Starting a new blog, or adding a section to my existing wp blog?

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[JaneBlogs]

Hi all,

I'm feeling a bit stumped, and I could do with some advice. 

My main blog, Kidzarama, covers my personal stuff, including craft, recipes, ideas for kids' crafts, parenting ideas, etc.
I usually post 2-3 times a week.

Since I spend so much time surfing for craft ideas {too much, actually} I'd planned to start a new daily section to feature craft tutorials that I come across.

My original idea was that by having daily features I'd attract more readers.
Kidzarama is a self-hosted wp blog, and the coding isn't a problem.

I awoke this morning with second thoughts for some reason, and began wondering whether I should just start another blog entirely instead {probably on blogspot}.

Does anyone have any insights to share on the pro's and con's?

Thanks,
Jane

[goatlady]

This is a dilemma that many people face!

Pros: you can mix things up, try different approaches, without impacting your existing readers.

Cons: you don't have your existing audience, and managing multiple blogs can be a lot of extra effort.

[Gemisht]

Could you start another WP blog on the same domain but so that it is a sub-directory of your current one - so that it is www.yourblogurl/dailyfeatures

OR

why not start a new page and just add new links to it as you find them then do a quick post each day linking to the site but leaving it on another page permanently??? Or even do it as a weekly wrap-up or something similar.

I agree with Goatlady with the pros and cons and if you are used to self hosted WP starting a Blogger one just seems almost a step backwards. If you have good page rank and traffic on your current one and you are blogging about craft things anyway, then use all that to your advantage.

Just my scattered thoughts.........

[JaneBlogs]

Thank you, goatlady & Gem.

You've just confirmed what I've been feeling all along. 
I suppose I just got cold feet about making a hash of things...lol

Kidzarama is PR2, so it's getting there, and my traffic is building up again after a major slump, so it's probably better to remain focused on one site.

I had planned to create a new category named something like "daily craft tutorials" and use coding to exclude it from displaying on the main template, and the posts will still appear as links in "recent posts" in the sidebar.

Thanks for getting my thinking back on track {hey, what's wrong with scattered thoughts, anyway?}

[JaneBlogs]

Actually, I just realised why I was suddenly unsure of what to do with this. 
~Sorry to jump in again like this...

Last night, when I checked my stats for my new (Jan/Feb is new) blogspot blog, I'm getting almost as many page views as I do on Kidzarama (2yrs old). 

That's what made me wonder if there's an advantage to having a separate, more focused blog for featuring tutorials.   

[OzSoapbox]

How often are you posting tutorials vs. your normal entries into your main blog?

If it's just like once a week or maybe twice i'd just add them to your main blog in a category of their own. Just schedule them for publishing on the weekends or something.

I blog about usually current events in Australia type stuff but also a bit about goldfish/cycling which has nothing to do with either.

I can't be arsed setting up seperate blogs for each as I don't write enough about cycling/goldfish to justify a seperate blog and time dedication I feel (maybe if I was blogging full time). I schedule the cycling/goldfish stuff for the weekends as it's usually quieter news wise on sat/sun.

Tutorials will be good search engine traffic so i'd try to keep them with your main blog and leave them as visibile as everything else.

[JaneBlogs]

I usually post 2-3 times a week on Kidzarama, and I'll be posting daily in the new section.

Each of the posts in the new section will feature a photo & link to a craft tutorial on someone else's site, with my own tips added in.

[goatlady]

If you usually only post 2-3 times per week but want to post daily in the new section, that might be a good reason to split the new stuff off into a separate blog. If your readers are used to a particular posting schedule and then you double or triple it, that can put them off.

[JaneBlogs]

If your readers are used to a particular posting schedule and then you double or triple it, that can put them off.

Hadn't thought of that.

I think I might have a go at setting it up as a separate blog on the kidzarama domain, like www.kidzarama.com/artsyfartsycrafty or something.

In that case, I'll try to keep the look somewhat similar, but still look like different blogs.

I really need to renovate the template for Kidzarama, and I wanted to avoid the extra work of creating one for another wp blog, so maybe I'll just go for a generic free template & tweak it for each, instead of going from scratch again.

Thanks again, goatlady