How Many Blogs Can You Maintain?

Indeed, how many blogs can you realistically maintain?

I got into blogging in March 2007. I knew nothing about how to start a blog, or what it was for, or what good it was to your everyday life.

Shortly after starting out with my first blog, I suddenly realized that I wanted to have a blog for each of my various interests. Soon enough you had one for music, another for TV and movie reviews, and then another on PC gaming, then one came up on business and marketing, followed by one on cats, another on writing, and it just went on and on.

Read the rest of the article here on my other blog, "Renzie on Blogging".

Cheers, everyone!

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Blogging Lifestyle: How Many Blogs Can You Maintain?

Indeed, how many blogs can you realistically maintain?

This was one of the questions that came up in that nice little workshop of ours with Abe Olandres last 24 November 2007.

I got into blogging in March 2007. I knew nothing about how to start a blog, or what it was for, or what good it was to your everyday life.

Shortly after starting out with my first blog, I suddenly realized that I wanted to have a blog for each of my various interests. Soon enough I had one for music, another for TV and movie reviews, and then another on PC gaming, then one came up on business and marketing, followed by one on cats, another on writing, and it just went on and on.

Which was cool, in a way, since it let me toy around with different kinds of layouts and plug all sorts of widgets, and try out different blog services.

But I soon found out that, at the rate I was blogging- which at the time was only once or twice a
week- there was absolutely no way I could put any decent amount of content into any of them.

Which was why I have just recently made an effort to scrap some blogs, or merge others into larger ones in favor of a more streamlined blogging operation on my part.

The question really, is not "How Many Blogs Can You Maintain?" but rather "How Much Time Can You Put In Maintaining Your Blogs?"

Assuming you have a regular eight-hour job, plus a regular enough life (where you have to have meals, take a shower, do some other day-to-day homestuff, have a social life AND sleep for six hours), you realistically only have time to churn out one, maybe two decent entries a day. And that includes a little bit of adding links, putting in some images, tweaking the layout a little and even reviewing it some.

One or two articles a day, if you have a regular enough life. And that's probably a good day.

So given a regular enough life, you might be able to maintain- comfortably enough- anywhere from maybe two to three blogs. Five is pushing the limits of your human ability and sanity.

If you want to maintain more the aforementioned suggested human limit, well, you can always consider going professional blogging- which might possibly mean forgoing all forms of regular employment in favor of a life dedicated to blogs and blogging.

And while there are many successful professional bloggers- or pro-bloggers- out there, there is (more realistically) a far larger number of aspiring pro-bloggers that have achieved varying degrees of blogging success: from "moderately successful" to "absolute failure".

We go back to our question: "How Many Blogs Can You Maintain?"

The answer: As many as you want to, as long as you make time for it.

Make time for it, man. Starting a blog is easy. But making time for it? It's what separates the serious bloggers from most of everybody else.

Whether you blog weekly, monthly, or daily, remember that blogging does take a certain amount of commitment on your part. The more time and effort you put into it, the more you can reap from it later on.

Cheers, everyone!

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How Serious Is Your Blog?

I just came from a highly informative, highly entertaining workshop on professional blogging. Of course as the discussion went on, there were lots of questions forming in my head- mostly on wanting to know how my blogs currently stacked up against pro-bloggers (professional bloggers :)).

More like, I'd like to know how much more I have to work on before I can actually be considered a serious blogger of any sort. And, well, as to be expected, it seems like I have LOTS more to do.

Your blog has to have anywhere from 50 to 100 posts to be considered a serious piece of work. Wow, that certainly sets the casual bloggers apart from the passionate ones, huh?

I get this. If the whole point of the exercise is to create a positive online experience for a reader- or just anyone casually dropping in on your blog- you really want to have enough stuff for your readers to sift through. Can't have 'em going through an empty blog now, can we?

That should also be enough material to establish the tone and pattern of your blog, show off some personality, and give you enough to showcase your knowledge and expertise on a particular topic.

While possibly daunting at first, 50 to 100 posts really is a good thing. It shows the amount of time, thought and effort you've put in to your blog. It gives the readers a better idea of what your blog is all about- and can therefore make it more likely for them to link to you, and keep coming back for something new and interesting. It allows you to market your blog, if you so wish, for ads, and more interestingly, for some cash.

50-100 posts should equate to just a few weeks, if you blog at least one post a day. And if a habit is supposedly formed in 21 days, by the time you've hit your 50 posts, you're so much into the blogging habit that it's totally effortless for you to put up a post or two.

So keep going at it. Keep churning out content. Good content- stuff you know people would like to read and stuff people will keep coming back for. Forget about the money, or carving out a niche for yourself, or building up rep- this one is all about making your blog a worthwhile labor of love more than anything else.

Let's get to it then!

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Make Money Blogging!

If you've been spending a great deal of time online, you've already probably checked out a couple of sites that suggest that you can make money just by blogging.

Or answering surveys, or clicking ads, or signing up for some service, etc. Those don't quite appeal to me as much as blogging (sorry guys)- and face it, once you get into the groove, you can easily spend a good number of hours blogging, lurking, emailing and jumping from one site to another.

In any case, if you're the type who spends so much time online, you might as well make some money out of it. Like I mentioned, there are lots of sites out there that can help you out (like this one that I just stumbled onto- www.johnchow.com), or -on the flipside- confound you even more.

It would be great if you unlocked the secrets to making money online on the get-go. But the truth of the matter is, it will take a great deal of trial-and-error to get things right.

I suggest you take time to get your friends together and learn it all at the same time. Join some online forums, look for other groups who are as into it as you are. The point is, you'd want to share your experiences and what you know with them, so you too can learn from what they've been up to as well.

One of the reasons why some friends of mine have decided to put up a small events group- for the purpose of helping other online entrepreneurs hook up with other like-minded individuals, so we can all learn from each other, support each other and have a great time while we're at it.

I'll be looking into these things more, and once I got something useful, you can expect it to be posted here in the near future.

Later, everyone!

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Do You Find Yourself Blogging For Hours?

Are you a blogging addict?

It's cool, man. You're pretty much in good company. Take a visit to www.jozzua.com and read all about a rather entertaining post on blogging and blogging addiction.

Now that I think about it, it takes me hours- HOURS! -to come up with a decent post, not unlike this one, if you consider this decent enough.

I actually have this short attention span issue. I easily get distracted by anything from widgets to photos to other posts- things that pull me away from focusing on finishing a post I'd otherwise be working on at the moment.

I wonder if it's anywhere as bad as my Facebook addiction...

Hmm...

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