can a 'generalist' blog be successful?

[serialfish]

So here's my issue.

I have had a blog website for several years now. What I've learned and believe to be true is that a blog can only become successful as a money making enterprise if it is in a niche market. I can't think of very many blogs that have reached critical success without beingabout a specific topic, and limiting themselves to a small audience in a particular field.

For example, personal mastery blogs seem to be fairly easy successes. Why? Because the people who love self-mastery can't seem to get enough of it. If a person has good ideas, and a knack for composition, starting and succeeding with a self-mastery blog is not difficult. It may be more difficult in politics, movies, or music, but still, you can get out and campaign and market in those parituclar frequencies.

I would love to be proven wrong. Has anyone seen incredible success with a blog that covers politics, movies, music, religion, etc. and is not by someone that has fame for other reasons (i.e. Wil Wheaton)? I realize there may be a few out there, but they all seem to have had something that made them famous other than just good writing about anything and everything.

I've wanted to submit my blog to some of those places that Steve suggests, but it's so diverse, that I feel like I'm cheating submitting it to something that is not the primary focus.

Any thoughts on how to promote a 'general blog' and make it stick? Also, any examples of general blogs that have been wildly successful without the writer being a celebrity pre-blog?

Disclosure: I haven't written much lately on my blog because I am reconsidering it's future direction. So comments along the lines of write more aren't necessary

Thanks in advance for all your thoughts.

~Jeffrey

[Brutha]

Steve has a generalist blog. Polyamourus relationships, making money through blogging, waking up early and subjective reality all happen to be different topics.
Steve however has his own identity and style.

What value do you thing does your blog provide to the reader that he can't find elsewhere?
Why should someone subscribe to your blog?

[runningbird]

That's sort of what I'm trying to do with my blog; it's like the intersection of environmentalism, health, wealth, and anarchy. However, my niche is that I try to supply unique information and ideas. I try to surprise a little and turn on some mental light bulbs.

I haven't had much success, yet, but I'm still pretty early in and haven't done much marketing. I submitted to some blog carnivals a couple days ago, and one (book reviews) included my post and has given me 6 visits so far, and another on hydrotherapy contacted me and said she liked my blog and would let me know if she published the article.

Are blog carnivals what you meant when you said "some of the places steve suggests"?

[RT Wolf]

The newspaper.

I spent some thinking about this for my blog, too. I tend to think of it as a general interest blog. However, reading Made to Stick and a few other things has made me think seriously about the point of niches. You said that a specific blog is limited in some way. You may want to reconsider that position. And the idea that limitations are bad.

Let's try this: Your blog will not appeal to every single person out there. The people it does appeal to is your market or your niche or your potential/actual audience. Point is, it's already been niched, you just don't know what it is and you haven't defined it clearly. Don't bother trying to make it appeal to everyone, because you'll get much more success going for a narrow and deep niche versus broad and shallow market. Tim Ferriss has affected my thinking on the business side of things.

All of that said, you can totally run a general interest blog. Violent Acres is a fairly successful one and the person behind it isn't a celebrity. It's a personality blog, and it's driven by the personality of the writer.

If you're like me and you get enamoured by a certain topic for a while, you could probably create a new blog for every new interest, write great content and keep promoting the blog even if you eventually stop writing on it cause you're not longer interested.

[RT Wolf]

Lemme add another thing: As long as your website is compelling and other people wnat to read it, it'll succeed. That is the most important thing, that other people wnat to come to it. Whether its general or not doesn't matter nearly as much. People may come cause Wil Wheaton's got celebrity status, but he's also got interesting things to say, so people keep coming back. I'd say that Wheaton probably uses his celebrity status as a bit like advertising to get people in through the door. But to keep people coming back or inside takes more, and that is having something enough people genuinely want to read/hear.

[serialfish]

Steve has a generalist blog. Polyamourus relationships, making money through blogging, waking up early and subjective reality all happen to be different topics.

No offense, Brutha, but that's complete and utter BS. Steve's blog is about personal effectiveness. It's about personal mastery. It's got a freakin topic. It may cover different ideas, but that's like saying a music blog is not about music because it covers more than one artist.

As for the two guys that have blogs, at least you have an intersection. Both of those blogs still seem to have a center to come back to.

I've never heard of Violent Acres, but I'll check it out.

[RT Wolf]

For Pavlina's site, I concur with both Brutha and serialfish. I think Pavlina's site has a "link" between those topics, Personal Development, however those are indeed all very different topics. It's not really a center, as much as it is a link. His personal development links and leads to those diverse topics.

I suppose it depends on what level of abstractness you go upto. Using adsense on blogs is a very specific topic, making money on the internet is more abstract, making money is even more abstract, physical survival is even more abstract, then upto "everything" is the most abstract.

Your website appears to have a focus and center, too. If you need a sentence, it's "whatever you're interested in".

[Brutha]

No offense, Brutha, but that's complete and utter BS. Steve's blog is about personal effectiveness. It's about personal mastery. It's got a freakin topic. It may cover different ideas, but that's like saying a music blog is not about music because it covers more than one artist.

Every topic can be in some sense about personal effectiveness. Steve could take music that he likes and write a post about it without any problems.
One of his most popular articles happens to be about cooking brown rice.
He also wrote about his views on politics.
He can take any topic and write a blog post from his perspective about the topic. His perspective has something to do with personal development and himself.

If you want to have a successful blog you need to have some unique perspective.

Violent Acres also happens to have a certain perspective that different from the way other people write their posts.

When I look at a blog that I read I ask myself whether the blog provides me with something valuable that worth the time that's required to read it. If it does I subscribe otherwise I won't.

You should be clear about what value you want to provide to your reader or it's unlikely that people will come back.