Will Indonesian Bloggers Drop Further? Worrying?
However, it seems the honeymoon period of Indonesian bloggers has been over after that. The numbers have been getting less at the end of 2015 and in 2016, it has been expected to have further decreased in 2016
There are possible two reasons behind this drop.
The first is because the more aggresive approach made by several social media such Facebook in regard of advertising. The 2nd is because the CPC of the most favorite advertisement programme in Indonesia, Adsense looks to go down since the last few months.
As it is already known, Facebook has been aggresively entered the market of online advertising in Indonesia. They provide more space for advertisement.
Many Indonesian businesses seem to have switched their promotional strategy from using the traditional usage of banners or advertisement on websites or blogs, to social media such as Facebook. They consider social media may provide possibility to reach bigger market in the country considering Indonesians have been known to be social media maniac.
The second reason symptoms have been heard many times in several blogger forums about how low the earning by being an advertiser. The last several months, more bloggers have whined since the CPC given has dropped quite a lot. As you may know, the CPC for blogs written in Indonesia, in average is between US$ 0.01 - 0.10, which is already quite low compared to other countries. Now, the rate seems to decrease further.
Some lucky bloggers have changed their strategy to maintain the flow of income by writing more in English to attract readers from overseas to come. This act is done with the expectation to get better and higher CPC.
Unfortunately, not many Indonesian bloggers that can write properly in English. Some others have forced themselves to produce English written articles by using Google Translate tools that unfortunately made their articles are very doubtful to be able to attract people due to broken English.
The rest may consider their options since if this situation continues, they will not be able to cover the coat of domain and server hosting. However for sure, many have dropped their blogs in hiatus as their spirit to rely on their blogs as income source has disappeared.
It can be expected that next year, the prospect for Indonesian blogosphere seems quite bleak. There should be less numbers of Indonesian bloggera next year.
Worrying? As a blogger, the steadily decreased number should be welcomed as that means less competition. However, as Indonesian, I am worried.
Bloggers have been one alternative source for Indonesians to gather information and knowledge. The variety of information or knowledge by people means a lot for a society that have been lack of library or any other types of information sources until now. The reduced number of bloggers can mean the source will be decreased more.
This is worrying for the development of Indonesians. They may rely on foreign sources that may bring different taste and style from local cultures.
Maybe, I am worried too much.