State of the Blogs

I feel like I am running behind my schedule. To date, I should have been operating (strange) ten blogs, but I only managed to run five and a half actively (the half one is on trial). Do not let the count confuse you as I have a completely different system of assessing which blogs will survive after my trials and not all of them are listed here.



Unlike most of the bloggers, I make long term plans. Short term popularity and little financial gains are irrelevant. Lacking the funds for a full blown research, I devised a personal evaluation method: I usually start a blog, bring it to maturity (read 30-40 posts) in a month or slightly longer, then let it rest for a while. During the resting period, I only measure search engine performance, but above all, keywords used to find the blog. They have to match what I had initially planned to a reasonable extent. If they do not, it means I did something wrong as irrelevant keywords indicate incidental traffic, not targeted.

When that happens, I usually freeze the blog until I figure out where I made a mistake and how I can correct it. Until the moment of truth arrives (it is not a must, it may never come), I throw in a post or two every 2-3 months just to keep search engines happy.

Some might argue that rather than freezing, targeting that incidental traffic is worthwhile. Not quite so! Simply because you will have to write for others not for yourself, and inevitably you will burn out after a short period by writing about things that you do not have a passion for.

A few blogs, like The Missing Culture for example, will go on regardless. They are not meant to be popular (though, I will not object if they are); they are there because I consider them important.

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