
How Many Blogs Should You Have?
The debate about the number of blogs you should own and maintain is as old as blogging itself!
Are you too wondering whether you should have just one blog, or more than one?
Here are my thoughts from running 20+ blogs!
My Recommendation – Run Multiple Blogs
Well, it must be kind of obvious since I run so many blogs myself – I recommend having more than one blog.
Does it mean you too should go ahead and start 20 blogs? No! Just read this post till its end π
There are way too many advantages of maintaining multiple blogs – here is a detailed analysis.
Benefit 1: Cover All your Passions
I always recommend starting a blog on a topic thatΒ you are passionate about. Only then, you can keep blogging for along time and survive the initial period of low-visitors and low-income.

Follow Multiple Passions
But what if you are passionate about more than 1 topics? If you run multiple blogs in multiple niches, you can cover all your passions!
That’s what I have done – I love blogging, so I write about it on this blog. I love New York City, and I have a blog dedicated to New York. I am an avid cruiser, so I have a blog on cruising as well.
I love all these topics, and enjoy writing about them. That’s why I never get tired writing for these multiple authority blogs!
Benefit 2: Different Types of Blogs
There are different types of blogs that you can start – authority blogs, affiliate blogs, AdSense blogs, etc.
If you have only one blog, you can cover only one type – but if you have multiple blogs, you can run different types of blogs.
Apart from the authority blogs I mentioned above, I also have some AdSense based blogs, and many affiliate blogs where I review products for people.
And this leads us to the next point.
Benefit 3: Multiple Income Streams
When you run more than one blog, you also have multiple income streams! And if you run different types of blogs, you also diversify the type of income that you earn every month.

Create Multiple Income Streams
This means that even if one income stream gets impacted by some development, your overall income would not suffer too much.
Also, blogs in different inches have different types of income earning opportunities, thus diversifying your income even further.
For example, the type of income I get from my New York blog (example: tour bookings) is very different from the type of income I generate from this blog (example: referring someone to HostGator for web hosting).
Benefit 4: Cost Averaging
When you run multiple blogs, you average out the cost of many products and services – thus reducing their cost per blog.
And what do I mean by this? In simple terms, it meas that your investment gets spread over multiple blogs.
Let’s understand this by looking at some real numbers.
Keyword Research
You can of course do keyword research using free tools like the Google Keyword Tool. However, it takes time, and is not really user friendly.
Using a paid tool like Market Samurai (which I use) for keyword research makes the task really simple and a lot less time consuming.
Market Samurai comes at a one time cost of $147 (with a possibility of a great discount). If you use it for doing keyword research for only 1 blog, it costs you $147.
However, if you own multiple blogs, the cost per blog reduces drastically. For example, if you have 3 blogs, the cost per blog is less than $50! This cost per blog goes down with each new blog that you start!
Domain Name Registration
You pay about $8 – $12 for a domain name to a domain name registrar like GoDaddy.
Since its best to host each blog on its own domain, there is no real cost saving whether you own 1 blog or many – the cost goes up proportionally with each additional blog you start, and the cost per blog remains constant.
Blog Hosting
This is another area where you can save a lot by running multiple blogs.
Any decent web host (I use and recommend HostGator) would let you host multiple domain names on a single hosting account. So if you start a new blog, you can host it on the same hosting account without shelling out even a penny more!
The cost of hosting per blog reduces with each additional blog that you start, or you can say that after the first blog, you can host all your other blogs completely free!
WordPress Theme
The cost saving on using a WordPress theme on multiple blogs depends on the kind of license you have for the theme.

WordPress Themes
Some themes give you a license to install it only on 1 blog, which means that you have to pay extra for each additional blog. In such case, there is no cost benefit of owning multiple blogs.
But if you have a theme like Genesis that gives you an unlimited use license, you can use it on any number of blogs without paying anything extra!
Again, the cost per blog decreased with each new blog you launch.
(PS: Genesis also has 45+ child themes, which means each of your blogs can have a completely different look even if all are using Genesis as the base theme!)
Email Newsletter
You the importance of an email newsletter and an email list for the growth of your blog. So of course you would in a good email newsletter service provider like Aweber.
Now, Aweber charges a fee based on the number of subscribers – the charge is not based on the number of email lists you maintain or the number of blogs on which you install its subscription forms.
Thus, you can use the same Aweber account to maintain email lists for different blogs. Again, there is no additional cost involved!
WordPress Plugins and Tools
You might want to use various plugins like SEOPressor to increase on-page SEO, or tools like PopUp Domination to increase your email opt-in rate.
When you have a multi-site license for such plugins and tools, there is no extra coast involved for using it on any additional blog.
(Normally, there is only a slight difference in the single-site and a multi-site license for most tools and WordPress plugins. So it is better to buy the multi-site license that gives you a lot more flexibility).
Investment in Trainings

Time and Money Invested in Trainings
You don’t just buy tools and services, you also invest your time and money in going through various trainings.
(I have used and recommend trainings from Darren Rowse of ProBlogger.net)
If you run just one blog, all this cost (both time and money) goes towards just that blog. But if you run multiple blogs, you can use the knowledge gained for multiple blogs – again spreading the cost!
Benefit 5: Less Incremental Investment of Time
Blogging involves a lot of activities:
- Writing posts
- Building links
- Writing guest posts
- Networking
- Social media interactions
- Creating videos
- Creating podcasts
- And more…
If you want your blog to be successful, you have to learn all these tasks – at least most of them. So you spend a lot of time and effort (and probably money) in learning these things.
But for any new blog that you launch, you would know these things already! There will be lot less of a learning curve, which means you would be able to do things much faster.
Bottomline: For each new blog you launch, you would get a much better return on your time invested.
Multiple Blogs – How Should You Go About It?
Ok, so now its kind of obvious that running multiple blogs is the way to go forward. The questions is, how should you do it?
How To Start and Run Multiple Blogs
One way is to pursue your different passions, and create an authority blog for each.
- Another option is to start an authority blog on a topic you are passionate about and be in it for the long haul. For generating income in the short term, you can start a couple of review-based affiliate blogs.
- Yet another option is to start an authority blog on a topic you are passionate about. And start another blog about blogging, where you chronicle your own blogging journey – you can talk about the things you are learning and doing with your authority blog, and how it is evolving with time.
My Journey
Here is what I did: I started an authority blog way back in 2007, and was solely focusing on it for about 3 years. (BTW, it currently gets about 5,000 visitors per day)
Once I got comfortable with blogging and all the tasks involved in it, I diversified and started the other authority blogs about which I regularly talk on this blog. I also created some AdSense based blogs and some review type affiliate marketing blogs around the same time.
Currently, as my current blogs are stabilizing, I am in the process of launching a couple more affiliate blogs.
PS: Wondering how I can manage soΒ many blogs at the same time? The answer lies in outsourcing – I have found some good writers and VAs through oDesk that help me on a part-time and full-time basis.
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