I’m mulling the idea of starting a new site devoted to writing and technology. I’ve got a name, a likely domain name, and am building a nice chunk of content to launch with. The idea is to discuss the particular technology needs of writers (of all sorts) using the web to promote their work and develop their audience.
The question is, am I better off starting a new blog devoted solely to that niche or to start integrating that content into this site?
The advantage to posting it here is that I already have a decent amount of traffic, I have a good position in Google, and I wouldn’t be splitting my attention and time off to yet another project.
The advantage of doing it as its own site is that all the material on the site would be focused on the same topic, so readers interested in the latest writing software wouldn’t have to read about my research interests or political positions or random musings on what goes on in Amazon boardroom when they name e-readers. Also, the tone of the new content is much more straight-forward and serious than here (which isn’t to say it’s not personal — it’s the same voice, but different tone and focus) so their wouldn’t be any dissonance as I jump from practical advice to joking around. Also, any ads or sponsorships could be much more tightly focused.
Any advice?
My advice is to keep them
My advice is to keep them separate. As useful as building off of existing resources can be, that kind of thing can be leveraged by simple blog-style contextual linking.
I pretty much decided to do
I pretty much decided to do that. Funny thing is, the day after I wrote this post, my PageRank here dropped to 0/10 — I must have jinxed myself. Apparently, I’ve been a baaaad boy. Not sure how, exactly — I’m clearly not doing any black-hat SEO mojo! (I’m not doing *any* SEO mojo, to be honest, other than having pretty URLs.)
Look for a new site announcement here some time next month.