I always err on the side of writing about anything that I feel passionate about and that is usually a lot less specific to one particular topic.

This is one question that I have trouble with. With my sites, I just about always second guess myself as to what I should zone in on. Am I being too specific or not specific enough? I know you can grow an audience from a small niche, but then again, if you go with the general perspective, you give yourself more freedom with topics to discuss.

What if you start with a fairly narrow topic and a URL that doesn’t easily fit other topics, but then decide to broaden your approach? Do you have any suggestions?

Several of your posts inspired me to start my own blog about a month ago. Check it out some time.

Wow, you’ve got a really good-looking theme.

In my opinion, your URL can be interpreted as pretty broad. “Reader” doesn’t have to mean book reviews only. “Reader” can be a broad publishing term like “journal” or “post”.

Hey Brian, this is a really cool blog you have going here, it’s very informative. I’m thinking of starting a blog of my own and I agree with you, a blog should encompass the entire individual.

Brian, I’m so glad to hear from a fan of generalization! To me, generalized blogs have always seemed infinitely more fun to write. It’s good to hear some perspective on other ways generalization can benefit both the writer and reader.

Regarding your take on John T. Reed’s analysis of Robert Kiyosaki, I partially agree. I believe his analysis is without merit, but I don’t think he’s doing it just to promote his own books–I think he truly despises Kiyosaki. My link points to a review of Reed’s analysis.

Good question, Rene. I’m not necessarily an expert in this field, I’ve just posted my opinion; but you might think about getting a separate “master” domain that somehow is linked to all of your little ones. Maybe you can combine the feeds and have all of your content posted in one place.

This way, you can keep your old domains for your current readers, but encourage people to check out your other interests also. -Just a thought.

sounds reasonable, and as I have five or so blogs on various sites I have the problem of time to get timely posts up.
certain things can help, like feeds, now got blidget on MySpace and “Shades of Kawasaki!” how to manage time to get it all done.

so what do you do when you got all these blogs? Can’t very well abandon them when they are getting lots of visitors.

I’m doing you on favorite.me on your blog.

Come check out my blogs.
Rene

I agree with a personal blog that it is more interesting with various topics.
If I have a specific topic in regard to education on a niche I personally find that
it is easier for me to keep it separate. But for a personal blog it is more interesting
to change it up.

I have difficulty finding the energy to run only one blog, so everything goes into it, like it or not. Your paragraph about having enough consistency says it all for me, and that’s what I’ve been aiming for.

If folk have a problem with the variety of subjects, or the fact that my blog’s not focussed on a single subject, well, that’s the way it is.

[...] at Genius Types wrote about his reasons NOT to specialize with different blogs for different topics. I tend to [...]

Brian, my blog is not as balanced as yours. I don’t revisit certain topics enough and it shows. Multi-blogging may work for some, but not for me. It’s easier for me to focus on one topic at a time. With multiple blogs, I would have to focus on multiple topics at the same time. One or all of the blogs would suffer in my case.

My philosophy is balance. Write about anything that you are passionate about, b ut be disciplined enough to keep recurring themes.

It’s so tough to balance specializing more and alienating your readership. How do you know when to specialize?

Fair enough. Let’s agree to disagree. BTW, I read an interesting magazine called $1,000,000aire Blueprints the other day. It has interviews with entrepreneurs in various businesses, and asks them to relate how they became successful, step-by-step. It’s pretty good I think.