Dave Hoffman explains why he keeps at it after ten years:
I doubt that blogging has made me a better scholar. I don’t think my blog posts have made a bit of difference in public debates. (It might have, but the effect is incidental and contingent, not by design.) I certainly don’t think that Concurring Opinions has built a deep virtual community (cf. Volokh) to play with. (Maybe we should?) When I look around, I can think of only a few examples of law professors whose blogging has moved the needle. Then again, the same is true of long-form scholarship! Blogging is a cheap form of self-expression, and it’s nice to own my own printing press. It is as simple as that.
I think blogging has made me a more visible scholar, but am agnostic as to whether it's made me better.
I think my blogging impacted at least one debate; namely, Harriet Miers. Matt Bodie, for example, kindly observed that I "was of material importance in making the conservative case against her." My blogging about the STOCK Act is the other case where I think I had an impact, since it got me in touch with key staffers. But that's about it.
I don't have a deep virtual community. I've stopped trying to build one. Indeed, my current attitude is summed up by the moment in the 1980 Presidential campaign when Ronald Reagan declared "I paid for this microphone." This is not a public forum. I pay for it. If you want a microphone, pay for one of your own.
At bottom, however, I completely agree with Hoffman's last point. When I was growing up, I wanted to be an author. I love writing and blogging has been a fun way of scratching that itch.
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