Daily Blog Tips

What Do You Think About Personal Blogs?

This post is part of the Friday Q&A section. If you want to ask a question,

just write a comment below.

Arwen Taylor asks:

I wondered if you could talk about “Personality” blogs.

These are blogs that people have built solely based around

their personality and things happening in their life.

An example of this would be Dooce.com and

The Bloggers.com.

What do you think it takes to build that type of following?

Do you think that is a viable business model?

To become Internet famous and then profit off that fame?

I think there are two categories of personal blogs

(i.e., a blog that gravitates around the personal life of

the author himself and his experiences) that end up becoming popular

and making a lot of money for the author (if he decided to monetize it)

The first one refers to the bloggers who were already famous

before they jumped on the web. This includes television and

movie celebrities, sport celebrities, music celebrities, business

celebrities and so on. These people already have a big

following, so if they start writing a blog tomorrow, regardless

of the topic and content, many people will want to read.

The second category refers to bloggers who were not famous

before starting their blogs, but who are incredibly funny,

or incredibly insightful, or live an incredibly interesting life,

or preferably all of these.

The two examples you mentioned fall in this second category.

I am not a reader of either blog, but after a quick visit to the

first one you realize the author has many interesting experiences

to share, while the second blog is plain hilarious.

If you fall into one of these categories and like to write,

then perhaps you could create a viable business model

out of it.

However, I still think that creating a popular blog on

a specific niche is much easier and can be much more profitable.

It is easier your visitors will understand upfront what

your blog is about, and whether or not they are interested in it.

It can be much more profitable because by focusing on

a specific topic you’ll be able to find advertisers and sell

products more efficiently.

But what about you, do you think that personal blogs can be

a viable business model? Would you try to build one?