I'm having this dilemma, and I need your help, dear reader, to solve it.
I recently began writing a new series of posts called the Read-Aloud Corner, and it is so much fun to write that I think I'll keep doing it for a while. Read-Aloud Corner is where I write about our experiences reading various books aloud and what my kids thought of them, as well as tips on how other families might follow in our footsteps. We (me and my three kids) have read six books as a family together, are working on a seventh, and aren't going to stop anytime soon.
But there's a problem. That problem is that Exception Not Found is intended for a technical audience and the Read-Aloud Corner series is intended for parents of elementary-school children. These are two very different sets of people.
Now, it so happens that a great many of my readers are not only technical people, but also parents. I have written technical posts that feature my children in the past. But it occurs to me that there will be a significant chunk of my audience that will have no need or desire to read the Read-Aloud Corner series. In fact, publishing Read-Aloud Corner on this blog might be more annoying than helpful, and my first goal with Exception Not Found is to be helpful to my audience.
To a certain extent, this is my blog and I can simply do as I like. But I recognize that I have a, shall we say, unspoken agreement with my readers about what kind of content Exception Not Found shall consist of. I feel it would be ungracious of me to continue publishing Read-Aloud Corner stories without first getting the opinion of my audience.
I have already published three Read-Aloud Corner stories. I have five more in varying stages of completion. I'm just not sure what to do with them.
Here's where you come in, my lovely readers. I need your opinion on what I should do with the Read-Aloud Corner series going forward. As I see it, there are two options:
- Continue to publish Read-Aloud Corner as part of Exception Not Found OR
- Make Read-Aloud Corner its own blog with its own domain, comments, site design, etc.
Obviously there's no guarantee I'm going to do what you all say, even if there's a clear consensus. If everybody tells me to stop writing the Read-Aloud Corner series altogether, I'll just ignore it :). But I do want to know your opinion.
So, in the comments below, tell me why you think Read-Aloud Corner should continue to be published with Exception Not Found, or why it should be split off into its own site. I look forward to reading your responses!
Happy Coding!
Personally I would prefer if the read aloud series is published elsewhere. I love reading the technical and developer posts, but find myself rather disappointed to see a new blog post, and find its only a 'read aloud' post :( I certainly think also that the read aloud series would appeal to a much wider audience if its on its own site. As others have mentioned, it might be a bit daunting for a non-technical person to trawl through all the technical posts looking for read aloud content.
You can do what Phil Haack did i.e. Try "Medium". I read a similar post from him earlier. Please have a look
http://haacked.com/archive/...
Although, I like the commingling of the tech + non-tech blogs as it gives the existing audience a break from the tech stuff which is very useful.
It also gives us a different perspective to think and learn how to deal with the real world scenarios and good parenting is one of the very important of them.
However, if you like to share your experience with the non technical audience as well you can really try "Medium". You can announce this here as a featured news to lure your Exception Not Found readers to read the article on Medium if they want to :)
I hope this helps
I appreciate the Read Aloud content but it probably best separated.
I was/am a Read-Aloud father of 4 natural and one foster & now Grandfather. One of my children recently took a reading comprehension test as part of a job screening. It was 50 questions with a 12 minute time limit. They said he wouldn't finish it and not to worry. He finished it. Reading to our children matters,
Hi! Being a technical father myself, I really like the interleaving of your blogs as-is, so my vote goes to "continue" :)
I'd suggest separating them, for SEO and reasons as mentioned by others. I think you'll get more eyes on that excellent content that way.
As a side note, your new posts come through the email notifications on iOS with gigantic images and text that's microscopic by comparison. Just a FYI. :)
I have no problem with the Read-Aloud posts intermingling with the technical content; I find both interesting. On the other hand, people who came to your blog looking specifically for Read-Aloud Corner posts are probably going to be more than a little mystified by posts like "ASP.NET Core Demystified - Action Results".
I'd probably spin the Read-Aloud Corner off into another blog. You could always cross-post things from there to here.
Yes, while devs are part of the audience for Read Aloud Corner, the audience is actually far broader - you should get far more readers if it's a separate blog.
I quite enjoy the series as-is, but I have no objections if you decide to launch a new blog - I'll simply add it to Feedly :D
I'm a new-father myself, so it's always interesting reading others experiences of such... and even when I wasn't a parent, I still was interested in such things. Worse case scenario is people can just skip articles they don't want to read, surely?
Since you monetize your site it would probably be more financially rewarding to separate the too as google will be able to help you with SEO better when a site is only about a single topic. I'm not an SEO guru, so don't quote me on that, I think I heard about that on the Simple Programmer though.
And you can always link to your other blogs too.