I have quite a few in mine. I am a voracious reader and I am frequent visitor to many of the blogs authored by the best bloggers on the internet. Yaro Starak’s entrepreneur’s journey, Jeremy Schoemaker’s shoemoney.com, Carl Ocab’s carlocab.com (I even guest authored a post there), Brian Clark’s copyblogger.com, Daniel Scocco’s dailyblogtips.com and Darren Rowse’s problogger.com, all are blogs that i frequently visit and have subscribed to. These blogs have been a source of learning and information for me over the past few years.

There were certain other blogs as well that were part of my favorites list but which dropped off them in the past few days. If you ask me the reason why, I would probably have to be a bit too blunt in saying that they had started to drop in terms of quality. John Chow’s blog and Caroline Middlebrook’s blog is amongst these blogs.

I know I am kicking off a debate and am being a very rude critic when I write this post. But the fact of the matter remains. Top bloggers have started loosing focus in their posts. The quality of posts have dropped.

Most of the successful bloggers either write a couple of posts in about 10 days, most of which are posts on affiliate products or, they are discussing off-topic things like the dinner they had the earlier day and the like. What do I have to do with the information on their dinner menu for the previous night? It is true that a bit of harping about your lifestyle and your earnings can motivate new bloggers on the blogosphere. But too much of it is injurious for both the blogger and the reader. Isn’t it?

This is where I am still a fan of Problogger and Copyblogger. Information contained in these blogs even after so many months of producing content, is relevant and informative. You feel like reading their posts again and again and you feel like remaining subscribed to them.

Carl Ocab, for instance had been basking in the glory that it attained as a “blog of a 13-year old blogger” for a long time. The quality of posts had dropped and there were very few or, no relevant posts. “Make money online” was only a mere punchline for the blog. There was nothing about making money online in the blog. I who was a frequent visitor to the blog, stopped reading the posts there. My interest in the blog also dropped. I am sure there would be quite a lot of readers like me, who would have unsubscribed from the blog. Though the quality of posts have suddenly improved there, it is going to take some time for a reader like me to start frequent visits to the blog.

What is the reason for the drop in quality?

These big boys in the blogosphere have lost their focus of blogging. With the kind of cut throat competition that is there in Internet Marketing business today, survival was a matter of “who has the most apples”. In this ensuing competition, most of these bloggers started shifting their focus from mere blogging to other arenas like affiliate marketing, product creation, social media advertisements etc. But what they forgot was to maintain a balance between the numerous apples that they were juggling. They started ignoring some of the things that they were doing and consequently the oldest project – in this case their blogs, started to go stale.

Does it mean that you should not venture into other projects?

Of course, not. What it means is that it is very important to maintain a balance between the projects that you are doing. It is here that a good business plan comes into picture. You should know the basic requirements that any new assignments need and the time that your will have to devote in order to get the project up and running and sustain its optimum performance. If you have an exact blueprint of your newest project you can work out schedule where your ensure that you do not ignore your current project and in the process loose your current readers and subscribers.

In addition to this, somewhere I also felt that many of these top bloggers were a victim of fatigue. It is not long back that I started blogging. The reason why I started this blog was because of my horrifying initial experiences with Internet Marketing. I wanted to make available to the newbie internet marketers, everything that I kept searching for and couldn’t find. After about an year into this blog, I feel many a times that I am running short of material to write about. These big bloggers, who have been blogging for the past 3-4 years are sure to experience this phenomenon. Some of them who are very strong and knew what they were doing overcame it and are still doing good. But yet others who couldn’t overcome this fatigue, slowly started to move off-topic and lost focus.

How to stay focused on your topic?

What I am about to say is better said than done? I know it is difficult, but you have to remain focused in order to achieve your financial goals in life.

Reading – The best way of remaining focused on your topic is to read. Read as much as you can and read relevant news and information on the internet. Read good blogs, articles and ezines. You will gain insights into a lot of things that are happening in your area of interest when you read. In addition to that you will also get information that can be duplicated in your own writing style, in your blogs. These information could be of help to your readers. Being updated with the latest is, in a way one of the easiest ways to remain focused.

Posting – This could sound a bit controversial and my opinion on this is a different from what the other bloggers feel. This opinion of mine has stemmed from my personal experience.

How many latest blog post updated would you want to receive in your feed reader from a particular blog in a particular day or, week?

There were days when I happened to see almost 3-4 recent posts from a few of the blogs that I had subscribed to. After a few days, I started to feel tortured. I did not want to read so many blog posts at the same blog in a single day. Also the flavor and aroma of the oldest post was lots in minutes because of the newer posts coming in. I was in a way fed up. This is a reader experience.

Such frequent posting leads to idea erosion as well, if you think from the perspective of the blogger. Today I might have about 10 different ideas to blog about and tomorrow I will have none. So does it mean that I should publish all my ideas today itself and publish nothing tomorrow. No, absolutely not!!

Each of your ideas should be carefully captured into your posts and these posts can be scheduled over a period of time. Ideas do not have a shelf life. So you need not worry about it getting stale.

I am of the opinion that you should only publish about 2 posts in a week, so that you readers are able to digest what they have read in your post. This helps in maintaining freshness in your blog and would also prevent “idea erosion”.

Conclusion -

A blog is your personal asset. It is an idea that had taken shape in your mind and that you had expressed in the form of words. It is entirely upto you, how you want to maintain it. The thought expressed in this post is entirely my opinion and I would surely encourage a healthy discussion around this. You are free to express your opinion in the form of comments. Also this post is not aimed at tarnishing the image of any blogger named herein, and all of them command respect from me.

Niche research is one of the most difficult things to do. People spend hours and hours together researching their niche before they start their blog because this is what most successful bloggers teach. Then when they are asked to research their niche further before writing any posts in their blogs, they start pulling their hair.

Actually niche research involves a lot of time, but the quantity of the results in comparison to the efforts put is very minute, like processing milk to get butter. You have to process a large quantity of milk to get just a small cup of butter. After putting in so much of effort, when there is nothing substantial to show, it becomes a cause for frustration for many. In addition to this, the lack of knowledge in niche research adds up to the frustration levels.

But niche research is not actually frustrating and worthless. It pays off but only if you persist and consistently understand your niche.

Researching a niche to decide on the blog is acceptable to most people, but when it comes to researching every time you have to write a post to your blog is tedious and involves quite an effort.

Why should you research you niche when you want to write a post on you blog?

You have created a blog on a niche topic. Now you want people to start visiting your blog. You also want the search engines to index you blog. You want your blog to feature in searches when the search terms involve your niche. It is unlikely that anyone starting a blog would say that they do not want any one of the above. How is it that you would make it possible? Will your blog start featuring in search engines all by itself?

It is here that niche research helps you. Carefully research your niche and find a few keywords in your niche that are being searched for by people. You can use Google Insights to check the searches and use that data as well while you are researching. Then write you blog post on one of these keywords, with the keywords itself featuring in the post. Maintain enough keyword density within you post and your blog post will start to feature in search results very soon. Search engines would start sending in a good amount of traffic and people who come to your site in search of information on the keyword, can be made to stay at your page by providing them useful information. When people find good information on your blog they would read through other posts in your blog and might even add your blog to their RSS feeds, thus increasing the number of regular visitors to your blog.

Is niche research required in all your blog posts? The answer would be “Not really”. You can occasionally write posts which are carefully researched in order to get traffic flowing into your blog from search engines. At other times you can write about other things on your niche so that you provide content that is useful and fresh and has a touch of your personal experience in it.

If niche research has proved to be a tough affair for you, then I would recommend you buy Micro Niche Finder. The tool is very handy, easy to use and does the entire research in less than 30 minutes, so that you can utilize your time for other important things.