The Challenges of Being a Blogger - Pt 3

My marketing experiment Explodes in my Face
I'm going to start with my end message: Working on 17 venues of information is not good for the quality of your content, your health or your family life.

But enough about the stress, I'll be getting into the details of my journey, research, and still in transition findings about this whole mess as I continue my series on The Challenges of Blogging.


Too Busy
There can be such a thing as too busy but I got caught up in the moment of the scenario. For one, I have a lot of things I would like to share with the world when I see stuff in print or media. When I think something is exciting, I want to help it get passed on. But that's both good and bad.

A blog's success seems to be determined by what I think are 1 of 2 things, maybe even both:

The authors voice, and
Focus of the blog.

The authors voice is my reference for style. I tend to have an impatience with some things, a dry wit with other things when I unleash it. An authors voice can draw a crowd, regardless of what he writes about.. but one must first become a known commodity for your voice to be heard.

To become a known commodity, one must focus their blog on an issue or subject.. a single subject so to speak and stay focused. When I was doing 17 blogs / site, I found that all I was posting were snippets and quotes and sending people off to other sites. I was becoming a reference site, not an information and opinion site.

That took me a long time to come to grips with and understand. With that in mind, I've been slowly weeding my blogs and sites down to a more manageable number and then I could start setting time frames for when I worked on what blog. It's still not perfect by no means, but I'm feeling better about my work, even if I do feel like I am abandoning one, I have to do what's best for me and my readership.


When Is It Time to Move On To My True Blogs?
So with the idea that I had to whittle down my labor output so I can sleep at least a few hours a night, I had to determine when to call it quits. What determines which blog to let go on it's way? All my blogs have had growth to some degree or another. Growth being the number of readers my statistics increase by.

I searched Problogger.net for the answer, but I had either not put in the right search terms or maybe the issue had never been covered, so I contacted who is considered one of the premiere experts on blogging, the author of Problogger.net, Darren Rowse. Darren took the time to answer my inquiry about how to determine a blogs potential. Basically Darren said:

"Give it at least 6 months and look at how much it grows % wise from month to month. If it's rising consistently at 20% or more it's got potential to really get good traffic over the long haul."

I've been whittling my blogs down and now with Darren's advice in mind, I need to run off and check out my analytic numbers and make some more decisions.

I'll check back with you later on the balancing act I've been dealing with.

Part 2.

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