I have a confession to make. I’m used to engage in multiple blogging. When Freelance Writing Jobs began to become successful, I figured blogging for myself was the way to go and approached it the wrong way. Instead of working my hardest to cultivate one blog, I began several different types of blogs. Only one achieved a smaller level of success and that’s because it’s a joint project with another blogger.
I found that by focusing on too many different personal projects, I wasn’t devoting enough time to one individual blog and they all suffered.
I also made the mistake of taking on several blogs for one client, a very popular blog network. The problem is, they all require quotas. When you’re blogging for six different blogs, all requiring two posts per day, plus trying to get your own stuff off the ground it’s not going to happen. In the past couple of years I’ve come to the conclusion that multiple blogging didn’t work for me, not if I wanted to give my best effort to my readers. The blogging became mechanical. I figured because one blog was a success, multiple blogs would mean multiple success. It was impossible. I just couldn’t give each blog the attention it needed. Even when I began hiring bloggers for FWJ, it suffered. Blogging is more than writing and I wasn’t being realistic.
Here’s why I’m not into building up multiple blogs at the same time:
Can’t give my undivided attention to each blog: My blogs deserve better than a cursory update and my readers deserve more than just going through the motions blogging. If folks are going to take some time out each day to see what we’re talking about, we owe it to them to put 100% effort into what we do. It’s hard to put 100% into ten different things. I tried it and (for me) it doesn’t work.
It’s easy to burnout: Two posts per day times twelve blogs equals a lot of writing. It’s not always easy to keep fresh with one topic, let alone a dozen. I love what I do and I’m passionate about what I do, but I don’t want it to consume me. I don’t want to hate it or not want to do it because I can’t get it under control.
Blogging isn’t just writing: Blogs require a lot more than writing. When you blog for someone else, that person generally takes care of most of the advertising and promotion. The blog’s owner handles technical issues and server outages. When you blog for yourself you have to deal with all of the little issues, whether you’re up for it or not. This is hard enough to do for one popular blog, let alone three or four or more. Multiple bloggers have multiple issues.
I can’t feed my addiction anymore: My passion for blogging is more like an addiction. As soon as I finish one post I want to write more. When I’m doing other things, my mind comes back to my blogs. When I’m watching a movie, I think about blog posts. When I’m at a school event, I wonder how my traffic is doing. When I’m shopping in the supermarket, I’m making a mental list of advertisers to contact. Having multiple blogs would give me more voices in my head than Sybil.
I want to do other things: I have ebooks in the works, an accompanying webinar, a book proposal to write up, and more. The research on how to do all of these things is consuming enough, but if all I did each day was blog for five different blogs, I wouldn’t get these non blogging projects off the ground.
Here’s a question for you:
Take a look at the most successful bloggers in the field. Not bloggers who work for someone else, but bloggers who own their own profitable blog. Now tell me how many of these bloggers spend a full time effort on several blogs at once? I know of one or two bloggers with two successful blogs, but I don’t know of any with more than one or two amazingly successful blogs. They spend their time cultivating their blog and their brand. They work on their flagship blogs and use the rest of the time to develop accompanying revenue boosters, but they don’t have ten different blogs.
I think one of my biggest mistakes was in thinking I could manage multiple blogs at once. I would either give one blog my full focus or get so confused at where to start, they’d all languish. I know multiple blogging can be done, but can they all be successful?
Are you a multiple blogger? How’s that working for you?
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