How Often Should a Blog Stay On Topic?
Jul 30th, 2007 by Lewis 11 Comments
I was thinking about this question two nights ago as I sat down to write a posting on Real Estate Investing. I had most of it written when I realized that Real Estate Investing has very little to do with the main topic for my blog. While I am not a full-blown ‘Make Money Online’ blog, I have chosen to write about investing, personal growth, motivation and of course making money. Through the journey I’ve had for the last month, and the great articles I continue to read on other blogs, my money making postings tend to focus on web based subjects.
As I sat at my computer waiting to Publish the article, I realized that I’d probably lose the interest of a large number of readers who want to learn how to make money through the internet. As you can see I did not decide to post the Real Estate article. Instead, I decided to start a new blog at RealEstateStarttoFinish.com to write about my experience in Real Estate Investing as well as buying/selling property and mortgages. It was originally a little site I started in early June before I began LewisEmpire.com so I reposted many of the articles as blog posts (and of course backdated the timestamps.)
My motivation for today’s post was from an article posted by Nate Whitehill called Analyzing My RSS Subscriber Growth. The article talks about the success that Nate has had with building his RSS to 443 readers (as of July 27, 2007) and the jump in readership that happened at 3 months and beyond. The part that really caught my eye was a comment by another reader David Wilkinson of Techzi.net who said:
Fantastic article! My RSS has been up and down of late. My blog commenters seem to prefer the tech stuff, my RSS readers seem to prefer the business/entrepreneur stuff and whichever I’m doing, I’m getting a faceful of ‘angry’ comments.
Maybe I need to start a new blog…
While the sample group is very small, this may have confirmed my decision! Starting a new Real Estate blog will allow me to write about a topic that has a very specific audience - one that may not attract people interested in making money online. I want to make sure people reading my site know what they are going to receive each day. While a random humorous post, video or personal story works in a blog, there needs to be focus in the overall theme and create value for the reader’s time.
If you liked this post, buy me a coffee!(so I can stay up late and keep writing)
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Hi Lewis, great blog and I think your idea is nuts!
How are you going to be able to devote enough time, energy & creativity to more than one blog? If you can do it then yes, it makes sense to have different blogs for different themes but I have to admit I thought this blog was more slanted towards personal finance which includes making money on the web as well as real estate investing.
If you can write about your soccer games on this blog then you can write about real estate investing!
Mike
Hey Mike, I’m glad you think I’m nuts! You’re almost family now…
I’m going to continue to make postings about real estate related topics on Lewis Empire; however, I think they will be more general postings about using real estate leverage on making money. I’m still of the opinion that real estate is a very specific topic that’s difficult to properly merge with a personal finance, making money blog.
My second reason is because it gives me a great outlet to continue to explore a topic that I love so much. As I wrote in a previous posting, I write articles for publication and will refer the real estate readers to RealEstateStarttoFinish.com. Plus, the Adsense revenue is much higher on real estate ads than on the personal finance and blogging stuff that shows up here sometimes!
Lewis, I have a half dozen or so posts of my own that are ready for press, but I’ve held off on posting them to my blog for the same reasons you did. They just didn’t fit with the theme that was evolving on my blog, and I think that posting them would alienate more readers than it would gain new ones–especially in the early stages when I’m still trying to build up a strong audience. What I decided to do was to keep writing those misfit articles and put them in reserve so that when the time comes, they’re ready to go. That may be when I start another more suitable blog, or when I feel I have readership that’s strong enough that I feel free to experiment a little more.
I know there are quite a few people that successfully run multiple successful blogs on different topics, so it’s definitely doable.
I totally agree. If you try to mix it up too early I think you may lose some of the credibility that you are able to build. As we’ve seen on other blogs, you can throw in other topics as your readership grows and they respect your opinion more.
Hi guys!
I use to sit on articles that I found were not ready for my blogs (off topic). Looking back, the worst thing you can do with something you have written is SIT ON it, lol. The way I see it now, is I was actually sitting on money that wasn’t growing! My advice is to quickly publish it way that you can, ideally starting a new blog might be the most profitable in the long run, but maybe the simplest thing to do is send it to the famous article submission sites! Don’t stand still, and don’t sit on your money, it wrinkles the corners.
Sounds pretty logical to me!
Hmm…that comment might qualify for your “Top 10 comments” list.
Mike
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