Bloggers, resolutions and multiple blogs
**Audio “enhanced” version is available at the bottom of the article**
New Years. This is when a lot of bloggers make resolutions on what they want to do differently for the next year. Most are improvement related and unfortunately most fail. Why? No strategy.
Wait Tyme! You’re jumping the gun! I have a strategy! I have a plan! Tyme says: bunk.
Example, I have three sites. 9rules, ScrivsTyme and Not Too Geeky. As most know I had more but I condensed them to three. What are my goals for Not Too Geeky? I want Not Too Geeky to be successful. There are trends I’d like to be the catalyst in changing. I want to share my knowledge of new technologies as I learn them. I want to monetize the blog. I want to improve my writing skills. Five goals, not an overwhelming list right? Well, what is considered successful? What things do I want to change? What new technologies? How much money do I want to make? What about my writing skills needs improvement?
Specifically, success is 10,000 unique visitors a day. New technology will be online applications, Web (insert whatever number here). I want to make 30K a year. I want to polish my professionalism in my writing skills without being boring.
Now we’re getting some place right? Well, can I make 30K a year on 10,000 unique visitors a day? What do I have to do to receive 10K unique visitors per day? If my site becomes professional, and I know my niche audience is not, will that turn them off?
I’m starting to bump into problems. To draw traffic I would most likely have to write more than one article a day. And they would need to be quality articles, increasing my writing/research time. To make $30K I would most likely need to sell advertising rather than third party ads otherwise I would have to put a lot of ads on the page, and that would irritate my readers. If I’m selling ads myself that means more time needs to be set aside dedicated to that. If my readers like my writing style, why would I change it? Who am I writing for, me or someone else’s expectations?
Got it! If I write three articles a day I should be able to do that in three hours max. This includes finding the articles, research to make sure the information is accurate, sending emails to confirm information if necessary and writing them. Instead of making them more professional how about more grammatically correct. Then go to lunch. Come back and work on sales for one hour per day. I need to set aside time for making contacts in the industry, so another hour per day. In between I can moderate/respond to comments and answer email. Tops 7 hours. Done. Perfect.
Except I have two other sites, what about those?
I can trim down the article writing time from three articles to 2 and cut the research down by 1 hour leaving two hours. Cool, I’m down to 6 hours. Ok, I don’t have to make 30K a year, 20K is cool. Great, I can use third party ads…..
This is an example of why there are so many average to crappy blogs out there. People stretch themselves too thin with their expectations, then settle for less than their original intent. Of course this entire process was thrown off because the wrong question was asked in the first place….
What’s the right question? I have three sites, what do I need to do for all of them to be successful? Welcome to Systems Thinking….
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