One of the things I am dealing with currently is building some new blogs, and while I sometimes wonder if there aren’t already too many blogs on the Internet, I still feel like I could make more of a business from blogging than I already do.

The biggest concern currently is money. It costs money to register a domain, pay for hosting, designing a WordPress theme, and developing a brand and logo. It also costs money to get a great writer to spend their time in producing content for the site.

The other thing it costs is time. I have been spending so much time developing the site, working on WordPress, integrating plugins, finding the right themes to use as a basis until I can hire someone to do a better job that by the end of the day, I feel completely exhausted.

I have given up on blogs in the past, either because my financial situation has changed, I have run out of time, or I haven’t seen the results I was expecting, and while I don’t think there should be a hard line that helps people decide if their blogging efforts should continue, I do think that there are a few indicators that it might be time to give up on a blog that you are trying to build into a business.

If by the third month, you aren’t getting more than five hundred unique visitors a month, it is probably time to move on.

If by six months, you haven’t earned back ten percent of what you have put into the site, it might be time to call it quits before you invest too much more into the site.

This means that if you haven’t found a way to monetize it that it earns ten percent on the money you are putting into it, you are probably not going to be able to get the blog to the point where it pays for itself.

If you are paying $500 a month on writers and other blog related expenses, and the blog isn’t earning $50 each month by its sixth month. Then this should be a huge concern for you.

If by the sixth month the blog is providing you with more stress than reward, then take a break from it, and shut it down. It isn’t worth pouring your heart into a project that isn’t rewarding you how you hoped. The reward could be RSS subscribers, advertisers, traffic growth or just a good feeling that you get when someone “gets” your idea.

My Current Situation

Currently, I am running three blogs, not including this one, that are using up upwards of $800 a month of my financial resources. These blogs have until October to get to the point where they are paying for upwards of thirty percent of my monthly expenditures or I will have to shut them down or sell them off.

This is the goal I have set for myself partially because of the upcoming addition of a new family member in November, and also because at that point, all of the blogs will be past their six month mark.

I truly believe that a blogs potential or lack there of can be seen long before the six month mark, but giving it half a year to mature will really tell me if it is something worth pursuing.

Originally posted on April 10, 2008 @ 8:43 am