The Online Photographer: A New, All-Off-Topic Blog?
(This is something that I wrote on theonlinephotographer.typepad.com.)
I enjoy your off-topic posts as much as the photography posts, sometimes more so, and have no problem with them being on this blog.
When it comes down to business, the question is: would you end up with more paying customers from two blogs, each updated less often, than you would from the current photography-and-off-topic blog?
It sounds like some people are put off by the off-topic posts here. Would they be happier with - and as many of them pay for - a photography-only blog that updates half as often?
It would, I fear, be hard to build a following for a general interest blog. Fewer people read blogs these days, as you know, and while there are still thousands of them, there’s less of a “blogging ecosystem” to generate interest and traffic for new ones.
As some have suggested, an email newsletter might be a better option (it can still be readable on the web, but its focus is more “sign up to receive emails). I’d avoid Substack personally - I do not trust this venture-capital-funded company not to switch focus and business models over time, much as Medium often does. But there are plenty of alternatives. I have used, and like, Buttondown who recently put together this calculator of the costs of different platforms https://buttondown.email/comparison-guides/take-rates