Adnan,
Thanks for sharing your experience as well. I’m glad that you decided to hold on to Blogtrepreneur. I would imagine that at some point you’ll want to sell, but the site has always had (for as long as I’ve been reading) a nice touch to it that most others don’t. We’ve all seen a lot of blogs go downhill after being sold, so who knows what the future would be with a different owner.

I agree with your opinion that too many writers on similar topics is a turn off. From my experience the only blogs that I pay attention to that fall into that category are news-related blogs that have to have a full team in order to stay on top of things. Even then, I typically just read headlines and rarely much more.

Great article Steven, and of course like Kevin and James, an area which I’m heavily involved in.

Kevin mentioned that he was nearly forced to start a multi-author blog due to the burnout he was experiencing. The same can really be said for me at Blogtrepreneur, however it all started in Summer 2007 through to Christmas 2007, where I was literally churning out a few posts per month. I felt extremely tired of blogging, and as a result, I nearly ended up selling the blog because of this.

When the sale fell through (mainly due to the fact that traffic was stagnating along with revenue), I decided to pick things up again, but use the help of authors to help do that to traffic. Now initially, I felt that there were drawbacks, for example, some of my regular audience stopped commenting on the posts that I didn’t write, and eventually, I think they may have stopped coming back (which is quite sad).

But if it’s meant that I’ve been able to continue owning Blogtrepreneur and helping to increase the RSS count every week, then I don’t view that as such a bad situation.

I have benefited really from one big thing – having such a talented writer as Steven on my team. Your articles rock buddy, and with your recent news, all the team at Blogtrepreneur are really going to miss you.

So yeah, that’s my story. In terms of reading other multi-author blogs, I don’t mind it if the original owner keeps posting (as I mainly read a blog to stay connected and close to the main author’s personality), but I suppose I’m being a hypocrite, as I don’t even do that on my own blog anymore.

Having a load of bloggers posting multiple times a day really dilutes things, and when they all start to cover the same topics, then I feel that that’s an immediate turn-off for me.

Great discussion!

1 – Doubling up on topics is rare.
2 – Writers easily learn our different voices and personalities without being confused who’s writing this time.
3 – We can cover for each other when needs be.
4 – We each bring different perspective to situations.
5 – No one burns out.

There are drawbacks. Some of these include:

1 – One author relying too heavily on the other if an agreement isn’t in place on posting frequency.
2 – Occasional doubling up of topics. Avoid this by assigning a niche topic based on the person’s skill sets and experiences.
3 – Differing tones, styles and qualities. But this does show that no one is a robot and no one is perfect. It adds uniqueness.

Would we add a third person in? That’s tough and I don’t think so, no. Would we go back to single blogger? Not at the daily posting rate we maintain.

I have to say I don’t like to read blogs with many posters. It becomes networky, stale and bland. Yuck. Give me just a couple of people that I can get to know, and I find it much more entertaining and interesting.

Yeah I think Adnan was going to sell his blog at one point but I’m glad he kept it. I think at the time he was just finding it hard to keep his online commitments on track because of his studies or whatever.

Kevin,
Thanks for the detailed response. I really appreciate you taking the time to respond in this way. I really agree with all your points. I haven’t run a multi-author blog as of yet, but I have a lot of experience writing for them. From my experience there is no right or wrong way to do it, each blog is different and should be run accordingly.

I know as a writer it’s a bit easier to do less than your best work when several others are posting at the same time. I’m not saying that’s justified when you’re being paid, but I think it’s just human nature that you really have to fight sometimes.

I think you’ve done an excellent job of recognizing the weaknesses of Blogging Tips and really taken control of them and turned it into a positive situation. Having different authors covering different topics seems to be working well.

I do agree with you that there are big benefits or running a multi-author blog. After all, those other blogs that I write for would have been put to rest or sold by now if the bloggers had not chosen to hire freelancers.

First of all, great post Steven. Obviously, since I own a multi author blog this is a topic that interests me.

I think that, if run correctly, a multi author blog can be good for a blog. As I mentioned in the post you linked to in this post, I originally went it about it all the wrong way. I hired several bloggers who were all covering very similar topics. This ended up with many of the posts being very similar and it offered nothing new to the reader. It was a case of too many cooks spoil the broth.

Recently, I parted ways with many of my staff because of this very reason. They were writing good posts but I wanted different topics covered on the blog so it didn’t make sense to keep them on. Presently on BT there are 8 authors including myself. All bloggers are given a direction about what subjects to cover so there is more variety in posts. For example, Sarah covers Wordpress design and coding topics and Amanda covers the blogger format.

Of course, there are a lot of pros from running a blog yourself however the weight that a multi author blog can take off the owners shoulders is immense. I dont know if David or Adnan feel the same way however I believe if I kept my initial blogging schedule up I would have burned out.

For the first few months of the site I was writing about two posts per day and I soon realised that long term this was a schedule that I couldnt keep up. I didn’t want to just churn out any old post so for me, the multi author format was the right decision. Infact, on Tuesday I worked late into the night and the next day I just wasn’t in the mood for writing. Since I had an author scheduled to post that day it allowed me a day off. Sometimes its good to give your brain a break haha

This format also gives me more time to write posts and I believe my own posts have improved because of it.

With regards to keeping your writing team small. I agree with you on this however in practice this is sometimes difficult. I have asked a few of my weekly authors if they would like to post more often but unfortunately they don’t have time due to other committments. I’m very happy with their work though so obviously I’ll keep them on.

Again, it comes down to, as you say, being a good editor. The more authors you have the more time you need to spend managing them.

Once again, great post Steven. It will be good to hear other views on this subject (because obviously my views are biased!!)

This post might convince us to publish on the same blog, who knows. And IF we decide to do it, it’ll be a 2 person blog, so not a big deal.