I’m at a little bit of a crossroads with Foodie Fridays, and I need your help to decide what will come next. Since this blog started, I’ve dedicated Fridays to one of my great passions- food. Based on feedback, people either love Foodie Fridays or hate them. I’ve received emails telling me that my recipes are a welcome break from less hedonistic articles, while others tell me they “just don’t fit”. I appreciate both points of view. While I had never really bought into the concept of niche blogging, I’m beginning to see the benefits that it may offer.
Foodie Fridays are some of my favourite posts to write, but from a numbers perspective they have been a little bit of a dud. With a few exceptions, these posts have my lowest page views and fewest comments. I’ve been amazed at how quickly my subscriber numbers have grown, but it seems that a lot of people who are interested in money aren’t interested in food topics, and vice versa. When someone comes to my site from a Google search looking for a kick-ass chili recipe they don’t stick around to check out my thoughts on ETFs, and when they arrive looking for information about closing costs they don’t proceed to check out my couscous chicken breasts recipe.
I’m not giving up blogging about food, but I’m thinking that my best course of action might be to create a separate blog where I can focus on yumminess and keep my focus here at MoneyGrubbingLawyer on the broad subject of personal finance. When a topic touches on both money and food I can cross post it, but for the most part it will allow me to focus on growing and promoting each site independently. I suspect that this approach will be better for both categories.
Before I break out my santoku knife and cut out Foodie Fridays, I’d like to hear what my readers think. Should I keep Foodie Fridays, launch a separate food blog (name suggestions are welcome!), or drop my food postings altogether and leave food writing to Jamie Olivier and the delicious Rachael Ray?
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m new to your blog so I haven’t seen much of what you posted in the past (last week’s post may be my new recipe of the week soon!). I know from my previous attempts at blogging that it’s hard to do if you’re targetting more than one focused niche. A related blog might be a good idea - FoodGrubbingLawyer doesn’t have quite the same sound though.
If you need to drive traffic to it you can always post here about how, with a little practice, it’s easy to save money by cooking instead of going out
Beware of starting a second blog. Few do it well.
Do you have some friends (real or blog) who would be interested in group blogging?
I won’t lie…not a huge fan of Foodie Fridays (but do enjoy the rest of your articles)…I think, to quote the great Uncle Joey from Full House, “cut…it…out!”
I’m not a big fan of off-topic posts on topic-specific blogs. If you’re really committed to the food posts, why not start a separate blog?
I LOVE foodie fridays! You are a diverse person and your blog reflects that. I think it should stay.
Who am I to give advice? I post everything on my blog - finance, food, fashion, budgeting, frugality, shopping… so I can’t be a good example.
However, I can’t recall ever seeing any of your Food posts… where the hell are they? I want to see the recipes now and save a couple/test them out.
I think if you want to keep food in your life and blog about it, then a separate blog should do it.. but then you open up a whole can of worms to have to handle 2 blogs and update on both. Ugh.
Conclusion? I like Foodie Fridays. I just don’t recall ever reading anything food-related on your blog and I’ve been subscribing for a while!!! Is that a sign?
Fabulously Broke in the City
Just a girl trying to find a balance between being a Shopaholic and a Saver…
I think it depends on why you’re doing this blog in the first place. If your priority is to have some place to put your thoughts and you don’t care as much about getting a large following then I would say do whatever you want. Post about food or anything else. IF, however you care more about having a large amount of people read your blog then you should either stop the food posts or move them to another site.
If it were me personally, I would keep doing the food posts. I don’t care as much about getting a large readership. I like to post for myself and if people are into what I’m posting they’ll stay, if not that’s fine too. I also think it would be too time consuming to have two blogs. But again, that’s just me.
I’ve become an every day reader and while I do enjoy the recipes, I always feel a little dissapointed when I forget about Foodie Friday and arrive at the site hoping for a personal finance post. You could keep the recipes in a seperate section of the same site, so you don’t have to create and keep up a whole seperate website. For me, the best-case scenario would be to have five PF posts a week plus Foodie Friday (or maybe Succulent Saturday), but I’ve become a blogaholic. Hey, it beats shopping.
Most of the other PF blogs do a link round-up on Fridays, so your food posts are a welcome break from the cross-posting bonanza.
I do like the suggestion to have 5 PF posts and a weekend recipe….that would probably please the majority of your readers.
Love it, better than the typical roundup stuff.
If you are concerned about the lack of page views for your food posts, change the title from “Foodie Fridays” to “Rona Ambrose Naked” or something like that.
I think you should keep Foodie Fridays.
Just keep doing what you’re doing. You have lots of great content and that’s all that matters.
Yes, in theory the food stuff should be on another blog but realistically can you drive two blogs? It ain’t easy…
From a business prospective, a separate blog might be better if you plan on writing a lot of food content. More targeted ads, etc.
But, if you don’t plan on writing that many posts about food, keep things the same.
I think you’ve got a good thing going here either way. I’ve got to tell you, though, that as much as I love seeing what’s cooking chez MGL every week, it mostly just makes me jealous. I wish I enjoyed cooking!
Keep it! I came looking for a rib recipe (from Google) and found something more informative to look at than hollywood gossip while wasting time at work, keep up the good work! By the way, have you ever tried Hot Chili Quinoa? DELICIOUS!
I’ve been reading your blog for awhile now because we’ve got a lot of common interests. I’m also a young-ish lawyer interested in personal finance…and food! (and also video games I see…). Your blog makes it unnecessary for me to start one
So yes, keep the foodie friday posts! Love the Ahi Tuna (and so did my wifey).
Cheers!
Just discovered your blog through a link on MSN.com. I’m interested in investing AND eating well. Delighted that you have food recipes in addition to the money topics. It’s like the blog equivalent of casual Fridays. My vote would be: keep it up!