Mothballing The Meta Blog & My Plans For This Blog

27 May 2020 | ~5 minute read

A few days ago I asked for advice on [whether it was a good idea for me to start The Meta Blog. In this post I talk about the decision I've made and why.

Quick recap - I started a niche blog about blogging a couple of weeks ago (The Meta Blog), and since had reservations as to whether it was a good idea or not. I was pondering merging those posts into this blog and focussing on this site alone.

My Decision

My decision is probably evident from the title, but in case you missed it, I've decided to close The Meta Blog and focus on this one.

I received tonnes of really great feedback from both the community on Fosstodon, as well as my readers on here.

The overwhelming response was to just write about blogging on here. It's an established blog and people enjoy my writing.

What surprised me was that a lot of people said that the various topics I cover on this blog are actually a positive thing. They enjoy the versatility of my posts, and if it's something they're not interested in, they just skip it. No big deal.

I think I was overthinking the whole thing and probably didn't need a separate blog.

There was one piece of advice that I received from reader and fellow Mastodon user, Coco. They said...

I'm just having a thought right now, does doing this blog reenergizes you or on the contrary does it deplete you?

After reading that sentence I immediately realised that The Meta Blog was sapping my love for blogging; after just a couple of weeks.

Energy Drain

You may wonder why a small fledgling blog was sapping my energy after such a short time.

If I wanted the blog to grow quickly I would have to market it. And to market it I would have to start going down all the rabbit holes that led me to sell my previous site.

I'd have to sign up for Facebook, and Twitter, and Reddit and any other social network needed to market my blog. I'd have to fall into all the traps most blogs have to. Welcome to click bait central!

I don't want that.

This blog has grown organically by me writing content, getting a good reputation on search engines, and sharing on Fosstodon mostly.

I can focus on what I enjoy - developing the site and writing content. So with that in mind, it was clear to me that The Meta Blog had to go.

So I've already taken The Meta Blog down. The 3 posts I had on there have been ported into this blog, and I've placed a redirect on all the posts. If you visit any page on The Meta Blog, you will be redirected to the corresponding page on this site.

Next Steps

Although The Meta Blog has gone, I think there's still a middle ground here. I've decided to invest more in this blog to improve it; it's still going to be the same old me, with the same old writing. But I'm going to take some steps to improve the blog and make it more of a “thing” than a simple side project.

Starting today I've added a newsletter to this site, there's a sign up form at the bottom of every blog post. I intend to use the Newsletter to share, probably monthly, updates about what's been popular on my blog, what I'm working on, and some exclusive content.

Sounds really markety, right? I know, but hear me out. My exclusive content simply means requests from my subscribers about having input into the site's direction. Which posts do you want to see more of? What works? What doesn't?

I'll add more to the newsletter over time, but I think this is a good start. If you're interested in getting involved in this little corner of the internet, it would be great if you considered signing up.

As with everything on this site, my newsletter respects your privacy. You can read more about that here.

Redesign

I'm thinking about giving the site a redesign to give me more options. I love the current theme, but I'm getting to limits of what I can accomplish with it I think. It's only something I'm exploring at the moment - I'm not 100% sure it will happen yet.

If I do though, I will likely bring back comments so that people have more of a voice on here, rather than just the IndieWeb.

Investment

I already invest heavily in this site, but to take it to where I think it can go, it's going to need more investment. So I may add ways for people to help out in the future. Maybe a Patreon page, or more affiliate linking.

Again, it's just something I'm exploring at the moment and if I did implement these measure, they would always be optional.

I'm Excited!

I'm really happy with my decision, and I'm very excited about the future of this blog.

As a reader you can look forward to more content, more interactions, and more me...wait, that last one isn't such a good thing! 🙂

Finally I want to thank everyone who provided their feedback. It's great when the community comes together like that, and it's the main reason I do all this.

Don't forget, if you're interested in joining my new newsletter, the form is below.

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