{"id":8209,"date":"2011-05-17T10:57:01","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T19:57:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rosalindgardner.com\/blog\/?p=8209"},"modified":"2019-03-10T14:34:51","modified_gmt":"2019-03-10T21:34:51","slug":"why-i-killed-my-blog","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rosalindgardner.com\/blog\/why-i-killed-my-blog\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I Killed My Blog"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Most Super Affiliate Handbook<\/a> readers and Affiliate Blogger PRO<\/a> members will be familiar with a personal blog of mine that was used as an example of an affiliate site until about a year ago.<\/p>\n

The blog was called Roamsters and I had a lot of fun building and working on it. <\/p>\n

It was the only one of my blogs where I could write about whatever I wanted… whenever<\/em> I wanted. I posted mostly about my adventures near and afar, but the blog didn't really have a defined niche.<\/p>\n

As a professional blogger \/ Super Affiliate, that removal of pressure to post regularly about a specific topic is a welcome change of pace. <\/p>\n

It also introduced me to a whole new audience of people who shared my personal interests in travel, cool gadgets and shoes. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

So, why did I kill it? Here are my reasons:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Roamsters began life in 2006 as a joint project with my friend, Ed, who had recently retired and wanted to supplement his retirement income. Ed, however, never really ‘took' to blogging, so I soon found myself as the only contributor.<\/li>\n
  2. Using the site as an an affiliate site example required that I maintain and upgrade the core and theme components when necessary. Not a big deal, but around the same time, StudioPress<\/a> moved to the new Genesis Framework, so changing over to that and a new theme involved a bit of a learning curve. <\/li>\n
  3. I also had to regularly check to make sure that the affiliate links were still valid and working. On a non-niched site where you are dealing with many different merchants and product types, checking and changing affiliate links and products can get time consuming. <\/li>\n
  4. Attracting free search engine traffic to a blog without a specific topic is much more difficult than if all your posts are within the same niche. And because it was a hobby blog, I wasn't keen to use pay per click advertising<\/a> to generate traffic. <\/li>\n
  5. Another reason I didn't want to use PPC was because it got to the point where I didn't care if the site made money or not. Hmmmm… can you see a decided lack of motivation?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    I already RosalindGardner.com, which at the time was being used as a business card site. Redirecting visitors from Roamsters would not only boost traffic, rankings and sales; but personal brand awareness as well.<\/p>\n

    That realization alone cinched the deal to kill the blog. <\/p>\n

    Combining the blogs would save time (time is money) and make more<\/em> money — which is exactly what I did. I moved all relevant posts over to RosalindGardner.com.<\/p>\n

    Nowadays, if you try to visit Roamsters.com<\/a>, it redirects to RosalindGardner.com.<\/p>\n

    The lesson?<\/strong><\/p>\n

    Don't work on sites that don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t serve a real purpose or for which monetization is difficult. Kill it or combine it. Just do whatever is necessary to keep your blogging business and brand <\/em>growing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Most Super Affiliate Handbook readers and Affiliate Blogger PRO members will be familiar with a personal blog of mine that was used as an example of an affiliate site until about a year ago. The blog was called Roamsters and I had a lot of fun building and working on it. It was the only […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":8220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[1006],"yoast_head":"\nWhy I Killed My Blog - RosalindGardner.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/rosalindgardner.com\/blog\/why-i-killed-my-blog\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Why I Killed My Blog - RosalindGardner.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Most Super Affiliate Handbook readers and Affiliate Blogger PRO members will be familiar with a personal blog of mine that was used as an example of an affiliate site until about a year ago. 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