I’ve talked about having 5 blogs long enough that it feels like it’s the only thing I’m known for. Truth be told, in the last couple of years it’s been much harder keeping up with all those blogs and 2 blogs I write for others.
on a building at SUNY Oswego
One of the problems is time. I have a lot more things going on personally and not enough professionally that my time is divided and I need to be more efficient.
Another is the loss of revenue because of Google. On one of those blogs I used to average $500 a month via Adsense & Infolinks. On the other, I was averaging around $350 a month through advertising and paid guest posts… many of which I wrote. I wasn’t making that money at the same time, but it was fairly significant as a side hustle.
Now… I’m making around $7 a month total! It drastically decreased before I stopped writing on those sites as often. I didn’t have the encouragement to keep writing for a site that wasn’t bringing me either revenue or a sense of fun, like this blog does. Thus, it’s been a long while since I’ve added much content to either of them.
This means it’s time to shut them down… kind of. The domain names don’t expire until June and August of 2020, and since you can’t get any money back it makes no sense to get rid of them. Unlike what Lisa Sicard did years ago when she shut down a website, I can’t cancel my hosting package and get any money back because all my sites are on the same one.
What am I going to do instead? Glad you asked!
I’m going to basically cannibalize some of the blog posts on both of those sites and repurpose the content elsewhere. I’ve already started the process with one of the blogs, and eventually I’ll get to the other one. I’m going to leave all the other content where it is, and when I’m ready I’ll write a farewell article letting anyone who visits (which won’t be many people) know that its best days are behind it and no new content will be appearing there any longer.
One friend asked why I don’t just shut down the sites and leave the link behind. I have a couple of reasons.
One, some of the content I’m leaving isn’t bad, but it’s relatively short. They’re not articles that work well in trying to rewrite them to make them longer, yet the content is still valid.
Two, Some of the blog posts I’m removing are linked to some of the content on the other site. Some of that content is industry specific (health care finance) and someone might want to read it; I’m giving them a year and a half to do so.
What am I going to do with the content I’m removing from those sites? I’m going to repurpose them on other sites. For instance, there’s one article that will appear on this blog at some time in the future. There are a few articles that are going on my business site. Some articles will go on what used to be my local site, which I’m turning into my “everything else I want to write about” site. Some of the articles will go on my accountant’s site, for whom I write two articles a month. Right now at least one article is going on my consultant’s groups blog. That should take care of everyone.
Here’s the deal though. When you’re going to do such an endeavor, you need to do two specific things.
One, you need to rewrite some of the content; I shoot for at least 35% but most of the time it’s more than 50%. I like making the articles longer, and I do more SEO with those articles, since I’m not starting them from scratch. I work on making them stronger and more evergreen than they already were; I’m not throwing up content that’s not going to do me any good.
Two, you need to give the articles some time to remove themselves from the search engines. A period of one or two weeks is sufficient to make the article new, and of course if you’re rewriting some of it the articles definitely going to read as new. I’ve found myself almost always changing the first line of one of these articles. I think it gives them a new feeling… though I may be fooling myself. lol
By the way, it isn’t the first time I’ve done this. Back in 2014 I killed another blog but took the best posts from there and put them here. It gave me extra content from July through November and took a major load off because I was traveling for work a lot at that time. What it also allowed me to do was have two articles a week here and there; the more content you have, the more traffic you get. I didn’t announce it at the time because… frankly… I never thought about it! 🙂
At this point I’ve already waited a week for those posts to disappear, so hopefully starting next week I’ll start posting them on all those other sites. Since there’s only one that fits this site, I won’t need it for a while… and I’m not telling you which one it is when it goes live. We can’t go giving away all our secrets now can we?
BTW, I wrote this post because it’s a question I’ve been asked quite often over the last few years, so I thought it was time to address it since I’m going through the process. Please share your thoughts, and if this is either something you’ve done or something you’re thinking about doing.
I’m Just Sharing
Hi Mitch, wow, that sounds like quite the project. I’m hoping soon to start another blog. But I know this time I must write at least 5-10 posts in advance and not promote the new blog until I have those posts done and published.
I don’t have a timeline but I’d love to have it started by April. Coming up the name is my long issue. Tough one!
I don’t know how you managed so many for so long without getting burnt out Mitch. It’s not easy keeping up with all of them unless you outsourced some of the work.
I hope you find new income streams to increase that $7/mo.
Happy Monday and have a good week Mitch!
Wow, you found this quick Lisa! lol I was good at keeping it up for the longest time, but circumstances have changed, and I just don’t have that kind of time anymore. It’s definitely a big project, but it’s going to help me in the long run… at least I keep telling myself that. lol Keep me informed when you start your other blog; you know I’ll be by to take a look. 🙂
Mitch, as you know, I have repurposed my creative writing–moving it from one domain to another. The process is far easier for me because I do not have to do any rewrites!
The only changes I made were cosmetic: adding images, reformatting the paragraphs to fit the current blog theme more aesthetically, combining two or three short stories into one, longer story and, lastly, removing or updating any links.
Years ago, I used to guest post (not really the correct term, but whatever) on sites like EzineArticles.com. Eventually, I pulled all of those articles and put them into my free eBook.
Repurposing is fun! I hope you get some satisfaction from all of the consolidating efforts!
Cheers,
Mitch
Hey Mitch! I have things on EzineArticles also but they were reposted from my original stuff so I’ve left them there. I even got a mug from them a bunch of years ago; that was funny. lol
You’re lucky you didn’t have to rewrite your stuff but you were telling stories. I’m hoping that rewriting my articles will help my blogs do better SEO-wise. Well, that and some of my older articles definitely needed a refreshing from my point of view. I think they’ll all help me in the end.
Hey Mitch, i am now spending a lot of time answering questions on quora along side guest posting!
I’ve been thinking about re-purposing these articles to turn them into an ebook, thanks for refreshing this as an idea.. Writing takes up so much time so it would be great to get more out of the process.
Thanks again for sharing!
Lisa Sicard likes doing that Quora thing also; I just don’t have the time or interest to do it. Thinking about using some of your articles for an ebook is a smart idea; I did that with my last book, using half from previously written newsletters and half from my business blog… the really old stuff.
Hi Mitch,
When I first started blogging we actually launched 4 blogs at once. That turned out to be far more work than I could possibly do and learn WordPress at the same time.
Repurposing the content and reducing the number of blogs you have to manage sounds like an excellent idea. That will give you more time to promote the content you publish and interact in groups to grow your audience.
Speaking of groups, I’d love to invite you and your readers to the new BizSugar Mastermind Community. Lots of free resources and live events. Ann Smarty is doing a Q&A on Featured Snippets on 2/6/19 and her answers will be saved for future reference.
I was going to put that link in the CommentLuv field, but it appears your CommentLuv isn’t working. You’ll be happy to know that Andy’s uncle has uploaded an updated version to the WP repository and they’re working on a new CommentLuv Premium.
Drop by my site for details on how to join and Ann’s Q&A.
Glad to see you here again Gail. CommentLuv comes and goes; I hadn’t realized it wasn’t working again… sigh… I saw there was an update for the regular CommentLuv but hadn’t held out hope for an update to Premium (which I had problems with previously, but one never knows) and I’m glad Andy’s feeling good enough to have someone helping him put something new out.
Anyway, I’m hoping to find more time to write and promote without worrying about finding enough content for 5 blogs any longer. Lisa’s been working on me about BizSugar, but I’ll admit that I’ve gotten jaded over that kind of thing because, as you know, so many of these types of communities crashed and burned at some point in the process (remember Technorati & Delicious?). I haven’t totally given up on the idea, but I need to think about it a bit more. Thanks for the offer; I’ll keep it in mind… I promise! 🙂
BTW, thanks for telling me about it. I figured out which plugin was messing things up and disabled it. Now CommentLuv is live again!
Always sad to hear about revenue drops. Hate it when that happens to any blog.
Other than totally shutting the blog down though, you might want to try a few more things. Experiment with new methods of monetization. Tons of them these days.
But always a good idea (and fun too) to repurpose content. You don’t have to just repurpose and post them to one place though. As many sites as possible is fine too, as long as they all link back to your main site.
Michael, the problem is I’m disenchanted with the topic of one of those blogs, and the topics on the other are similar to some I have on my business blog. With 3 other blogs to continue managing and more marketing for my business releasing those two blogs will give me more time to concentrate. I’d rather sell at least one of them, but I doubt I’d get any takers at this juncture.