Blog Tips

Creating a small network of blogs may seem appealing if you want to “spread” traffic across several different blogs and want to increase readership across each of them. You need to be aware that there are several ways to do this and best practices for creating a blog network.

1. Be sure that the blogs have some type of connection to one another. If not, your readers will find little value in visiting each of them other than the fact that you have created several different blogs for different types of readers.
2. Don’t spend too much time creating the network with the fear that it won’t work out the way you wanted it to.
3. Add other bloggers to the network to give them an opportunity of growing their own blogs and providing additional perspectives.
4. Create a main, separate blog to highlight the blogs in your network. This is the main approach that many blog networks use, but the obvious negative aspect is the fact that you will be paying at least $10 more per year - lower budgets should choose the alternative methods - placing links in your sidebar or header, or simply the fact that your blog is a part of the network.

If you choose to create your own blog network, there is definitely more work involved than simply writing on different blogs. You will have to create content for each blog/be able to hire/have people write on your blog, market each blog or the entire network, and still be able to have a somewhat normal life away from the computer.However, if you want to do this, there are benefits that should be addressed before continuing:

• Traffic rates will be distributed across the network, provided that each blog is given the same amount of visual presence.
• Readers will find more value in your network than a single, one-person run blog.
• Provided each site is roughly equal in traffic (which is often rare), you will see more income, although it won’t be equal or representative of the traffic of each site.

Negatives:

• It is more difficult to manage a blog network than an individual site/
• Readers may not like all your blogs, so traffic will never be distributed equally.
• Updates and upgrades are harder to do, especially when it comes to themes, plugins, etc. since you have to essentially update all of the same time and the time it takes will be multiplied (obviously).