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20 April 2006 9 Comments

My Changing Blog Portfolio

I’ve been experimenting on a lot of fronts with my blog portfolio. At the beginning of the year, the only blog in my portfolio was this one. That has grown significantly and you might have noticed that a lot of the blogging I once did here, I don’t do as much. That’s because I’ve effectively pushed a lot of my content into other blogs and spread the wealth a bit. This has been remarkably successful with some blogs and others it has been a dismal failure.

For one, I’ve found that having several of my blogs at b5media has required more attention be focused there. Those blogs have the most potential for rapid traffic and earnings growth because of the very nature of being in a blog network with a hundred other blogs linking back. I also have a vested interest to see those blogs succeed.

Other blogs started as good ideas but I quickly found out that I did not have the time or desire to maintain them. Others suffered purely on the basis of attrition and priorities.

And yet, the blog portfolio continues to morph. I have decided to mothball a couple of my blogs while taking on or launching others. Still others are getting the focus-honing treatment. Here’s the breakdown that will begin to be reflected in the next few days:

Blogs I’m mothballing

  • Alpha Tango was a blog that was started to sort of follow a journey of faith. The difficulty in this blog is that the journey is a very private matter and I discovered it was hard to be transparent when so much is private. Though this journey continues and has brought me closer to God, the days of this blog have come to an end.
  • Emmense Technologies was never really a blog. It’s been my freelance web design business and I’m not really doing that anymore. Nor do I feel like blogging about it. This blog is really a content center that is about 4 years too late for my career.
  • Observing You never got off the ground and I was bored. It was a people watching blog but I don’t get to people watch like I want to. So, we kill it.

Blogs Being Added

  • ProBlogger is Darren’s home for providing advice on how to make money with a blog. I announced awhile ago that I had begun writing a weekly column for Darren and his readers.
  • Squib Kick is a partnership between frequent Technosailor reader, Jesse, and myself on all things related to pro football. I’m having a blast blogging on that one.
  • Backstage Pass is my brand new Movable Type-powered music blog. It’s the Backstage Pass – because music is sexy…

Changes

Finally, this blog, Technosailor will become more of a personal blog. That simply means I’ll blog about whatever I want to. However, I recognize that this blog has core readers that fall into various groups. This change will likely be a longer transition over the next month or so. It will specifically affect Political readers. I’ll likely be mergin The Not So Free State with national political content and rebrand things. Shake it up a bit. If anything, Technosailor will likely become a source of blogging info. That’s what interests me and that’s the benefit of a personal blog.

Anyways, tell me what you think. I’m genuinely interested.

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Written by Aaron Brazell on April 20, 2006

Popularity: 1% [?]

9 Responses to “My Changing Blog Portfolio”

  1. Jesse 21 April 2006 at 9:18 am #

    In the end it always seems to come down to the one blog many topics or many topical blogs. The idea of hving an “everything blog” always sounds appealing, but most people tend to find that it doesn’t work after a while, as you seem to have. There are some that claim their blog is really about anything they want it to be, but if you take a closer look you’ll see they don’t actually focus on very much…

  2. Jesse 21 April 2006 at 9:18 am #

    In the end it always seems to come down to the one blog many topics or many topical blogs. The idea of hving an “everything blog” always sounds appealing, but most people tend to find that it doesn’t work after a while, as you seem to have. There are some that claim their blog is really about anything they want it to be, but if you take a closer look you’ll see they don’t actually focus on very much…

  3. Aaron Brazell 21 April 2006 at 11:50 am #

    It really depends on what you want to accomplish, Jesse. For a long time, I ran this blog as a universal voice for Aaron Brazell. Over time, I realized that I wanted my blog to work for me. In other words, I wanted to be an SME and seen as an ‘insider’ on various topics. I wanted to earn income. Etc.

    So I started watching and learning from the guys who do this best, most specifically Darren. I realized that though it might be convenient to have one blog in one place, it’s not good for Search engine Optimization, blog categorization or garnering the watchful eye of experts in niches. IOW, I’m not likely to get added to Steve Rubel’s RSS reader as a general purpose blog. I’m not likely to be interviewed by Business 2.0 when I talk about everything.

    However, I can still talk about everything I want to talk to if I break it all down and keep various blogs on various topics. So that’s what’s happening.

    And through experimenting, I’m finding where I’m good at blogging and where I’m not so good and eliminating the weak points and strengthening the strong points.

  4. Aaron Brazell 21 April 2006 at 11:50 am #

    It really depends on what you want to accomplish, Jesse. For a long time, I ran this blog as a universal voice for Aaron Brazell. Over time, I realized that I wanted my blog to work for me. In other words, I wanted to be an SME and seen as an ‘insider’ on various topics. I wanted to earn income. Etc.

    So I started watching and learning from the guys who do this best, most specifically Darren. I realized that though it might be convenient to have one blog in one place, it’s not good for Search engine Optimization, blog categorization or garnering the watchful eye of experts in niches. IOW, I’m not likely to get added to Steve Rubel’s RSS reader as a general purpose blog. I’m not likely to be interviewed by Business 2.0 when I talk about everything.

    However, I can still talk about everything I want to talk to if I break it all down and keep various blogs on various topics. So that’s what’s happening.

    And through experimenting, I’m finding where I’m good at blogging and where I’m not so good and eliminating the weak points and strengthening the strong points.

  5. Stacie 25 April 2006 at 8:38 am #

    I just checked Emmense and it looks updated… what do you mean it’s about 4 years late for your career?

    Stacie

  6. Aaron Brazell 25 April 2006 at 8:48 am #

    I’m not really doing development much anymore and that’s what Emmense has always been about.

  7. Stacie 25 April 2006 at 8:38 am #

    I just checked Emmense and it looks updated… what do you mean it’s about 4 years late for your career?

    Stacie

  8. Aaron Brazell 25 April 2006 at 8:48 am #

    I’m not really doing development much anymore and that’s what Emmense has always been about.


Trackbacks/Pingbacks.

  1. Blogging for the Long Haul » Technology, Blogging and Politics - 24. Apr, 2006

    [...] A couple of days ago, I made some wholesale changes to my blog portfolio. Some of those changes included dropping three of my blogs. You see, I realized in those blogs, what is likely a universal truth across blogging: to be a success in blogging (in terms of getting traffic, making money, building your profile, becoming an SME, etc), it doesn’t happen overnight. In fact, it might not happen in a month. Chances are, it’ll happen over several years. [...]