I have been having many conversations with myself, friends and colleagues and on this blog about where I am heading.
Since the beginning of the year I have been talking about setting up a new blog, Solo Home Business about Having Fun Making Money Online. “That’s a crowded market” I hear you say. I heard Darren Rowse say it the other day too.
I also hear focus your blog on one topic. That has been my stumbling block. I want this blog to focus on the Law of Attraction in Action, AND I want to write about lots of other things that I am passionate about, including cooking, blogging, making money online, my art, people and causes, to mention a few.
I was delighted yesterday when Des alerted me to this fantastic article 45 Ways to Power up your blog by John P over at One Man’s Blog. The whole article is a must read,and as long as you are using wordpress gives you the tools to take your blog to new heights.
John’s take on the question of whether you should have just one topic in you blog spoke to me. In fact, it made my heart sing:
Don’t Believe the Hype
I’ve been hearing people advising authors to stick to only one topic per blog for some time now. And they are just plain wrong.
Any possible SEO advantage is more than outweighed by the fact that authors and readers become bored by the same subject after a while and content becomes stale and painful. Not to mention the fact that you’ll only keep a regular subscriber for so long without some variety. (Oprah doesn’t talk about the same thing every day, so why should you?)
Instead, write about what you know and love… all of it. As an example, my blog has 42 categories and 2,300 tags. I average 15-20,000 page views each day, with a record day being over 140,000.
He acknowledges that Darren Rowse disagrees with him. I am planning to go on the call today introducing Darren and Andy Wibbels course 6 Figure Blogging today to see if I can be persuaded otherwise.
So what to do? Look at why I blog and why this blog? That was what Des asked me yesterday as we were walking on the beach.
- I started the blog seriously last year to share my story and my journey to freedom- that is for me total financial freedom. The freedom to have the choices to do what I want, with whom I want, where I want.
- To share the many tools and processes with you my readers along the way
- To build a community focusing on the practical side of The Law of Attraction- You might have noticed I have changed the tagline to Law of Attraction in Action
- To generate income
- To have fun in the process.
I would love some imput on this so please leave a comment below.
If you liked this article, please share it on del.icio.us, StumbleUpon or on Digg. I’d appreciate it. 
Gratitude to Massimo Visona for the delicious photo.
Funny, but I was just thinking of the Law of Attraction this morning, and Darren points me to your blog. I’m in two minds as to what I think about this topic. Having started blogging by covering a wide number of topics, I found more success focusing on a niche (healthy food) but often find myself having to make an effort to stay focused and on topic. Maybe it’s also like that with the Law of Attraction?
Cookiemouse’s last blog post..Coffee is good for rabbits and maybe Alzheimer’s
THANK YOU for this post. When I first started blogging I wondered the same thing. I WANTED a universal, all around blog – so my friend and I started what we deemed a “random blog.” But…it just didn’t work. I think our readers were confused and thought we weren’t serious. I noticed I was getting more readership with my design and art posts – so I went forward with that and my friend dropped out. Since my decision, and connecting with other design related blogs my readers and comments has increased tremendously. I mainly talk about design, but I throw in personal notes here and there to break up posts. I agree that you should try a larger niche (as long as it interests you!) and add a personal segment…maybe every Wednesday, or once every two weeks. Good luck!
Diana’s last blog post..Please Sir on The Road
Let me be part of this conversation. Blog is information plus a person behind it.
As an information way, it means that there are rules to be effective. If you talk about a lot of issues with no connection, it will not work for your subscribers. If you stuck in just one subject, no effectiveness also, it will annoy people.
Oprah talks about a lot of things but all of them linked to his strong personality and life history. This is the point that connects every subject. The same Oprah subject in Letterman´s show would be read in a different way.
I think that if someone wants to talk about daily news that appear in the front page of his/her preferred newspaper, no problem. But this person has to show a specific personality that moulds all these things according to a specific point of view. Or it will be just a clipping.
Nadiva Olivier’s last blog post..Blogblogs
I write about a number of subjects – Linux, Unix, Mac OS X – but those are all related under the “Unix” genre, so that’s fine. But then I also write a bit about self employment, which can be tenuously related in that many tech people either are or would like to be self employed. Finally I write about blogging itself, again because tech folk often have blogs and all self employed people should be blogging.
At one point I split off the blogging and self employment to their own blogs.. because “everybody” said blogs need to focus. That experiment did not last long and I soon pulled everything back to one blog. The heck with “everybody” – like Popeye, I yam what I yam.
Thought a long time before I named my blog.
I finally chose “personal growth” because it is a broad topic.
I write on spirituality, jobs, sales, fear, the past, Iraq, prostitution –
Living is personal growing.
I believe if your domain is not specific on a topic, it gives you a lot of leeway.
Maybe just use your name like Tom Stine – or Jonathan Fields. They write on a variety of topics. Great blogs!
I think the articles on my blog, however, have to be helpful in some way – there has to be a common thread.
Suzie,
Thanks for bringing this topic to light. You are right on. Although I enjoy many single topic blogs, I also enjoy blogs that I can read about multiple topics as well. Some people have a passion for one topic and some have a passion about multiple topics that they are equally great at sharing about. If done right it will not overwhelm the reader. That what make the blogosphere so great.
Suzie,
There are a lot of comments here and it’s clear you’ve hit a nerve. I’d like to offer a slightly different take on it, as you definitely want to be directly making money from the blog. Think of it like a traditional business.
If you were a magazine, you’d have a topic. Sports Illustrated never tells me how to put my makeup on or what stocks to invest in, but they can go from trends to fashion to current events to profiles, within their “niche.” Likewise, I’ll never read about dogs in Fine Cooking, but they can go from gadgets to specialty ingredients to kitchen planning to profiles, in addition to what to cook for dinner.
If you were a shop, you’d have a theme. I can’t get dog food at the local Hallmark, but I can probably find a gift for my dog. I can’t get a basketball at Victoria’s Secret, but I can get outerwear, underwear, and little splurges in a wide range of categories. Even megastores do it: yes, Target’s got lingerie, but I’m not going there for it because it’s not what I think of them for. That’s sort of like going off-topic once in a long while. (Pardon me for all the U.S. references. Hopefully you get the idea.)
I think focus is important for any blog, but critical for one that hopes to make money. Clear Vision gives you, guidelines and your readers, expectations. I don’t think the folks at Sports Illustrated say to themselves, this is too restrictive. I can’t say anything more about sports!
I read about a sign on the side of a New York State highway once that’s all about focus: “Choose your rut wisely. You’ll be in it for the next ten miles.”
I think if you choose it wisely, you can also be delighted the entire time.
I’m glad Darren directed me over here.
Regards,
Kelly
Having just this past week gotten back into “the game” of near daily blogging after a computer crash-induced year hiatus, I’m reinventing my own blogs.. Sort of..
“Station Break”, for now anyway, is going to be how I mark posts that completely digress from whatever thought process a particular blog usually follows.. *Hoping* to keep in mind not overusing it to the point it is as fun to endure as three minutes worth of commercials every six or seven minutes of a really intense movie.. 😉
Cyber hugs.. 🙂
Cindy Sue Causey’s last blog post..Beautiful Minds :: If There’s One Thing In This World That Gives A Girl Butterflies..
Well that little blog was effective – just look at all the great dialogue!
Suzie you can do whatever you want to as long as you maintain some agreement. If it isn’t on the subject, theme or message your blog usually follows just say so, and also say why it is so important to say it anyway. As Carol Fogerty put it “with passion and inspiration”. Say “This is not my usual theme but I am so excited about…”. “This most intriguing thing came to me so I hope you don’t mind a diversion into…” “While this may seem off the subject…”
I was mulling over the same question really as I step into blogging after just writing scripts and when I organized my thoughts discovered I reach out to 7 distinctly different niches. To me that is 7 blogs, but what is to say I can’t interconnect them so if someone notices a kindred spirit he can click over to the blog of another theme.
There is another trick here as well: just as it appears I have strayed off a subject in a blog I wrap it back around so it ties it all back together and the contrast makes for interesting content. I can do that as well jumping off from the article borrowed from one blog and use it in another in a way that climaxes on a revealing relevance to the theme of the seemingly off-subject blog.
If after a string of articles on The Laws of Attraction you launch off into your favorite cooking recipe this could be a good thing if it then gets revealed that the coconut shrimp dinner was really just to lure a group of people together to open up income possiblilties – and boy did it.
There has to be a theme and there has to be a message that has consistancy, even if it is “This is how diverse and wild I am.”
In one blog I set off talking about my dad the Alaskan Bush pilot and slip over onto John Travolta’s home where he parks his jets and then I make it all relevant as that is just like dad who would come home and park the helicopter in our yard. Turns out it was relevant.
I think you’ll do just fine Suzie.
Robert Gisel of OnceAnAlaskan.com
I too face the same problem. I have wide variety of interests that I want to cover in my blog but as Darren Rowse said it will decrease the readership though it might get some traffic from search engines.
I’m planning to cover 5 or 6 topics in a theme blog. Like how Steve Pavlina does. I see that Joe Vitale has branched out and is blogging about different topics these days. Recent example would be the movie “Try it on Everything” which teaches about EFT.
It also depends on your reader. For example, when I read art blogs, I want to see art. I don’t want to hear about gardening or baking or children more than every six or seven posts unless the post ties back into art somehow. And I have stopped reading blogs where off-topic stuff becomes too frequent for me.
Although I haven’t read your blog before, it seems from a quick skim that you won’t have any trouble tying almost anything you want to write about into your main purpose, as Tom Stine and Chris suggested earlier.
Beth Robinson’s last blog post..How Might Your Solution Become a Problem?
It all comes down to content really, and dig this: if you all of a sudden break the agreement established by the blogsite the blog becomes unreal it will drive away traffic. If you’ve been, say, a high tech site and start talking about gardening all of a sudden you’ll lose your following.
Even that you could survive if you wrap it back around into high tech, say for instance as a parable. Farming and commercial nurseries are highly technical subjects in their own right and though it is not SEO and html etc, they have laws of application. It could be illustrated that these diversities were relevant and make a point of some sort.
That is called craftsmanship. I know what that means for script writing and now I am learning it for the internet. These discussions are extremely helpful.
You know what makes a writer good? He writes, whatever he writes, from himself in his own unique and novel way, first of all, then there is the craftsmanship, writer skill, that allows him to fully deliver the message and the theme in earnest. He communicates. People get to know who he is and come back to hear more.
If your subject matter gets too diverse they won’t tie together easily, like the gap between a blog on Raising Mangoes that out of the blue talks about Mud Engineering on an oil rig. That is a good exercise though. How could you tie those two subjects together so that one was left with the understanding they belonged on the same blog?
Steve Pavalina writes that if you concentrate on doing something for the reader you gain a following and word of mouth that will take care of the traffic. That’s one end of the spectrum while being a complete internet technical guru seems to be at the other end. I think the slick tricks of the guru are often irritating. I also think that of Steve’s overlong blogs where he could say it quicker with as much punch.
Suzie, you’re on the right track or you wouldn’t have thought even ask the question. I think you’ll do fine.
Robert L Gisel, OnceAnAlaskan.blogger.com
I’m nobody, so don’t listen to me, but I found that my blogging became more rewarding when I began to focus more. I think my readers knew what to expect when they came and the came ready to interact and discuss. I also started getting emails from readers asking me what I thought on specific topics or if I’d heard about certain events.
I have read that there are two ways to approach this: blogging on a specific topic or blogging to a specific audience.
Dana’s last blog post..Home Education Week Wrap-up
Doesn’t matter if it’s a lead-generating blog or a revenue-generating blog –
FOCUS still wins the day.
If your goal is to make money with contextual advertising and AdSense, I would recommend going the niche route for the reasons Darren provided. My website is nothing more than a stream of consciousness exercise, and as a result, the content can be quite random. As a result, the ads often don’t match the content, particularly on the front page. Someone coming in to read a Barack Obama article may be presented with ads for tobacco. On the other hand, there is joy in being able to write about disparate topics under one umbrella.
However, before you do purchase multiple domain names, make sure that you can write enough content in each niche. If you have ten niche websites, yet you can’t write enough content for those niches, you won’t make any money. Before expanding this website into multiple ones, I’d recommend listing your target niches, and start writing for each niche now – before you go online. Do this for three to four weeks to determine if you have the motivation to create quality content for all your niches. Most likely, you’ll find that you can produce quality content for less than have the topics you originally selected. The ones you can write consistent, high-quality articles for are the ones you purchase domains for.
Brad Brown’s last blog post..When Mexicans Attack
Hi I’m new to blogging it has often crossed my mind, how many different topics should I concentrate on. For me personally if I were to concentrate on one specific topic it would bore the hell out of me, and at the end of the day If I want to be bored I will go find a job that does that for me and get paid well for it. This article has made me see that the way to success in blogging is to do what you feel is going to work for yourself. We need to step out of the box and find our own path, instead of constantly following someone else’s opinion.
Suzie, I’m somewhere in the middle. I deliberately chose a fairly broad topic for my blog (personal development) because I didn’t want to burn out by writing about the same narrow topic over and over. My posts have some variety to them, but they’re all meant for people who want to improve themselves.
I don’t think you need to restrict yourself to just writing about the law of attraction. Surely readers who are interested in LOA are also interested in other personal development topics. I don’t see the need to be purely focused on the LOA just for the sake of being focused. At some point your posts would probably become repetitive, and you’d become frustrated that you couldn’t write about other things.
But personally, I think it’s a mistake to write about completely unrelated topics. Let’s say you write about LOA, cooking, and art. There aren’t many people who are interested in all three of these, or even in two of them. So every post you write is likely to annoy close to 2/3 of your readers. I don’t know what kind of person has time to read blogs about topics they don’t like!
By the way, your picture looks familiar, so I think I stumbled onto your blog once before. I often subscribe to blogs that I come across a few times. I look forward to seeing what topic(s) you’ve chosen when I come back!
Hunter Nuttall’s last blog post..A Simple Productivity System
Suzie,
This is a great article. I also have a blog that I cover multiple topics and like the way it works. I am still getting going with it but the fact that I can write about anything makes it more fun for me. This may be against what others say but I at least want to try it. Thanks for writing about it and I wish you success.
I understand what Darren says in his comment too and it makes a lot of sense. I think it tells me that if I want to cover multiple topics I can but don’t get too crazy. He didn’t say that but I think it is a way to do what I want yet use his advice somewhat. Either way I am enjoying this and no matter what I write about it will be a good time for me. Great blog and I will definitely stop by often.
Thanks – Tom
Tom’s last blog post..Kansas vs. Memphis
Suzie, thanks for your posting, it comes at a critical time for me as well. I have been publishing my blog Sparkplug for the past year and a bit and was starting to second guess my original intent which was to talk about things that I really want to talk about – be it politics, entertainment, marketing or any other subject I care about.
Sometimes it feels like I am shouting into the void and then a posting will hit a nerve and start comments flowing.
And that reminds me of what I started out to do which was to enjoy the journey and not just reach a destination.
All the best,
Peter McGarvey
Peter McGarvey’s last blog post..and our hearts and minds will follow?
Suzie,
Great post! I believe as long as you cover what you’re passionate about and you can find a way to keep it somewhat under the same umbrella, then you’ve got it. I do something quite similar at Season of Shadows. I cover the supernatural, mystical, spiritual and paranormal, but I believe they all have the common thread of metaphysics running through them. This allows me to branch out quite a bit, but still keep everything under a similar umbrella.
Keep up the great work!
John
John Wolfe ~ SeasonOfShadows.com’s last blog post..Living the Placebo Effect
It the shoe fits…
A good trick for you in that kind of situation is to come out and say it. That which you think might strike a sour chord can usually be turned to advantage, calm the storms, if you point out that it might strike a wrong note.
It helps to establish agreement. That accomplished you can make all the sharp turns you want to and it won’t be a shock treatment. It becomes acceptable.
Don’t know what the automated Google ad selector wil “think” about that though.II”
…what you’re passionate about…”
Of course you can always give your viewpoit from under the umbrella about the interesting gut prefers to stand outside the umbrella in the rain.
Robert Gisel’s last blog post..Bears At Large
Very interesting stuff. I am right in the middle of having to make some basic decisions on some of these issues, so this is definitely well met. So many blogs. So little time.
John Lockwood’s last blog post..WordPress Plugin to Increase Subscribers
This is good to hear because you usually only hear the opinion that you should stay on topic – but what if your topic is a broad topic?
I like that you’re focusing on your joy, and how could joy be limited to a narrow topic, especially if your goal in life is to experience joy now? That’s what my goal is (for life, that’s not my main blog topic) which means if you’re blogging about that, you would never ever run out of topics! 🙂
JoLynn Braley’s last blog post..Feel Too Overwhelmed to Lose Weight and Get Fit?
@Matt Totally agree focus is so important as is consistent daily action and I just love your blog- very focused:)
@ Garry,
I agree with you about stepping out of the box, I still feel there is value in learning ways that generate income in positve, non gimmicky ways. Good luck with your entry into blogging
@Hunter Nuttall I like your GDT post- yes I am with you on simple. BTW not planning to put cooking and probably not my art unless it is a win I was putting out for. Look forward to seeing you around the highway.
@Tom yes enjoying what you do is a must. your blog is fun and I can see you enoy what you do.
@Peter Mc Garvey
I just visited your blog, I can see your thinking, have you checked you stats to see what your reader like. I am just looking at that and that will help in my final decision
@John Wolfe
I like the common thread idea and the umbrella, an I see Robert Gisel has picked up on this .
@John Lockwood
pleased to help your thinking
John has a very interesting post with good stats, most comments there are for a niche focus
@ Jolynn
Thanks for the encouragement, I still have to see if this will pay the bills:)
Your help and knowledge is priceless. This is just what is needed for people to get started in the right direction towards starting
and operating your own online business. The detailed info is a great tool to use to save people time and money to help jump start people
on their way towards supporting themselves in the way the feel comfortable stepping out if the box, to help enhance their quality
of life. Thanks for the knowledge and God Bless You.
Hi Suzie –
I’m 45 years old and “behind the times” when it comes to blogging and web 2.0 stuff. I’m just now exploring it. But it seems to me that a blog would stay most interesting if it has a “loose” theme to it. It doesn’t have to be rigid – in fact, rigidity would probably make it stale. But a “theme”, in my opinion, would be what brings me back to a blog as a reader. I’d want to see what’s being said about the “theme” today. But there can certainly be different topics within a theme – especially one as wide open as The Law of Attraction. That’s what keeps in interesting!
I’ve been told that blogging is narrow focusing. Therefore, a blogger needs to stay on one topic. While my topic is careers, I feel branching out into related fields such as sales and human potential is within bounds.
When it comes to writing/publishing, I feel we need to write within the bounds of our mission, or purpose of a particular blog.
Lots of subjects can be worked into abundance. Perhaps what you need to do, Susie, is to get your work out there to Digg, StumbleuUpon, Reddit, and more. Focusing more on marketing will get your work out there and drive more audience to your wonderfully laid out and creative site.
Best,
randy place