Matt’s Musings

And Knowing When To Hold Em

I am by no means a gambler — I don’t even buy lottery tickets — but I am familiar with the Kenny Rogers song that implores, “know when to hold em, know when to fold em.” The Gambler is one song that many people take to heart when they hit the slot machines or play Saturday Night poker with the guys (or gals!).

Knowing when to fold em is also something I take quite seriously when it comes to managing my many online enterprises. Since I began my personal online enterprise in 2002, I have built scads of sites including forums,web pages, and blogs. I’ve also closed several down of the same or sold a number of them off.

Saying Good-Bye To My Writing Blog

Last month, I took a hard look at my flagship site, The Article Writer, and decided I needed to make an important move. For more than two years I ran a pair of blogs on this same url — one covering freelance writing and the second one cars. Sure, it is unusual to have two blogs on one URL, but it worked for me. Then again, if I were to do it all over again, the automotive blog would have been given its own site.

The writing blog I launched in December 2005 followed two months later by the car blog. I’ve always blogged more often with the car blog, but it wasn’t until the beginning of this year that I stepped up my automotive writing and finally cut back my other blogging to three days per week.

Additional Business Opportunities Have Come My Way

The result? More business for me, particularly from automotive industry clients which now make up half of my current clientele. I knew that when I took a hard look at my writing blog that shutting it down would be the best decision for me to make, but it wasn’t a money maker either.

Some of my readers know how passionate I am about my writing and were stunned to see that the blog was closed. I believe I have even said that I had no plans to shut it down, but it became obvious to me that shutting down that blog while retaining the related web pages and the other blog was the best way to go. Besides, it wasn’t as if I was deleting what I had written — The Article Writer is well indexed and the pages will live on.

Leaving On A High Note

The best part of shutting down my blog when I did is that I ended it on a high note — traffic was up, I achieved a PR5 ranking, and it helped to bring in additional business. I hate to shut anything down with a whimper, but going out in a flame of glory is the best way to end any endeavor we have in our hands.

And now I’m moving on….

Photo Credit: Special Thanks to Hashir Milan of Sri Lanka

Filed under: Negotium