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I’ve always been asked for advice by people thinking about starting and in turn running multiple blogs. Jasa for example is the last one to ponder such a question to me:

Anyway, say that someone is really passionate and skilled in 2 or more niches. And presume that all those niches are of equal money making opportunities. Would you advice starting a blog on each of those niches? Take out laziness factors and stuff

Thought this should be a great opportunity to answer this question in a blog post, as I find it to be quite interesting, one that deserves a more thorough look and which should prove insightful for most; plus I’m a bit tired of answering the same questions over and over again. Talk about laziness factor.

When to Start Running Multiple Blogs ?

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Here’s a scenario I bet most of you are familiar with. You’ve just started a blog, in a niche your very familiar with. Traffic and income grow at a steady rate, until it reaches a peak or a plateau of mediocrity as I like to call it, when you’ve exploited your readership market to a maximum and things begin to stagnate from all possible points of view. This usually gets solved either by pushing yourself to blog better, harder and more or by attracting new readers to your blog. Most aren’t able to get past it and decide to launch another or more blogs.

Here’s a second case scenario, that’s equally as often encountered and which I’m pretty sure crossed most of your heads, at a given time. You’ve opened a blog, buit and developed it and now it’s managed to produce a pretty decent and constant income. To keep the line going, let’s say your making 5$ a day with it, then you suddenly ask yourself, but if I had 10 blogs each making 5$ a day? That’d lead up to 50$ a day, meaning 1500$ a month, pretty decent right? Most will do the mistake of actually trying to mimic the first blog’s success tenfold, that will eventually lead to nothing but wasting your time. You’ll be lucky enough if you can make 5$ a month from any of them. The truth is you won’t be able to dedicate the necessary time to each blog, so that it may prosper, also you won’t be able to maintain the necessary enthusiasm and passion to keep you going, as your “gas” is bound to run out eventually. Not to mention that running too many blogs is a killer job, that will leave severe marks, such as extreme fatigue.

These are just two different case studies, that lead to the same outcome: multiple blogs. Finding the right moment to open a new blog is difficult and relative from blogger to blogger. If you’re fealing up for it, you can open several blogs right from the start or one by one, as you move along. So, I guess, what I mean to say is I can’t tell you when the perfect timing to build multiple blogs, but what I can’t tell you, however, is when not to:

• If you don’t have enough time. If you barely manage to find the time to post on your current blog, then what’s the use to launch a new one ? It will only drag down your first one, as you’ll sacrifice time for the second and by doing so you won’t be going anywhere. Some would say that they can hire people to write for them; ok, good for you, but good content writers don’t come cheep and at the end of the month you might find yourself spending more then your earn, at least till you get your stuff together.
• If you can’t face the pace. Mutiple blogs can be very tiresome for most and this can lead to either burnouts or infrequent posting, whatever the case may be, your blogs will have to suffer, so it’s best to avoid it altogether.
• If you don’t have a plan. Don’t start opening up a new blog, if you haven’t, prior to that, carefully researched your niche and competition and formed a growth plan. Don’t blindly head through unfamiliar territory, until you’ve carefully scouted the path, otherwise you’ll get nowhere.

Quality Over Quantity

Just a short mention, that I feel like I have to make before we continue with the article, is that you should always aim for quality, more exactly: nothing but the best. Ten relatively decent blogs can possibly equal, in terms of income, one well established blog, but never in terms of growth potential, readership quality and authority. I myself run multiple blogs, of which I blog in 3, but they are all very well put together, in terms of organization, posting quality, traffic and income. So the main idea is to always aim for quality, not quantity.

Advantages of Running Multiple Blogs

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1. More income. This is the most obvious advantage and most of the time the main reason why people start more blogs in the first place. Keep in mind this only works if keep the quality ratio up.
2. A income diversification. Ever heard of the phrase “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”? Well the principle applies to blogging as well and relying on a single source of income can be extremely risky, especially in such a volatile environment like the Internet. Thus running multiple blogs will not only bring more income, but both a safer and diverse one.
3. The potential for building a network. Every blogger that aspires of being a problogger and gain a stable income, must have his ultimate goal set to build a flourishing and established blog network. The potential and capabilities of a network are immense and starting multiple blogs is the first step in building one. I’ll definitely cover the subject in more depth soon.
4. SEO privileges. This is sort of a double edges sword, that many SEO gurus have come to argue about. I’m talking about interlinking between your blogs, that’s sure to bringing some PR juice, but at the same time it may harm your rankings, if you’re not careful. It seems that Google doesn’t hold too much love for networks and penalizes them at every opportunity, to avoid this it’s better to have your blogs on different dedicated IP or better yet on different web hosts altogether and try to avoid network blogrolls.
5. Experience. Opening a new blog is always a difficult task, possibly the toughest stage in a blog’s lifetime, but you’ll find that with every new blog it gets easier. When I first started my first blog and gradually learned the ropes, I made a lot of mistakes. Mistakes that I know now how to avoid and have shaped into a better blogger.
6. More traffic. By running multiple blogs you’ll both increase your traffic levels and readership demographics, thus gaining a even greater and more diverse exposure to all sorts of advertisers. More blogs equals more traffic and more traffic equals more money.
7. Better advertising solutions. Multiple blogs mean a better life for both bloggers and advertisers, as due to the increase in traffic you’ll have a better income and advertisers in term will have a larger and more diverse exposure to a reader demographic. If you really want to play it smart, you can make advertising plans in which you’ll put up for sale various forms of advertisement all over your network, for maximum income potential.
8. Readership exchange. If your running multiple blogs, that are all in the same related field and only differ through focus, then you can always make traffic exchanges, by indirectly leading people through your blogs. And no, you don’t use 403’s, like a dude told me when we were at a coffee, you just interlink. Plus you if you run multiple blogs in somewhat the same niche and decide to open another one, you can always publicize it extremely well and efficient by promoting it on your other blogs. A solid example is Skellie’s recent blog Anywired, that managed to gain a few hundread RSS subscribers in its first week, after Skellie made a simple post on her blog, in which she let people know about her new blog.

Disadvantages of Running Multiple Blogs

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1. Time. This is probably the biggest predicament behind authoring multiple blogs, because you basically have to work twice as much, even three times as much, depending on how many blogs you write on and you post frequencies. If you can’t manage to keep up, you’ll have some dying blogs on your hands. As a solution you can hire copywriters, but they of course cost money.
2. Fatigue. This is something I’ve personally experienced myself, a few times, as I became increasingly tired, during a few months of extensive multiple blogging. I was blogging as much as 6-7 hours a day on as much as 5-6 blogs (I used to do freelance gigs as well) and that, coupled with school, made suffer extreme fatigue and depression. I had to abandon one of the blogs I was writing on and soon after I found a perfect balanced blogging pace.
3. Stress. It can be quite stressful when you’re overwhelmed with posting schedules, deadlines, e-mails and other mambo jambo that might intervene. This all ads up and can be damaging to your health.
4. Increase in learning curve. Although you may be a expert in your current blog, you may want to open a second blog in a niche where you’re vaguely familiar or in a extreme case you know nothing about, but are passionate. This means that you need to spend extra time documenting yourself on your niche, besides the actual writing.

Are multiple blogs better then one? Do the advantages outweigh the disadvantages? The answer differs from person to person, depending on each blogger’s capabilities and time resources. Personally I’ve witnessed more success with multiple blogs, because I’m active in more fields of interest and like a challenge; it’s also highly rewarding, from more points of views. As a last idea I guess it’s important to say that multiple blogs are the way to go, if you can handle all the difficulties that come with it and don’t compromise the quality of your blogs in the process.

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The Running Multiple Blogs: Advantages vs. Disadvantages by Tibi Puiu, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.