1100 Posts

To split or not to split, that is the question. Should I do it?

This blog is eclectic. The dollar cost of starting a new blog is zero. Those who write about such things claim that focused blogs are more successful. I suspect that few of my readers are interested in all of the types of things that I post about anyway.

The most obvious disconnect is between my writings on defense and national security policy, on the one hand, and my writing on just about everything else. This is particularly problematic because blogger doesn't support categories. There is overlap (most prominently with civil liberties issues), but it is limited, and I would split this off before making any other splits.

Indeed, I might do a new split off blog on some other free non-blogger platform, although the benefits of having a blogger blog are that I strongly suspect that Google biases its search engine in favor of its in house blog platform which is blogger -- there is no way that this blog should have the Google ranks that it does on a level playing field by another neutral measure, and that it is easier to rapidly move from one blog to the other without logging in and out as I settle down to blog. Suggestions on which platform is best for my needs would be welcome.

I could, of course, link to a new blog from here, indeed, for a while, at least, I could even do an RSS feed. My working title is Wash Park Warrior, but I don't like that name because I am not a warrior and have never claimed to be, and don't want to convey the wrong impression. Perhaps, I should even abandon the "Wash Park" theme, as the defense blog wouldn't be local in any meaningful sense of the word and wouldn't resonate with national and international readers. "A Democrat On Defense" or "Democratic Defense" perhaps? Again, suggestions for better titles that are also snappy, are welcome.

The other cost of splitting the blog, of course, is that a newly split blog would take some time to build up. I suspect that much of the traffic to the defense posts on this blog via search engines comes from the fact that there are quite a few links to this blog from other blogs which are not defense related. The defense posts free ride off those links. Part of the solution is to keep the non-defense blog where it is, links in tact. But, I've built this blog from scratch, and I'm sure that I could do it again.

So, in sum, splitting would give more focus to both resulting blogs, but would probably reduce traffic to the defense posts that might be quite hard to build up again, and would be a slight hassle. Gah! This meta stuff is hard.