[NOTE: I wrote this in late Feb, as a followup to part 1 + part 2 and forgot to post it. I’ve updated it slightly.] Have you lost track of the number of blogs you’ve started? I have. Or more accurately, I’ve stopped counting, after giving up on several of them. Some never got past the URL on a freehost. Sure, I’ve tried a number of different tactics, including both popular and obscure topics, and promoting a blog with only 3-4 posts as well as others with 10-15 posts. I’ve tried it on free hosts and on my own domains. The problem is a matter of reaching your own personal tipping point for a given blog, and you cannot necessarily do it if you’re starting several all at the same time.

What I’ve noticed so far is that I get the best initial and ongoing traffic when I have a suitable topic, and when I start with at least 10 posts before I start promoting it. I can hypothesize all kinds of reasons for this, but I’m going to guess here and say that it’s for the same reason that a site that has been around for a while and why accumulated articles bring in traffic.

But there’s more to it than that. There’s a critical-mass - a personal psychological tipping point - in the life of a blog, and when you pass the point, the blog becomes part of you. You feel the impulse to continue it, and you can manage to write it along with other blogs.

I don’t know where that critical mass is for you, but for me it’s about 16-20 posts. Any blog for which I post less than that and then ignore for a month usually stays a zomblog (zombie blog). I rarely resurrect the dead.

I still believe that you can successfully write multiple blogs simultaneously. I’m proving it currently for the blogs I write for other people, which already have their own pre-defined success level. However, if you try to start a brand new blog while still nurturing an earlierone, there’s a good chance that one or both are going to end up zomblogs.

This is primarily because you have not reached that tipping point, that stage of satisfaction that makes you want to continue a project. Traffic’s not coming in, and, oh, I’ll research tomorrow. I’ll work on something else today.

If instead you dedicate some time to a new blog and it starts getting some consistent, self-sustaining traffic - even if it’s just 50 pageview/d - then you feel the motivation to continue the blog, and your subconscious will find topics for you for later posts. If you don’t do this, your interest will fizzle and so will the traffic.

It’s a mistake I’ve repeated several times, but am trying not to do anymore. Nurturing one blog at a time is what I would I differently, if I were to start my blogs over again. That’s my answer to a related question Darren Rowse has been several high-profile bloggers, including Theron Parlin, whose answer most closely resembles mine.