Benefits of Owning More Than One Blog

I have been writing online for a little over 2.5 years now and continue to learn more and more. Of course my writing is part-time since I do work about 50 hours per week to put food on the table and provide my family a place to live. So I may be learning at a slower pace than others, but at least I am learning.

One of the things that I have discovered is important for me is the benefit that can be derived by owning more than one blog or writing on more than one site. Initially for me, I chose to write at various free sites. I started with Squidoo and HubPages during the same week in May of 2009.

As I started on the sites, I discovered that I enjoyed HubPages much more than Squidoo. I appreciated the feedback and the fact that several of the other authors on HubPages would read my articles and comment. I didn't get that sense of community at Squidoo since the business model there required your lenses to be popular. I didn't feel like everyone was working for a common goal.

Now HubPages has several different methods to earn income, and I have earned something through each of them. I just recently got signed up and accepted into the eBay program and have even earned a few cents using that program. I expect that to only improve and increase in 2012.

I have also earned money with Amazon. I have made about $80 in commissions this year. Sure that is not as much as many, but it has improved each year for me. This year, I received orders in each and every month which was the first time that has happened. Plus, it is totally passive income since all I do is add an Amazon capsule to each Hub.

AdSense and the Ad Program are the biggest earners for me with the Ad Program taking the lead since the Google Panda update. I am looking to increase Ad Program earnings in 2012 and will be shooting for $20 in January. This should be possible since I have made over $21 this month primarily by increased publishing of Hubs.

I have also written for eHow and Life123 in the past. Both of these income streams now no longer exist so it is important to have different sites in case one of them changes their business model or gets slapped by another update.

If you want to make money with a blog, it is best to limit it to a particular topic or niche. No one wants to read about personal finance in one post, gardening in the next, and your pet cat after that. Advertisers are not going to know who your readers are or what they care about if you bounce around to different topics.

Now there is nothing wrong with writing on all of those topics, and it is possible to make money with each of them. But I would suggest having more than one blog so that the blog can be focused. That is what I am doing with my blogs.

I am finding that I tend to get into certain modes of writing. What I mean is that some days or for several days in a row, I can write many, many articles on a particular topic. For some reason, the topic just seems to strike a creative nerve, and the words just seem to flow constantly. Now, I don't suppose that I could do this constantly.

Having more than one blog on several different topics allow you to write about cats when you get sick of writing about personal finance or gardening. Then you can focus your energy on another blog when you get tired of a topic.

I tend to use HubPages for this purpose and write on this site when I want to write about something that doesn't fit into a neatly defined blog topic. I think this can help avoid burnout and allow your mind to remain creative and fresh.

Another big benefit of having more than one blog is to use an existing blog to introduce those readers to your other work. I started my blog, Cash Flow Mantra, in May of 2011. After several months, I decided to introduce it to my readers on a blogger blog that I have been using to outline my efforts at making income online. It is a blogger blog and only gets about 500-700 visits per month.

But it turns out that as I review my 2011 stats for Cash Flow Mantra, it is the second most prominent source of traffic from other blogs. There are only 3 sources that have sent more traffic, namely Google, direct traffic, and another blog which linked to one of my articles. Now that I have really started mentioning this blog on HubPages, for December, HubPages is the 8th ranking source of traffic.

For my newest blog, Grand Per Month, which will officially launch in 2 days, I have been writing about it here, on CFM, and on my online income blog as well. The response has been good and I expect to get over 1000 visits in my first month if not more. Consider that I only get 3000 visits on HubPages after 2.5 years, 2000 visits on CFM after 7 months, and 600 visits at the blogger blog after 2.5 years.

Due to the topic and cross-marketing, I suspect that GPM will be my fastest growing and most successful writing venue to date. The fact that I have other sites to announce my newest venture has undoubtedly contributed to the initial interest. It also helps that I have partnered with a couple other bloggers who will be mentioning it on their sites as well.

These are the benefits that I have found by having more than one blog and writing on multiple sites. Can you think of any others? Please share in the comments below.

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