I’ve been searching recently to answer a question that many people considering new online programs have probably had: Just how many blogs are there, anyway?

Let me start by saying that hard, reliable data is difficult to find…if not impossible! Many of the services or engines that track individual blogs, like Google, don’t share their information. Even then, it is still impossible to know if their lists are all-inclusive, and how many “dead” or “sleeping” blogs they contain.

Dead means what you think it means: the blog has been permanently abandoned or discontinued. Unfortunately, this has been the fate for quite a few blogs. Sleeping is a term I just made up, but seems to fit nicely: blogs that are temporarily “out of commission”…or that will be revived by their owners at some point in the future.

Technorati, a popular blog hosting and tracking service, said they knew of 70 million blogs as of 2007, and that the number could double in the next year.

How many people read or follow these blogs? This question is just as difficult to answer, but once again we are talking about many millions of people, hundreds of millions.

Does this mean that starting your own blog now is a pointless venture? Absolutely not!

Sure, for (almost!) every niche, there are a few popular “A-List” bloggers. Some have even become media voices in their own right, even rivaling offline competitors in terms of readers and potential advertisers.

But because of the low barriers to entry, almost anyone can begin blogging. And since professional blog ghostwriters such as Hat Trick Associates exist, the same holds true for businesses and other organizations. This means there are many voices - and certainly not everyone will achieve A-List status - but each one can attract its own share of attention, and contribute to the ongoing conversation which is the web today.