“Updates from SXSW” plus 1 more

Posted: 16 Mar 2010 10:30 AM PDT

Over the last few days I’ve been in Austin Texas attending the South by South West Interactive (#SXSWi) conferences. Sometimes known as ‘Spring Break for Geeks’ I try to get out to this gathering each years because there are so many of my colleagues in attendance and it is an opportunity to meet up with old friends, network, do a little business and a meet a few readers at the same time.

Today is the last day of SXSW (I return home tomorrow) and despite some late nights I woke up this morning with a start on the dot of 5am (jet lag sucks). As I lay in bed reflecting upon the days I’ve just had I just started to feel very very grateful for this opportunity and especially the chance I’ve had this week to interact with some very special people.

A few highlights come to mind:

People Practicing the Art of Saying Hi

Lets start with what has happened constantly, day and night, since arriving. The people who come up and introduce themselves are amazing. Whether they be past or present readers of ProBlogger (or one of my other blogs), members at Third Tribe, previous bloggers from b5media….. the amount of people who have come up to say hi has been amazing.
I think what I enjoy so much about these real time and face to face interactions is that it makes me realize in a more tangible way that what I do as a blogger impacts ‘real people’. I find it very inspiring and a great reminder to keep building a blog here that helps such people to take their blogs to the next level. If you are one of the people who stepped up (sometimes a little out of your comfort zone) to say hi – thank you.

Salaam Garage

One project I came across on day 1 was Salaam Garage – founded by Amanda Koster (a photographer, author, speaker… and great person) – Salaam Garage brings together a variety of things I am interested in and passionate about – storytelling (with writing, video and image), humanitarianism (partnering with international NGOs) and traveling in teams. You can read more here.

Book Reading

On Friday at 5pm (day 1) I had the opportunity to do a book reading to promote the upcoming 2nd edition of ProBlogger the book (I’ll talk more about this in coming weeks as its launching late April). In the 20 minute session I planned to share what was new in the 2nd edition and run through a case study on my photography site (which is a new chapter in the book).

The session was 20 minutes but 10 minutes in a siren began to sound and an announcement came over the speaker system saying that an emergency had just taken place in the building and that everyone should evacuate. Wow – talk about a mood killer :-) Everyone calmly filed out (literally thousands of people in the building at all of the different sessions taking place at that time).

My stomach sunk a little as I realized how far I’d travelled for this 20 minute session that was now potentially just 10 minutes but even as I traveled down the escalators people were very kind and I met some amazing people. Luckily we were let back in the room 10 minutes later and I was given 10 minutes to finish my presentation.

About half those who had been there returned which was great. The other half of those who were there for the 2nd half were there for a completely different book which was strange but it seemed to go ok!

I’ll turn the presentation into a video in the coming weeks but in the mean time if you’d like to see what the reading was like you can read the notes of one person in attendance here and here and see some visual notes on it here.

Photo Shoot – Meeting Jasmine

As I was leaving the book reading (the first time…. during the ‘emergency’) a number of people said hi – one of whom was an amazing photographer by the name of Jasmine Star. I’ve long admired Jasmine’s photography and have particularly enjoyed watching her blog develop over the years (she is someone who uses her blog VERY well to build her business – a great case study). Jasmine is a photographer who many of my dPS readers LOVE too.

We only met fleetingly on the elevator but later that evening Jasmine emailed me to ask if she could photograph me. I’d only been telling someone earlier that day that I needed to get some new headshots taken and so when the opportunity came to have someone of Jasmine’s calliber take them I leapt at the opportunity.

The shoot was fun and it was interesting to watch how Jasmine approached it – but even better as the opportunity to hang and connect with someone like Jasmine who is a very genuine person. You can see some of the results of the shoot at her blog (tell me which shots you like best as I’ve got to choose some).

Other Stuff

There are numerous other great things that have happened at SXSW this year. We had a great meetup for Third Tribe (at a pretty wacky bar), I spent a great relaxing afternoon with a smaller group of bloggers at a house party, there have been some fun larger parties in the evenings, I’ve done a number of fun interviews with both bloggers, media and for the promotion of the book and have had opportunity to catch up with some good friends who I’ve not seen for a while.

All in all I’m feeling very very grateful and lucky to be in the position I’m in. I’m also feeling pretty inspired to keep at what I do and to be as useful as possible.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Updates from SXSW

1. Sell It

Before you decide to delete your blog, or simply decide to stop writing – consider whether it might have some commercial worth. This might not be appropriate for all blogs (for example if you have a more personal blog you might not want to give it over to someone else) but if your blog is more commercial/entrepreneurial in nature you’ll probably find that it has some value to somebody else.

There are a variety of places where you can sell blogs and websites online but one of the best that I’ve had a little to do with is Flippa which has regular auctions of blogs and sites running. A quick survey of blogs listed there over the past few months has seen blogs sell for anything from two digit numbers right through to some pretty large sales (I just saw one that went for $60,000).

Obviously the more traffic and income your blog has the better but you might be surprised what people are willing to pay even for smaller blogs that have been around for a while and which have some page rank and incoming links.

Another option if you’re not willing to give away your content but still have a domain with some commercial value is to simply sell the domain without the content. Again – if you have a more established domain with lots f incoming links pointing at it you’ll find that some will be willing to give you something for it.

2. Hire a Blogger or Take On a Partner

If you’ve lost your passion for the topic of your blog but it still has potential to generate traffic and income you might want to consider hiring another blogger/bloggers to write for your blog (or even the run the whole thing).

There would be a variety of levels that you could do this on – from hiring a blogger to write a certain amount of posts per week which you edit, to hiring someone to write and do all the editing, to hiring someone to take on everything (including managing ad sales, maintaining the blog’s platform etc).

The model for this might be to pay a per post rate or you might choose to make it more of a partnership where you share ownership and income with the other blogger.

3. Transition it to a Community Blog

This is similar to the last option but if you have a blog that does have a group of loyal readers it could be worth handing the blog over to volunteers from your community to help you keep it running. In a sense it will become a blog which is largely made up of guest posts from readers.

This approach will only really work if you have an established readership who feels strongly that the blog is something that they believe in and want to keep running – even if it costs them some time to contribute to.

4. Relaunch

One option that I’ve not seen done many times but which could be considered is to refocus or relaunch your blog. This will probably only work if you have a domain name that is suited to more than one niche but instead of completely scrapping your site and starting again from scratch on a new domain perhaps you could build upon the Google rank that your blog has and start a new one on the same domain.

Again – there would be some branding considerations to keep in mind here and it work work best with a small shift in topic, but it could work in some situations.

5. Stop Writing But Let the Blog Sit as an Archive

I’ve done this a number of times – instead of just deleting my blogs I generally will just stop writing and then let them sit on the web in archive mode.

The benefit of this over completely deleting your blog or letting your domain name lapse and someone else grabbing it is that you keep the option open of using it again later and if you are monetizing it you have the opportunity to keep earning a little money from it in the mean time.

The other benefit is that you still are making your content available to readers who might be loyal to your blog and who want to keep referencing what you’ve written previously.

I’ve seen a number of people take this approach and also take up a more aggressive monetization of the site, do some link building to it and treat it virtually like a more static website that targets search traffic.

6. Redirect Links to a New Project

Another approach to consider if you’re starting a new blog on a similar topic is to set up your old blog and get it redirecting its permalinks over to your new project to help that new project get established with a little extra SEO juice and forwarded readers.

This is something I’ve seen a few SEO types do quite successfully and could be well worth doing instead of deleting your blog and not building upon what you’ve already done.

7. Delete it

This would be my last preference for most blogs but could be an option if you don’t want to keep paying for a domain/hosting and don’t care if your content disappears for ever.

I would probably sell my blog before doing this (or at least sell the domain) but I suspect that this is probably the most common approach among bloggers who simply let their domain names lapse and/or switch off their hosting.

What Have You Done with Old/Dead Blogs?

I’d love to hear what approaches you have taken with your old/dead blogs? Have you done some of the above or have you tried something else. Please share your experiences of ending blogs in comments below.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

7 Ways to End a Blog