*I'm feeling a bit i
[2022-11-13 05:47:37 AM] : I'm feeling a bit indecisive on my audience.
Earlier in the 30x500 process, the sounding - or my interpretation of it - was "just pick one, it's not important as it's just for practice".
So I did, and I went ahead and started learning. But now, suddenly I landed at "purchase a domain and set up a website and start dropping e-bombs", which is starting to feel a lot more committed.
Not a problem, I have the capacity to figure out if this is the audience I want to stick with or not, but I feel like there's been a bit of a disconnect in how seriously I should have taken the audience choice earlier on.
Am I wrong in assuming that once I've gotten my website setup and start dropping e-bombs, I've committed to that audience?
3 Replies
[2022-11-13 06:41:01 AM] : I did this. Not in relation to 30x500, though. My personal site used to be heavily focused on publishing and issues with tech in publishing, to the point where a couple of my blog posts were assigned to the curriculum in a publishing course in Oxford Brookes (US translation: "my writing was highly regarded by a lecturer at one of the country's least disrespected community colleges!" :grin:).
Then I stopped working in the publishing industry (it's a toxic place through and through) and switched almost entirely to writing about web tech. Traffic and newsletter subscriptions took a hit but not as big as I thought it would.
So, switching audiences, even after 8 years of blogging, wasn't a disaster for me. I think it might have helped that publishing tech -> web tech wasn't as big a shift as I expected. Still. (Also, good for my mental health. Like I said, the publishing industry is toxic.)
Of course, this is all before 30x500. So, I don't know if that changes the calculus or not because I'm restarting the course myself. But if I had to guess then it should turn audience building into a repeatable process and make audience switching less risky, not more.
(Though, I defer to the more experienced in this Slack on this.)
[2022-11-13 11:55:27 AM] : I ended up switching audiences about a year in - from writing about AngularJS, to writing about React instead. I was glad I had chosen daveceddia.com instead of something more Angular-specific :smile: But even still, a domain name is not forever - you can move everything to a new domain and redirect traffic so that you don’t lose much in the way of SEO.
When I made that switch I had something like 1200 email subscribers, and I was worried most of them would leave, but it turned out the vast majority (probably 90-95%+?) stayed. So I think “switching” varies a lot depending on what you’re switching from/to. Switching programming languages or web frameworks would be a lot different than switching from developers to pizza shop owners or something.
The last year or so I’ve been focusing more on Recut, a video editing tool, which turns out to have very little overlap with the React audience. So in some sense, I’m starting over there. But I still have a twitter following (which helped a ton at launch time), and I have so much more knowledge now about research, writing good sales copy, running launches, etc. And I still have the React audience, and traffic to that blog, and some sales too, so they’re both running in parallel.
Anyway all that to say I think “committing” to an audience doesn’t have to be forever. It could be months or years even, and there’s a good chance you can build upon that audience or knowledge for the next one.
[2022-11-13 12:55:55 PM] : It's a struggle isn't it! I just bought my domain name using my name (oh so boring but it makes sense) so I can switch if needs be. I'm guessing choosing an audience doesn't mean committing to either the newbies, peers, or people who hire categories? I'd still like to have flexibility here ideally!
[2022-11-14 02:10:19 AM] : Thank you, that's extremely insightful! Thanks for sharing your experiences :pray:
For Baldur Bjarnason and dceddia how did you end up making the transition?
Did you just start posting content on another topic? Or did you make some sort of 'declaration' first, perhaps in an email or blog post?
Did you remove old content or just "pile on"?
In any case, your responses has taken away a lot of my worry, and I definitely see it being less of a problem now, so thank you for that! :smile:
[2022-11-14 06:40:18 AM] : I piled on and didn't make an announcement. But I did take a hiatus so the switch wasn't as jarring as it otherwise could have been.
[2022-11-14 11:08:59 AM] : pretty much the same for me - I just kept writing and piled on. I didn’t take a break in between. You can probably see the transition in my post titles here https://daveceddia.com/archives/ :smile: “Why React? Why not Angular 2?” was the turning point in 2016 and that post attracted a TON of comments and shares compared to the others, which gave me a good feeling that switching to React probably wouldn’t be too bad.
[2022-11-14 03:42:41 PM] : That's amazing! Truly your responses helped so much, thank you :pray:
As I'm having reservations against my audience this gives me more confidence that I can continue down the track of learning and then eventually come back around and change my audience! :smile:
[2022-11-14 04:10:21 PM] : i started off writing for php developers, then wrote for ruby/rails developers, then did javascript workshops, then launched software for freelancers/small agencies, now sell to large agencies and large corporation departments, plus, of course, all this STB/30x500 stuff……… so you tell me :wink:
[2022-11-15 01:54:47 PM] : Well, all I can say is that, how easy you make it sound ties well into how little of a deal you explain it to be in the course :grin::joy::muscle:
[2022-11-15 01:55:05 PM] : But thank you! Very reassuring to hear :pray: