Published by John Hoff on 12 Aug 2008 at 09:00 pm
The Continuity Of My Blog - Putting It All Together
My journey takes me along the path of a Web Entrepreneur.
My blog follows my journey and forces me to push my creative business ideas and mesh them with what I know about creating a successful website.
I’ve read article after article telling me I need to laser focus my blog’s niche crowd and write to them. These articles tell me if I write about web development, then only write about that. And if I write about entrepreneurship, only write about that. Consistency is key, otherwise, you’ll lose readership.
Don’t write about Google Sitemaps one day and then write about Unconventional Thinking the next, they say.
I don’t believe this is always the case.
To be a Web Entrepreneur, it’s not enough to only learn about popular web designs. It’s not good enough to only learn SEO techniques. And it’s definitely not good enough to only learn about marketing.
To be a successful Web Entrepreneur, you need to know all these things. You need to know how to budget, how people view your website, how to be creative in business, how to push your own creative limits, how to write a business plan, the thinking process of creating profit where others may not think, and you definitely should understand the Time-Value of money.

This article comes about because I found the following message in my Inbox the other day:

After seeing that I sat back in my chair, turned my eyes away from the monitor, and questioned if my blog’s focus was a little off. I then jumped online and headed for my blog, I wanted to examine it the way I believe others might be viewing it.
The first area I looked to was my Categories. I had 6 listed:
- Business 101
- Entrepreneurial Learning Curve
- General Discussion
- Marketing
- Real Estate
- Web Development
On the surface I can see how a few of these don’t go together. I mean, how does real estate go with web development?
To me, there really should only be two categories: Entrepreneurial Learning Curve and Web Development. But to file away my articles a little better for my readers, I’ve created a few separate categories.
I believe whole heartedly these categories all go together, or at least, the way in which I write about them. Here’s an example:
Real Estate and Web Development - How They Go Together
Real Estate
My entrepreneurial experience comes from owning 2 businesses and real estate investing.
If you follow my blog, you’ll notice my Real Estate Category doesn’t concentrate on tax laws, how markets are doing, which city is the best to invest in, etc.; instead, it concentrates on how an investor thinks.
How they find profits by thinking creatively. How they market themselves. How they solve seller’s and buyer’s problems to succeed in business.
It concentrates on the entrepreneurial experience as an investor. When I write a real estate article, I’m not trying to teach you how to invest in real estate, I’m trying to show you how you should think as an entrepreneur through the entrepreneurial experiences I’ve had as an investor.
Web Development
As a Web Entrepreneur, it’s important to know how to design a website people won’t click off of the instant they come to it. It’s also important to know important tools like WordPress and Google Sitemaps that are out there and how to leverage them to rank well in search engines. So I write about that.
By learning how to think creatively and how an investor solves problems for buyers and sellers, you can take that new found knowledge and plug it into your website. By learning how an investor does things differently than a Realtor, like buying and selling, you can use that knowledge to zag when others are zigging.
I thought for a moment about what a Web Entrepreneur needs to know. Here’s a short list of only a few things I came up with. They know about:
- marketing
- search engine optimization
- what makes a good website
- setting up a business and protecting their assets
- managing money
- being creative in a competitve marketplace
- listening and reading between the lines
My actual list was much longer but I think you get the point.
Searching a bit more, I headed over to my StumbleUpon page and took a look at a few friends I have and noted the interests we shared in common. Here’s a snapshot:
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Conclusion
You see, by writing only about one niche, web development for example, I am leaving out all the important things a Web Entrepreneur needs to know about the entrepreneurial experience - and visa versa.
It’s not enough for me to focus in on only one topic and stick to it. I feel I would be doing you an injustice. The images above prove to me people out there have an interest in both being an entrepreneur and succeeding online.
And that’s the focus of my blog. Read each article with the Web Entrepreneurial spirit in mind and how it can benefit you as a person. How can my experiences help you grow? By commenting, you can help me grow as well. Entrepreneurs need to know to some degree a little about web development. Web developers should know a little how entrepreneurs think.
The above paragraph is why I love to blog, even though it seems like a chore sometimes. This is the notion behind the yin and yang symbol which I associate with this blog and my company’s brand.

The result hopefully molds you into a person *like this*.
Related Posts
- 3 Sentences, Post 3: Web Development
- How To Buy A House Like A Real Estate Investor: Part 9 - Becoming A Problem Solver For Sellers And Showing Them You’re Here To Help
- My New Real Estate Category
- Hello & Welcome To The eVentureBiz Blog
- Good Business Decisions Should Become Second Nature
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Barbara Swafford
on 13 Aug 2008 at 5:01 pm #
Hi John,
As far as niche blogging goes, if everything fits under one umbrella, it’s a niche - may be a big niche, but is still one.
I’m guessing the only way you could split the real estate part is to have a second blog for real estate related topics only. If you wrote a post on the entrepreneurial blog that also affects real estate transaction, you could link them.
If you’re looking for a web host, I know where you can find one.
BTW: I checked out your sitemap. I like how it looks. I’m going to have to try that. Thanks for supplying the link.
Haha! You’ll get a kick out of my post for tomorrow - we’re on the same page.
Barbara Swafford’s last blog post..Blog Visitors - Like Kids In A Candy Store
Linda Abbit
on 13 Aug 2008 at 5:02 pm #
John,
Your thinking above and your blog’s focus make total sense to me! “Screw” the unsubscriber and stay the course! You are really on track — no cause for doubts.
Linda Abbit’s last blog post..Let’s Pay it Forward and Help Another Blogger!
Al at 7P
on 13 Aug 2008 at 6:05 pm #
Hi John - I see where you’re coming from and agree with your point. The person who unsubscribed has their own reasons why they think it’s no longer relevant. As long you stay true to blogging about what you see as valuable, there will be many more to replace that person!
Al at 7P’s last blog post..The Hero with a Thousand Jobs
T Edwards
on 13 Aug 2008 at 7:42 pm #
Hi John
I say let your blog develop the way you naturally take it. I am very new to blogging and I don’t believe that your blog should be one dimensional any more than the writer is one dimensional. Although you lost one subscriber, I’m sure that your blog grabbed someone else and made sense to them. I am definitely interested in following your progress!
Keep it up!
T
John Hoff
on 14 Aug 2008 at 6:46 am #
@ Barbara - I’m trying my best to stay away from 2 blogs. The only real estate articles I write is about the entrepreneurial side of investing. I see what you’re saying though and technically I could probably focus in more on just real estate if I went that route.
Hey if I buy that hosting account through you, do I get a commission? Oh wait, it doesn’t work like that, huh?
@ Linda - I like the way you think!
@ Al - I was looking back in my archives and noticed I wrote more about being creative and the entrepreneurial side of things more than I did web development. Plus one of my “creative” articles went viral and as a result I gained a lot of subscribers. I think a lot of those people were people looking for a blog about creativity. I most certainly cover that, but I also cover ways I develop a winning website.
@ T - Agreed. A successful (web) entrepreneur needs to know about a variety of topics and not just copywriting, for example. I was thinking about Copyblogger the other day. I love Brian’s blog and it’s about copywriting and is quite successful. But I bet as an entrepreneur he has more skills that we could learn from other than copywriting.
By the way T, I checked out your blog. Good stuff. I subscribed, but will have to come back to it in a couple of days. The next couple of days is going to be all about my kids.
Cath Lawson
on 14 Aug 2008 at 1:56 pm #
Hi John - I totally agree - it’s not great to have too narrow a focus. After I’d been blogging for a year or so, I realised that many of my beliefs are changed (I thought actually living beyond business didn’t matter) and the focus of my blog expanded too.
Expanding is a good thing - as you say business owners shouldn’t be focusing on reading one topic - eg. web design, or marketing.
Cath Lawson’s last blog post..Don’t Be Like The Women On The Titanic
John Hoff
on 14 Aug 2008 at 9:08 pm #
Hello Cath. The problem I think is sometimes people don’t fully understand what all they really need to know as an entrepreneur.
Marketing, web design, creativity, all that - they’re all part of molding a successful entrepreneur that makes great decisions. If I get too technical for some people, what they should take with them is the knowledge of what this is and why it’s important.
I’ve been enjoying the expansion of your blog’s focus. It’s a deeper level of discovering the entrepreneurial journey which many people don’t always think about.
Also, congrats on having Donald Trump linking to one of your posts. Which one was it?
Vered
on 18 Aug 2008 at 7:07 pm #
Hi!
Our blogs are VERY different, but I completely agree that limiting yourself to a niche is not always the best route to take. Especially if it’s a very narrow niche. It’s just too limiting and I totally gey how it would take the fun out of blogging.
Vered’s last blog post..Top 10 Fashion Mistakes To Avoid At All Costs
John Hoff
on 18 Aug 2008 at 7:18 pm #
Hey Vered! Nice to see you. Thanks for stopping by.
You know, when I first started this blog I wrote more articles on the Entrepreneurial side than web development. I felt though I was holding back because I didn’t want to get too technical in web design.
But I think these days an entrepreneur should at least have some basic understanding of the web. I just write what I know and yes, I don’t feel as limited anymore.
Now, if anyone hasn’t checked out your last blog article with the funny pictures, they need to click over and have a good laugh.