This is a guest post by Neil Matthews
I’m running an experiment at the minute on my personal blog, where, instead of having a traditional blogging niche, I am working on a series of blogging projects.
How Do I Define A Project
A project is a series of focused blog posts on a particular topic that go in-depth. The project has a set start and end point. Once the subject has been covered completely, the project is finished and I move onto my next project.
This is different from a blog niche, where the same topic can also be covered in-depth, but there is no defined start and end point, and no real structure to the postings.
loosely Coupled
I’m using the computing term of loosely coupled to describe my work, the projects are related under my high level tag line of working online, but a project is a complete piece of work, it can stand alone. The next project could be similar, but does not need to know anything about the contents of another project.
Freemium Model
My projects will follow the freemium model I will be creating a lot of content for free as blog posts, but I will also be creating a deeper coaching or information product to accompany the project for people that want to go deeper.
This way I can focus on building multiple streams of income on a variety of subjects and I am not limiting myself to one niche.
The creation of information products and coaching services cause me a lot of “stuckness” I’m a procrastinator (well I think I am, I must look up the meaning of that word one of these days) and I think the momentum of a project will get me through the reasearch and out the other side to build a saleable information product.
Why Am I Experimenting With Projects?
I’m doing this experiment for a number of reasons:
Flexibility to change projects – we live in a very fluid world, things change, online business tactics are moving at warp speed, I can work on Google+ for a couple of months, when the new flavour of the week social media platform comes into view I can start a new project and be very agile.
My goldfish like attention span – I get very bored, very quickly, projects will give me the starters enthusiasm every few month. I run a service business at wpdude.com, I have written about WordPress for more than three years, I find it very hard to write new blog posts about a topic I have covered in-depth for that period of time, whereas I’m enthused about writing my new project.
I get to delve deep – like the dwarfs in Moria I get to mine a project deeply and get to fully understand a topic. One of my favourite things is self education. Reading other people’s work as research for my project is something that excites me. Let’s just hope I don’t dig up a Balrog when I am delving deeply into my project.
Future proof – much like the flexibility option I think projects allow me to future proof my work, my main job is to build an audience under my high level topic of working on-line, then to create projects to solve the problems within my topic. Things change, and I am not sticking with one niche that may become redundant. Did anyone spend a ton of time building a MySpace presence for example?
Inability to multi-task – It can be argued that if I have multiple niche blogs I can create exactly the same results, but a personal inability to multi-task make me think that focusing on one site, building traffic to one site and making a name creating projects for people who work online is better for me than diluting my time over multiple sites and multiple audiences.
Sell projects – projects can become saleable assets once they are complete, they are a packaged piece of work. I could wrap them up as an e-book, or an information product, or spin them out to a separate website which can then be sold as an entity free from me and my main site.
Projects can be cancelled – if I choose a project and it is not resonating with my audience, I can cancel the project, this is not the case once you have selected a niche, you are in for the long haul or you need to abandon your blog.
People change -Neil at 20, is not the same Neil at 30 and definitely not the same Neil at 40. I worked in big corporate IT departments throughout my early career, I was focused, I wanted to climb that slippery pole. Now that pole looks more like a torture implement that people are crucified on. I’m all about the flexibility of solopreneurial enterprise, working on things I love, the Neil at 50 may be all about building an online enterprise that my daughters can join as a family firm; neil-matthews&daughters.com. Projects can change with me.
Renaissance Person 2.0
Michael wrote about the renaissance person 2.0 earlier this year, and I think projects are a brilliant way for the polymath to work on their variety of subjects.
If you have something to say on a lot of topics, projects are a brilliant way to work in a number of fields you are passionate about.
What Do You Think?
Is your blog niche too narrow for you, do you want to move onto different work, but your niche and your audience has an expectation of you to retain the status quo.
Let’s talk in the comments.
About the Author: I’m Neil Matthews, and you can see my work at the imaginatively titled Neil-Matthews.com, my current project is all about Freelancer Marketing, how to bring a steady stream of clients into your freelance business.
Even if you are in a blog niche, projects as you have described them can be a great way to ensure you build out your niche to cover all topics within it.
One of the best ways to think through projects is to go through the events that happen within the niche and target projects (and products) for those events.
In the career space I am in, there can be projects around job interviews, building resumes, deciding on taking a new job, taking a promotion, going into management — all within the career niche, but all different areas that help built a robust catelog of expertise.
How would you address the risk of ending an “outside of a niche” project and starting another and losing your audience and having to build another? Loosely coupled could mean an audience that is loosely coupled as well.
A thought-provoking article. Thanks for sharing it.
I think Neil’s article could inspire a variety of approaches. I was just reading in Ann Handley and C.C. Chapman’s book, Content Rules about publishing content cycles and themes, which have similarities to Neil’s idea. That book and Neil have got me thinkin’.
Really interesting Neil. I’m a successful freelance writer, but new to the blogosphere. And the whole ‘niche’ thing is messing me up. On the one hand, in my ‘freelance writing’ life, I work mostly in the tech sector (my clients are all enterprise software or consulting companies) – so is that my niche? But I started blogging about freelance writing in general – so is that my niche? And I’ve had a side speech writing business…I fired that up as a blog – so is that my niche? And I am a guest columnist for an online publication writing about balancing entrepreneurship with life in general – so is that my niche? The project model does offer flexibility, but the projects should probably be related, no? Maybe I’ve spread myself too thinly, but like you, I clearly have the attention span of gnat. I’m gonna go check out your ‘projects’!
Neil, I absolutely love this idea. I also struggle with the attention span of a gnat, so your model is very appealing and I hope it works.
While the conventional wisdom is that you have to be ultra specific to stand out and become known as the go-to person for that area of expertise, the same wisdom also suggests that you have to buck convention in order to succeed…Do you think you’ll find it more difficult to find your audience with this model?
Your post has given serious food for thought. Many thanks for sharing.
Really like your idea. I’ve been struggling with the need to just write/blog from my “brand”, Leadership. My depth of knowledge and discovery is much broader. I’m going to explore this idea more.
Thanks for “freeing” me up to see through this lens!
Thanks for the post. I am just becoming informed about blogging and blogs as business. I have had the same thoughts and concerns about niche sites that you mention and I appreciate your insights into the matter.
@Scot – The loosley coupled audience is something I need to be careful about what I see is a careful transition between projects perhaps with surveys to make sure I bring most of my audience with me
@Ruth – glad I’m not the only one with a 7 second attention span
@Brett – I’m hoping that my projects will have some overlap so the audience for project x may also be interested in project y, this is all part of the experiment.
@Jane – good look investigating this model
Another idea I had was to work on projects in cycles, perhaps revist a project after 12 months to update it which is similar to the cycles idea
Hi Neil, I also fit in the category of the easily bored and one who loves to learn new things so from that aspect, the project angle is intriguing.
On the flip side though as has been touched on a bit, I’m not sure about attracting an audience if you are so general in your high level topic definition. The common thought right now is that people are more attracted to specialized information and specialists, rather than generalists. I guess that’s partly because of how we search online and also short attention spans to a point. Which brings up the idea of keywords and SEO (which is driving me crazier by the day). I’m curious as to if you’re concerned at all that you may not be able to get good search results because there is no main focus? Are you figuring you can achieve it for each project/the pages relating to it?
Essentially what it sounds like what you will have is a mini Wiki or About type site. Definitely interested to see how it works out. Hopefully Michael will let ya guest post again and give us an update
.
Very cool. I can relate to many of your issues/opportunities…multi-tasking, delving deep and my favorite, “goldfish like attention span”.
Thank you.
Lianne
Neil! Brilliant. precisely what I needed to hear today. I’ve been toying with this concept for a while — tied up into writer’s block because of a fear of not being “on message.” But my work is as multi-faceted as any human being – projects, as you describe them, are just the thing.
Thanks. And as always Michael, thanks for bringing thoughts to the forefront that truly help us become/stay remarkable!
Neil! Great article!! I would be VERY interested in finding out the results of this experiment. I have had similar reservations and frustrations regarding this topic. How long are you going to run the experiment and when are you planning on posting your results?
Wow, are you me? I saw the title of this blog post and was intrigued. This is exactly how I feel and I’ve been ruminating for a few weeks on how to move forward. I think you give excellent reasons for working a project based blog.
My concern would be/is whether my audience would follow me through the different projects. While I can see that the uniting idea is the top level ‘niche,’ it is inevitable that not every project will resonate with a particular reader. So will readership drop as people stop reading throughout the life of one project and not pick back up again at a later point? That’s what would concern me.
I am getting back into regular blogging after taking a year off to run a restaurant, and this is just the inspiration that I needed to focus my thoughts on “what should I write about now??”
This paragraph especially resonates with me:
“My projects will follow the freemium model I will be creating a lot of content for free as blog posts, but I will also be creating a deeper coaching or information product to accompany the project for people that want to go deeper.
This way I can focus on building multiple streams of income on a variety of subjects and I am not limiting myself to one niche.
The creation of information products and coaching services cause me a lot of “stuckness” I’m a procrastinator (well I think I am, I must look up the meaning of that word one of these days) and I think the momentum of a project will get me through the reasearch and out the other side to build a saleable information product.”
Thanks for the reminder, this could be its own set of blog post projects! Hmmm, now there’s an idea for something to write about…
It’s really a kind of integrated content marketing/product creation model when you think about it. Nice to see you back in the saddle, Stephen, and best of luck to you. Gimme a holler if you need anything.
That is precisely what it is, and a very good idea at that. Thanks, too. I am excited about this but unsure of where to start…I’ve been totally heads-down in that restaurant and will probably need another week or so to recover. Man, this summer was brutal, physically and mentally.
Well you’re still here and still going and that matters. A hat tip to you, sir.
I agree with your article.
I’m intending to do the same on my blog, which is to create a lot of content for free, but I will also be creating a deeper coaching or information product to accompany the project for people that want to go deeper.
I think this is a good model.
If you’re going to get your content Shared, Liked, and Tweeted, you’re going to need to do more than throw sharing buttons up all over the place, throw some traffic at it, and hope for the best. You’ll also need to understand what motivates users to share content. Users usually share content because it’s either:
Useful/Informative,
Interesting,
Unique/Original,
Inspirational,
Funny/Entertaining,
and/or Surprising/Shocking
Really like the idea of yours , thanks for all the info ~
@cheryl – the problem of keeping my audience happy is somethng I’m dwelling on at the moment, this is all part of the experiement, I’ll keep you updated.
@Peggie – I think you have the same issues as me, focusing on a niche on one topic is hard, hopefully hte projects under a higher level tag line will allow me to work across a number of areas that I’m interested in.
@Alison – again keeping the audience is one of hte problems of this model, for example I’m working on online marketing for freelancers, next up I was thinking about email detox, how to keep your self out of your inbox to free up more time, they are not related that much, is there a crossover between the two. Time will tell, when I move onto my next project.
Love it! My blog envelopes my real estate business. If I only wrote about what most think of as real estate, homes for sale, etc., I would run out of things to write about. But writing about local events, whatever I feel like writing about has helped me in many ways.
I have worked on what I thought of as a series, writing about very specific real estate questions or issues, which were well read also. Now that I look back on it, truly it was a blog project which was successful.
I happen to have the attention span of a flea, so it is often difficult to plan ahead. This is probably my biggest downfall. I really need a better plan if I want to get more readership from the audience that will actually USE my services rather than other real estate agents across the country.
Real estate is definitely one area where a lot of folks are just not getting it, but the ones that do stand out all the more for it.
Michael, the amount of RE people who don’t blog, don’t use social media, or for that matter don’t even text is scary. But you are right, all the better for me. In the geographical areas I cover I certainly am way ahead of the game. Now the task at hand is to get more of the public to read my “stuff”. I can’t complain though, in a market that is so fragile I have had sales as a direct result of my online efforts. And I dominate Google for some of what I perceive are search terms the public would use. (I admit to wanting more… )
But… am I crazy to want to have the public subscribing? Or does that not really happen.
I am very much enjoying your posts. The lights have started coming on, I feel rejuvenated and have already started reworking my WP site. Thank you!
Thank you so much for this great eye opening post. I have been in the fitness and nutrition industry for over 20 years and have helped many people reach fitness goals. I really need to focus on more consistent blogging and let it become a everyday thing, and see where the results will take me. Have a blessed day,and stay focused.
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Interesting idea, working per project is definitely a good way to stay motivated and anything with an end goal/date easier to focus on.
Thanks
Blog projects is new to me but sounds interesting.
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