I recently concluded an experiment in niche blogging (dedicating a blog to a particular topic) and decided that it was not for me. (For details, see my recent post on “Back Foot Drive” is now closed). [...]

    Comment by Niche blogging… me? No thanks - Untwisted Vortex (visitor) on Wed, Jul 25, 2007 @ 16:29 IST #
  6. my another blog http://advt-check.blogspot.com is also dying because myself and other team members dont have time to focus on that concept and write.Idea was to analyse TV and print ads and write about them-are they useful, how creative it is,pros and cons etc.But unable to focus on that.By any chance If anyone's interested let me know.

    Comment by Shrinidhi Hande (visitor) on Wed, Jul 25, 2007 @ 17:42 IST #
  7. That's an interesting concept, Shri. Maybe the blog itself is too un-exciting in layout to attract people. It is one of the default blogger themes. You could try a different customized theme?

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Wed, Jul 25, 2007 @ 18:24 IST #
  8. I can, but since there's no visitors and not enough content, I've not focused much on that blog-There're no widgets, I dont track visitors..kind of abandoned one.If atleast I can have 7 members who commit to post atleast one ad review per week, it will be a good idea.

    Comment by Shrinidhi Hande (visitor) on Wed, Jul 25, 2007 @ 22:19 IST #
  9. btb how many browsers and OS you have? I've noticed you commenting from so many combinations of them...

    Comment by Shrinidhi Hande (visitor) on Wed, Jul 25, 2007 @ 22:20 IST #
  10. Hehehe... I multiboot Windows 2000, Debian, Slackware, Gentoo and other OSes on my desktop and on my laptop of course I dual boot Vista and Debian.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on Wed, Jul 25, 2007 @ 22:57 IST #

Comments closed

The blog owner has closed further commenting on this entry.