The worst blogging mistake I made...

[This post is a part of a blog project compiling mistakes made by bloggers and what they did to overcome them.]

The worst blogging mistake I made was to start off many many more blogs than I could run - simply because I thought each blogging idea deserved it's own space and URL. In a short while I discovered that it takes quite a bit of time and energy to generate content and to get a steady stream of readers for each blog - and by spreading my limited resources across so many blogs I was not doing justice to any one of them.

But it took me some time, a great deal of perplexity and much heartache to challenge my assumption that each idea should have its own blog. I eventually realised that by combining the different ideas and content all under one umbrella blog (which then became my one personal multi-faceted blog) I could not only combine all my readers but also improve my Google Pagerank substantially.

And what's more, by strongly sub-branding each feature/series in my blog and labelling them distinctly I could actually sport these individual blogs-within-blog as separate blogs. At this moment I run three such blogs within my primary MisEntropy blog: ten things i didn't know until last week, the sentence and the aphorism factory.  I am also experimenting with other ideas that can become long-running series.

I'll probably come up with a few more ideas for blog series' - but it will take some convincing to persuade me to blog them under a different blog/url.

One exception to this rule, of course, is if you are blogging to establish professional expertise - rather than running a personal blog - in which case, you're better off not mixing your professional blogging with your hobbies and other eclectic stuff.

But for me this blog is an extension of the person I am - and therefore it is natural for it to encompass everything I am interested in, no matter how disconnected those diverse things seem co-existing under one blogging roof.

Comments

[Rene Kriest]

Thank you for this nice article. I like your point of view.

It is indeed very important to distinguish between personal and professinal blogging.

Regards,

René
ProBloggerWorld.de

[Elias]

I guess what you are saying, is that instead of having many different blogs, you are aiming at one "Long Tail Blog" with many niche topics each aimed at a different audience. The combined audience of all these sub-blogs will hopefully get you a huge audience.
I'm trying to do the same :)

[blaiq]

Elias, I do use that analogy to think of how I approach my blog - and it's good to know someone else thinks the comparison apt :)

[dhivya]

I agree, generating content for multiple blogs is quite a herculean task. As a result of this a lot blogspace has redundant and pointless content. Most of the time I end up reading somebodys 'shit- shower- shave' routine

[CreditGuide]

I believe it is better to run only some blogs not much in order to work hard to make them ranked and write only cool posts that will find their readers.

[TopTenz]

I have decided to focus all my limited attention on one blog, it is too hard to keep up more than one and do it well for me. http://www.toptenz.net is a list site that keeps me fairly busy.

[blaiq]

@TopTenz: I originally wrote this post a while ago - and looking back, I know that sticking to one blog was the best choice I made. Make that one count :)