Blogging Tips: Many Topics Versus Few Topics
Posted by John Lockwood on April 7th, 2008
photo credit: joshuamckenty
If you’re a dedicated blogger and someone who has more than one interest in life, sooner or later you may be haunted by the issue of how many blogs you should have. That’s the position I find myself in now. To give you an idea of how much I’m wrestling with this issue, today at lunch I was doing a balance sheet of the pros and cons of using an existing blog and widening it to several topics, versus spinning off yet another blog that I’m not sure I have time for.
Because that’s so on my mind these days, I was very interested in this discussion on Suzie Cheel’s blog, which is about the pros and cons of having a narrowly focused, single-topic blog versus having a wide ranging blog with many topics.
The Battle of the Bloggers
A lot of folks weighed in on Suzie’s blog, and I was hoping some of my readers might also want to discuss it here. One of the first things I did in going over it was look at who was arguing for and against specialization, and how well that model seems to be serving them. On the specialist side of the argument was ProBlogger author Darren Rowse (In fact, I learned about the discussion because Darren linked to it). Taking the generalist approach was an author that Suzie Cheel cited in her original post, John Pozadzides. John believes strongly enough in the case for blog generalization that the tag line of his blog is “Specialization is for Insects”, part of a Heinlein quote that John gives in more detail in his About Page.
Digging into the numbers for both authors, I noticed that John had about 3,700 pages indexed by Google and 1,045 Feedburner subscribers as of today. He also posted a figure of an average of 15,000 to 20,000 page views daily. The ratio of page views to subscribers in his case is approximately 17:1, which is about what it is on Inklit, where I have 1,072 page views daily and 57 subscribers.
Comparing Darren’s numbers to John’s, what struck me immediately is that Darren had less than twice as many pages indexed by Google (5,260), yet he had about forty-two times as many subscribers. I don’t know Darren’s page view numbers, but I estimate them at something over a half million daily.
That’s Not The Result I Wanted
I love that Heinlein quote about specialization. I really wanted to have a blog about everything — in fact, as of yesterday, I had decided that that’s was where I was heading, and this morning I was taking the first steps in that direction, and was pretty much prepared to make the frightening announcement that Inklit was about to be devoured by my growing Borg Collective!
Have no fear. I am a specialist again. This is a blog about Writing on the Internet. Pay no attention to those digressions about Wordpress Plugins.
Readers, What Do You Think?
Comments? Do you specialize? If you generalize, do you do it in more than one place?
April 7th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
Good man. The objective of a blogger is to make a very small segment of the population very very happy.
Now, do that with four or five blogs and you can be diverse. Just keep them close to the same niche, and you can turn it into a blog network.
I started out with a blog on History, a Dungeons and Dragons blog, a political blog, and a novel-writing blog. Because I didn’t have nearly enough to do, I started the Writing Journey. It’s been the most successful by far, and the rest sort of sit there glaring at me like that old dog who used to be a cute puppy but now just pisses on the carpet every damn day.
Once TWJ is cooking (another 6 months, if I had to wager) I’ll pick back up the novel-writing blog. That one shouldn’t take as long to build, because I can leverage TWJ at that point.
The D&D blog will always be for fun, and just a way to meet other gamers. The history blog has potential, but I’d guess it’s at least a year before I can do anything substantial with it.
Those numbers are, as always, pulled directly from my behind.
April 7th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Oh man, I have so many blogs that are like that old dog. No, not even — I have a bunch of blogs that I don’t even let in the house any more. I have five real estate blogs, two of which are active, and two more of which are as officially defunct as I can conceive them to be. The last might get a post next year for Christmas.
Then there are three other blogs on real estate social networks, one of which gets a post now and then when I feel like promoting something else.
My real estate Internet marketing blog used to be the recipient of all the good “How to Promote Your Blog” sort of stuff that currently ends up here, but in the past few weeks I’ve discovered the beauty of the guest author series. Also hosted on that domain is the blog who almost became the Borg Collective Blog, until as you just saw I abandoned that idea and registered a cute new
puppydomain name this morning.It’s not just a job. It’s
an obsessive compulsive disorderan adventure!April 7th, 2008 at 7:29 pm
I would agree that specialization is what brings in the subscribers. People (or I, at least) don’t want to subscribe to a blog where their topic of interest might get one out of five posts.
Unfortunately, this is where I am right now. I have one “tech blog”, which naturally encompasses my spin on tech news; my opinion about the latest gadget; tidbits about Linux and, occasionally, Windows; and ideas, observances, and tips on web development (programming). One day I’ll talk about styling forms with CSS, the next it’ll be how to install KDE4 on Kubuntu.
I think I’d be better off specializing, spinning off my X main topics into blogs of their own. However, it seems like that’d be either a lot more work, to keep X blogs updated as regularly — or even half as regularly — as my single blog, or a lot less content per blog, with the same amount of content spread across X blogs/domains.
And, if I do split out, what of my current content? Should my entire site be split out accordingly, or should there simply be an announcement on the current site, with subsequent content placed in the appropriate blog?
Any advice?
April 7th, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Yeah, exactly. Well, the best advice I seem to be hearing from those I’ve read is to try spinning off a related blog after the first one’s been established for several months — which I see yours has.
But really, I don’t know. You bring up the same sort of thing that I’m dealing with. This is a blog about writing, but ends up being about blog promotion and things like Wordpress plugins, so I feel the focus is lost. However, one blog for each interest I have in the world is probably a bit too granular.
I think one approach is to have a core focus and then write about other areas as they relate to that. I agree with you that focus is what people are looking for when they subscribe, however, so the trick is to really not veer too far from whatever one’s established straight and narrow path is.
It’s all doable, I think, but not trivial.
April 7th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
I have felt the pain. Starting a blog without knowing what you are going to do with it is the first step towards ruining it (traffic wise). Better to plan and focus.
April 8th, 2008 at 3:32 am
I have to agree, John. Your specializing in Internet writing brought me by. What’s wrong with specialization with a bit of other stuff mixed in? I do that every stinkin’ day! :))
Thanks for stopping by my blog. A week into Entrecard and I’m already feeling disenchanted with it. It’s too much work, and it’s too much of people blindly dropping and not really reading your words. What I can’t stand are the multiple droppers - that’s just not right. They don’t care about your blog - they care about their credits.
April 8th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
Hi John,
Thanks for the stats comparisons, very useful
Looking at some stats, looks like that will also help me focus on what direction I take.
The discussion is very intereating
April 9th, 2008 at 8:21 am
I suppose it boils down to whether you want to be something to everyone, or everything to someone.
In other words: you can please all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all (well, most) of the time.
I have a ‘niche’ blog, although calling it a specialised one is stretching a point as I cover just about anything reading- or writing-related that strikes my fancy. I’d rather have a dozen readers who read and comment regularly, than a thousand who subscribe because they might be interested in one post in ten.
But then, I’m running my blog for my own amusement, not because I want to be rich or famous. I can see where a blog that covers bits of everything would certainly be easier to market, with more readers and wider advertising.
I’d like to think there’s room out there for all flavours of blogs; people will find what they like, even if they don’t necessarily like what they find.
April 9th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
See, that just proves that I’m too ambitious. I want to be rich and/or famous and/or amused.
Thanks so much for stopping by.
Did you say guest post?
April 14th, 2008 at 7:41 am
[...] is clear. I recently wrote about the debate between the specialists and generalists, and in that post, I argued that the specialists won. People like to subscribe to resources that [...]