When your blog starts to get traffic or make money, you’ll inevitably think, “I should start another blog.”
But, maybe that’s not the greatest idea. Let’s go over why.
Reasons People Want Another Blog
1) People Want a Second Blog To Diversify Their Income
Most people would feel safer with a 2nd source of income. If a hacker or Google algorithm update tanks their site, it’d be nice to have a fallback option. The problem is that multiple blogs are still a single point of failure.
Imagine being a restaurant owner and deciding to diversify by opening a 2nd and then 3rd location. Then an act of God hits (like Covid) and shuts down all 3 stores. Suddenly all the “diversification” you did actually made the situation WORSE!
A 2nd blog isn’t a great way to diversify. A 2nd platform would offer you much more safety. Starting a YouTube Channel or creating your own product will multiply your blog’s effectiveness and give you real diversification.
2) People Want a Second Blog Because They Got Bored With Their Original Niche
It’s not healthy to grind away at something that is crushing your soul. I highly recommend putting in the work needed to change things if you find yourself feeling this way. And so you should start a 2nd blog on a fresh topic, right?
Maybe. However, I’d take special care to make sure it’s not blogging that you’re tired of (rather than the topic). Doubling down on a business model you hate might make you feel twice as run down.
3) People Want a 2nd Blog Because They Think They’ll Make Twice As Much Money
On its face, this seems like the most legitimate reason of the three to start a 2nd blog.
But is this actually the case? Would you make twice as much money with a 2nd blog? Let’s explore that.
Will Two Blogs Get More Traffic Than One?
This may be obvious, but it needs to be said. Writing blog posts takes time. This isn’t a question of whether two sites with 200 posts are better than one. Writing twice as many blog posts would take you twice as long.
We’re really asking if two blogs with 100 posts will get more traffic than one blog with 200 posts. I’d argue you’ll clearly get more traffic with a larger authority site. To know why you have to understand a couple things about how Google works.
- The queries that get the most (valuable) traffic tend to have a lot of competition.
- Older sites with more posts/links tend to have more domain authority and rank higher for those competitive queries.
Look at how many clicks each position in the Google search engine results page (SERP) is getting. The #1 result is getting 10x as many clicks as the #6 result.
| Rank | Click-Through-Rate | Extra Traffic vs. Previous Rank | Clicks From 10k Keyword Searches |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | 31.24% | 123% | 3,124 clicks |
| #2 | 14.04% | 43% | 1,404 clicks |
| #3 | 9.85% | 41% | 985 clicks |
| #4 | 6.97% | 27% | 697 clicks |
| #5 | 5.50% | 47% | 550 clicks |
| #6-#10 | 3.73% | 1,765% | 373 clicks |
| Page 2 (combined) | 3.99% | 149% | 39 clicks |
| Page 3+ (average) | 1.60% | NA | 16 clicks |
A bigger site could be the difference between ranking #1 vs. #6 for your niche’s most valuable query. Even if this only happens for a handful of valuable queries, it mathematically guarantees one big site will get more traffic.
Will Two Blogs Make More Money?
No.
I’m not sure how two blogs could make more money than one. As we just went over, two blogs will get less traffic. With monetization methods that rely almost entirely on traffic (like ads), you’re going to end up a financial loser.
You’re also going to end up a loser selling your own products with two blogs. Again, creating a product takes time. You can’t create a product for your knitting blog and then sell it to your shark fishing blog. If product sales are your play, two sites means spending twice as much time on product development. And while blogging costs are cheap, they’re still double with two blogs.
I can only think of two plausible ways that two blogs might make more money than one.
- You intend to quickly sell a blog on Flippa and dump the cash into the authority site.
- You’re monetizing entirely through affiliate deals, and having enough high paying affiliate deals is the limiting factor.
Conclusion
As a business owner, you must understand opportunity cost.. If I asked you to travel from California to New York City, there are multiple ways to successfully travel there. Still, some ways are clearly more efficient than others.
Building two blogs is a bit like running to NYC. Yes, that is a possible path to success. But, it’s definitely not the quickest way to get there.
One blog will get you the most traffic and the most money the fastest. It’s the most efficient way to be successful, so why build two?