Are blogging advice and making money online blogs simply rehashing the same old stuff
Sumesh Premraj left a comment today on a Blogging Tips post I wrote about 5 or 6 weeks ago about the changes I was making to this blog at the time. He spoke about how many blogging advice blogs like Blogging Tips are simply rehashing what has already been said. Now, this is a view which is shared by many and since this affects this blog in particular I want to talk more about the subject.
Before I proceed, here is the last part of the comment which inspired me to write this post :
Another point is that there are too many arm-chair theorists here. No offense to them, but most metablog readers (especially those who’ve read Problogger, DBT etc for two years or more) would find many posts here at BT rehashed. Perhaps the authors here do not realize that most things they have said have been said already, but that’s the way it is.
As I see it, traditional “blogging tips/make-money-online” blogs do not have much value any more. Most established blogs have said everything there is to say in the niche. Of course, with proper marketing and branding, BT could be popular even while rehashing some of the advice, but that would not make for an invaluable blog.
The challenge for new metablogs would lie in distinguishing themselves from the rest by providing what other blogging tips blogs do not. I can think of only 5-6 topics off the top of my head as I write this, but I’m sure there’ll be more (and I won’t tell you those 5-6 because I need them for my own metablog, BlogCreativity.com
)
First of all, I need to point out the irony that this comment was made by someone who has just launched their own blogging advice blog 
Also, I believe Sumesh was referring more to how Blogging Tips was a few months ago when we had more authors on the blog.
I actually agree with some of what Sumesh has said in his comment. I agree that some topics are rehashed however I don’t believe it is intentional and I think it hard to avoid too.
Heres the thing, any advice or tips blog will inevitably cover topics that have already been covered elsewhere on the web. Blogs which discuss the latest news or event for a given subject will not have this problem. For example, an LA Lakers fan blog would blog mostly about the last game played or upcoming transfers. Advice blogs are different though and that is the category which Blogging Tips falls under.
Advice blogs like this one will at one point post about a topic which has either been covered on another blog or the blog itself. For example, if I launched a brand new dating and relationship blog I would no doubt cover topics which have been discussed on other dating blogs and after a few years theres a good chance some of the topics will appear to be very similar to ones which appeared at the start. Does that mean you should stop posting, of course not!
Blogging Tips posts are rehashed
Sumesh stated that :
those who’ve read Problogger, DBT etc for two years or more would find many posts here at BT rehashed
I think that this is the wrong way to look at Blogging Tips and the wrong way to look at any blog to be honest. First of all, ProBlogger is without doubt the most popular blogging advice blog on the net. Compared to how long most other webmaster related topics have been online, blogging advice is a niche which is relatively young and Darren Rowse was without doubt the pioneer in this field. ProBlogger was started in September 2004. It was 26 months until Daily Blog Tips arrived and 30 months before Blogging Tips arrived.
In that time Darren wrote hundreds of great articles which covered just about every aspect of running, maintaining and promoting a blog. By the time DBT and BT arrived it was practically impossible to cover a subject which hadn’t at least been touched upon by Darren. Does this mean that these blogs should not have been created? Does that mean we should not cover topics which have already been discussed elsewhere on the web? If that was the case 99% of people reading this would be best to close their blog and stop blogging. It reminds me of the South Park episode entitled ‘Simpsons Already Did It‘ where the creators acknowledged how difficult it was to cover subjects which hadn’t been covered by The Simpsons because the show had been on so long.
One other major point is that Darren himself has covered topics which he has already covered years before. This does not mean he is rehashing his own posts, far from it. Firstly, whenever he touches upon a subject he has covered before he links to the original post. He then adds more to it by repeating or changing his view on the topic and explaining why.
Secondly, and for me more importantly, is the changing readership. Just like everything in life, there is a learning curve with blogging. Blogging advice sites attract a lot of people who are new to blogging. As time passes many of these bloggers will change their working and their reading habits. If you have been blogging for a few years and run a highly successful blog then the need to read blogging advice and making money online blogs everyday obviously reduces. Therefore, it’s safe to say that the majority of people who were reading ProBlogger every day and reading comments 3 years ago are not doing it now because they either stopped blogging or developed a successful blog and no longer need to read it every day. Sure, they may still visit it from time to time and they probably still subscribe but they don’t rely on it as much as they did.
This is one of the main reasons why topics which have been covered before are discussed again. You need to cater for your active readers and you just cannot assume that your readers have searched all of your archives and read all of your old posts.
With regards to Blogging Tips
With regards to this blog, it is difficult for Blogging Tips not to have comparisons drawn with other blogging advice blogs. Daily Blog Tips has about 6 times the number of subscribers as this blog and ProBlogger has an incredible 25 times the number of subscribers we have so it’s safe to say that most people who read Blogging Tips also read those blogs too.
Being the smaller blog means that if I cover a subject which has already been touched upon on more poular blogs some readers may assume I am copying or rehashing what has already been posted. Of course, the opposite is not true. I have wrote posts about subjects which have later been covered on more popular blogs and no one suggested they were rehashing something which had already been discussed. This isn’t a complaint, it’s just the reality of how things work.
There are a variety of subjects covered on Blogging Tips but generally speaking they can be split into 3 different types of posts :
- Blogging Advice posts : These are the types of posts which Sumesh was referring to in his comment. Posts like ‘Top 10 ways to promote your blog’ etc. Posts such as these stay relevant for quite a long time. They should be of interest to new bloggers as they give basic tips on blogging however more experienced bloggers will not get much from these kind of posts.
- News type posts : News posts discuss a new webite, product or a current event. These posts interest bloggers of all levels however their relevance is short lived. If someone comes across one of these posts via a search engine theres a good chance it’s already old news.
- Technical and reference posts : My post today entitled ‘An explanation of CSS List Style Types‘ is a good example of the technical posts which can be found at BloggingTips. These posts should stand the test of time and should be as useful to bloggers in a years time as they are today. However, new bloggers who do not have experience with coding may struggle to understand this kind of post. I do my best to explain technical posts for newbies but I’m sure many new bloggers simply skip these types of posts.
As you can see, different types of posts are written to cater for bloggers of different experience. Blogging advice type posts are the type of posts which you are likely to see on other blogging advice blogging however that does not mean I will not cover these posts here. Bottom line, if I have something worthwile to say about any blogging subject I will write a post about it. I cannot allow posts on other blogs to have a negative influence on what I cover here, I cannot write posts on the assumption that all readers subscribe to other blogging advice blogs.
Overview
If you are thinking of starting a blog in a competitive niche then you should be aware of your competitors, however don’t be overawed by them and don’t be discouraged to start a blog in the first place. If you enjoy blogging and you have an opinion you should start the blog. Who’s to say the most popular blogs in a niche today will be the most popular in a year or two.
Blogging advice and making money online blogs are incredibly popular nowadays. Yes, I do agree there are a lot of people bringing nothing new to the table however there are a lot of great bloggers coming through too so it’s unfair to put everyone in the same boat. I have spoke a lot about blogging advice type blogs in this post thought I’m sure you can see how all of this can be applied to any blog which gives advice.
Trying to cater for all your readers can sometimes be a juggling act but if you be yourself and continue to improve as a blogger I’m sure your blog will grow.
Last of all I would like to thank Sumesh Premraj for his comment as it inspired me to write this post. Nothing beats a good debate!
As always, I’d love to hear your opinion on all of this
shawn | June 10th, 2008 at 1:38 pm #
As long as there are new blogs being born, there will be a need for blog tip websites. But being a new blogger now is different than it was 3 or 4 years ago and blog advice sites must change as well. In other words, blog tips sites must learn how to be new - again and again.
Sumesh | June 10th, 2008 at 1:46 pm #
I’m glad to have inspired this post
A couple of things before I analyze this post
a)Blog Creativity is not all about blogging tips. It contains my thoughts on various subjects, for example posts like “Are news websites worst in linking out?”. There are also practical examples of using plugins which aren’t widget enabled etc., and I have many more posts coming up with regards to SEO, SEO that bloggers should use for specific goals, CSS tips and solving CSS bugs (which I spend a large part of my time on).
If BC came across as a typical blogging tips blog, I should obviously change its branding. The header contains the words blogging tips, but only 2 or 3 of all posts have been strictly blogging tips. And I actually regret having written one of them, after finding a similar article on Problogger during a search later (to which I promptly linked, of course).
If you understood how Blog Creativity is positioned, I would appreciate it if you would update the post about it. Being cast in slightly negative (I hate hypocrisy, and this post almost makes me a hypocrite with regards to launching my own metablog) isn’t fun
PS: I wonder how you got to my full name. I haven’t left it on my comments. Perhaps my email and/or looking at Blog Creativity/TechZilo?
b)I did not mean to peck on bloggers at BT or say that content was simply rewritten in a different way. All I said was that many of the advice has been said elsewhere. If it came across differently, my apologies. Perhaps I should have conveyed the message better. I am of the view that the web and blogging topics are incredibly vast, and wasting my time on writing something that has been covered is not as good. I’d prefer to point my blog readers to that article with a link - saves me time, saves my readers the hassle of perhaps running into similar content twice. That is my philosophy, but something that I rarely see on the web. Most people write their own version and say it is just their own opinion. While opinion is good when it is majority of the post (think Daring Fireball), the opposite cannot be good. The opposite is what had happened at BT in several months, I am afraid.
Of course, my philosophy of above is applied only on Blog Creativity which is sorta un-commercial and a repository of my thoughts that others also happen to enjoy. On TechZilo, my technology blog which is monetized, things change vastly, and is similar to what happens at BT and others.
As I said in previous comments, most of these thoughts were not born today, but several months earlier. I’ve just been holding back because I am wary of reactions (though I know you handle it like a champ, which is why I commented here).
As regards posts which have appeared elsewhere and then on Problogger or Daily Blog Tips, I have comments on that too, but I think it is wise to relegate that to respective blogs or BlogCreativity (my blog)
And perhaps unlike others, I don’t always like what PB and DBT write.
In the end, the urge to write what others have written already comes up because of commercial aspirations like subscribers and page views that you already wrote, and if left uncared, could ruin a blog. Thankfully, that has not happened with BT. But I guess you’ll refuse to take BT to the olden days, I guess, Kevin.
Sumesh | June 10th, 2008 at 1:50 pm #
I agree absolutely with shawn’s comment above (is similar to what I wrote in ‘misc. news’ post) - metablogs must evolve and explore new possibilities. One of that would be to cover more technical aspects that newbies who slowly change into advanced bloggers would require.
And that is one thing I aim to provide with Blog Creativity.
John from WeHaveContact | June 10th, 2008 at 1:55 pm #
This was an extremely well-crafted reply to a topic that is equally relevant. I’ve often wondered the same thing: how many times can you cover the same niche? It was a question that plagued both myself and my fellow blogger when we decided to start our own site.
Since the monitary rewards were a far second to our enjoyment of writing, we found that there was little we could write about on our topic (Spirtuality/Science/Unknown) that hadn’t been discussed ad nauseum. Granted, it’s a still a niche subject, but I didn’t want to write things for the sake of writing it - I wanted the readers enjoy it too! So what could we offer that no one else could? Our opinion and personal spin. It would just be a crap shoot to see if we had return visitors or now.
Either way, we eventually would like to have our ads pay for our hosting (and of course generate traffic), so SEO is still important to us. I’ve found that even though there are many SEO sites out there, some just do it better then others on various days. It’s better to have choices, in my opinion. Great article!
Kevin Muldoon (Post Author) | June 10th, 2008 at 4:44 pm #
Shawn - I actually have to disagree with you on this. I dont believe that that it is hugely different for bloggers now than it was 4 years ago. I started developing websites online more than 8 years ago and the core skills which I learned in that first year or so has served me right up until now ie. understanding how hosting and domains work, have a basic understanding of html and php (and back then cgi), understanding how to market your site. Granted, with social networking there are different methods available but most methods which a blogger learned 5 years ago are as relevant today as it was then. Just my two cents
Sumesh - I actually got your full name from your facebook which was noted on your blog. I usually try and mention the full name of someone I’m quoting but if you don’t want your surname online I’m happy to remove it and just keep your first name
Theres no need to hold back here, I welcome debate and I welcome criticism too as long as it’s constructive.
With regards to your blog, I’m not sure why it wouldn’t be grouped together with other blogging advice blogs. In your header you mention blogging, seo, wordpress and writing. These are topics which most blogging advice blogs cover. I’m confused why you would think that people would see your blog as something different. I’m not ragging on you, far from it, I’m just curious as to why you don’t think people will think it is a general blogging advice blog when you are promoting it as such.
With regards to the good old days, I’m not 100% sure what you mean by that. If you mean for me to be the sole author here then I don’t think it will go back to that anytime soon. I am trying to post more often but I’m just too busy to post as much as I would like. Also, Amanda is a bit of an expert on the blogger platform and has been writing great articles for blogger users. I understand WordPress pretty well however Sarah is more more knowledgable than me and can explain certain things better than I can. I have a pretty good understand of most online and blogging topics however I am not and do not claim to be an expert on any given subject which is why I hope writers who can cover topics which I don’t fully understand remain as authors here.
John - Thanks for the kudos. I’m glad you are continuing with your blog. I think it’s impossible to start a blog on a topic which hasn’t been covered before. As I said in my post, you cannot write your posts on the assumption that your readers read all those other blogs.
Great comments so far guys
Kher Cheng Guan | June 10th, 2008 at 9:17 pm #
Wow! Kevin that’s one long post you have there. I agree to with Sumesh to some extent. There are too many similar rehashed blogging tips from most meta-blogs. But then again, I think blog like Darren Rowse’s ProBlogger is still relevant and useful to newbies.
Link Building Bible | June 10th, 2008 at 9:33 pm #
I jumped into the internet marketing niche…. but i jumped into a niche of that niche, and that is link building…. yah, there are a lot of sites out there about link building,but most are there talking about directories, commenting, and thats about it…. and then trying to sell their service.
I agree that Sumesh’s site looks just like most blogging advice sites…. your popularity will depend on your voice, and what you write about….
I am shocked I have 161 subscribers in less than 3 months… thats crazy to me…. but I am providing some info and services for free that others dont specifically talk about, or go in depth above, or provide.
I enjoy your blog…. thanks a bunch. The South Park reference was good… it’s all been done before.
Sumesh | June 10th, 2008 at 9:43 pm #
I don’t usually put my full name out there, but it is more out of habit than choice.
My blog wouldn’t be grouped together with other blogging advice blogs because
a)Unlike most such blogs, I’ll be posting on things that are not covered, as much as possible. For example, technical sides of WordPress (more advanced stuff, that is). My readership currently consists of a few coders too, but apart from that, everyone else would be interested in that. Same goes for SEO and writing tips. I’ll also try to write about those things that I wished posts were written by someone, back when I was a newbie in blogging.
This is because I see that many such topics have not (yet) been covered by PB, DBT or BT. And I have little to no monetization aspirations. I write only once a week or so even when I have time for more. Yes, there is an affiliate banner and space for advertising, but I have been thinking of pulling them down too. Doesn’t help much on a 2 month blog.
Blog for Beginners | June 11th, 2008 at 12:29 am #
This is one hell of a read and I enjoy every minute of it. If I were to take side, I would say I agree more with Kevin on most of the issues raised.
It is nearly impossible to cover one subject which has not been discussed or written elsewhere. How can one ensure that the topic has not been raised before? Google it? Even if there is a way, doesn’t it stifle the effectiveness of a blog?
With hundreds, if not thousands of post written everyday, you end the day searching for what has not been written rather than writing something which has been discussed previously and yet still interest your own base of readers.
Unless of course you only post once in every fortnight because you spend the other 13 days searching for what’s not in the blogosphere.
Just my thought..
MyStore | June 11th, 2008 at 1:06 am #
Agree….good tips.
Takes dedication, vision, perseverance and patience to get the bloggin up and running.
Good article
Yuwanda Black | June 11th, 2008 at 11:18 am #
Nothing under the sun is new Sumesh, so good luck finding a continuous stream of new content ideas.
What makes blogging fun and interesting is thatyou can put your own take on a much-discussed subject.
For example, I’m a freelance SEO writer. I have a 3.5 year old freelance writing blog. There are so many writing blogs it’s ridiculous. But, I write from a first-hand point of view. No one is going to have my exact experiences with clients, billing, marketing, etc. While there many more established blogs in my niche, readers come to me b/c they like how I relay my experiences. And I read others for the same reason.
And, in the end, isn’t that what blogging is all about — choices. IE, making the personal choice to write about what you want, and your readers making the choice to read and stick with you because of what you write.
Cassie | June 11th, 2008 at 7:21 pm #
Yuwanda pretty much summed up what I was about to say.
I don’t pretend that I’ve reinvented the wheel, but I like to think that my personal experiences and opinions make my blogs unique even if the topics themselves have been covered numerous times before.
I subscribe to a lot of blogs’ RSS feeds and see the same topics covered day after day, but I keep reading them because the authors make them interesting by injecting their personality/opinions/experiences in each post.
MyStore | June 11th, 2008 at 11:46 pm #
You just have to be creative…
Look around others’ blogs and I always learn a thing or 2
Good article