The Evangelical Outpost has often been criticized for seeing too big a picture, or over-focusing on numbers in the faith or god-blog subsection of the ever growing blogsophere. This post is closer to reality.

Unfortunately, we bloggers rarely appreciate the power we possess. Instead of being constantly amazed at the potential influence we wield, we carp and whine (if only to ourselves) that we don’t have the links of Glenn Reynolds or the site hits of Daily Kos. We believe that since thousands of people could be reading our blogs that we should have thousands of readers. If we don’t then we judge ourselves to be inadequate.

A conservative Republican blogger who gets more hits than 99.9% of his fellow blog readers, Joe Carter uses this post to encourage others, using his twin passion for god-blogs and numbers to define what he calls the 5/150 principle.

Now consider what would happen if each of these 150 readers read and thought about what you wrote on your blog for five minutes every day. Five minutes may seem insignificant but it has an exponential effect: with only 5 minutes every day, six days a week, every month, you will have the reader’s attention for more than one entire day – 26 hours – every year. With only 150 consistent readers you will have gained the equivalent “mindspace” of one person for one entire day for almost five straight months. This is what I call the “5/150 Principle”: capturing the mindspace of 150 people for 5 minutes can create an astounding opportunity for influence.

The question then becomes how you will use the principle. Your audience is giving you two of their most precious possessions – their time and their attention. What are you doing with this gift? Are you using it to improve their life, influence their worldview, feed their mind? Or are you wasting it by giving them junk food, blather and trivia which provides a momentary amusement but has only a fleeting impact?

I’d also recommend Joe Carter’s article at Spero News: When your blog appears in The New York Times