The one thing I really like about blogging is the ease with which you can play with new ideas, explore different territory and just try things on for size.

For the past few months I’ve been trying out a long-term focus, without my usual goal of monetizing what I do.

And I’ve now come to a few conclusions.

The main one is that I have a lot of fun when it comes to focusing on making money - I get so many ideas, and I’ve been missing having those ideas lately.

And the other main conclusion is that with my new blogs - the ones with the long-term focus - I haven’t been enjoying the pressure to write regularly and consistently, even though these are areas that interest me. I love writing posts for these blogs, but I find that I enjoy it most when I’m feeling inspired.

When I push myself to sit down and blog consistently at these blogs, I’m just not having fun with any of it.

It’s far more fun to network with other bloggers when it’s not something that’s on my to-do list for the day.

In other words, I’m finding that blogging about my passions has all of a sudden taken on the feel of “a job”. Which was not my goal.

I have no problems blogging at my niche blogs, though, the ones that do make me money. In fact, I rather enjoy my daily blogging. It’s fun finding things to blog about, it’s fun checking my feeds, it’s fun watching my stats and checking the various monetizing avenues I’m employing.

My freelance blogging is also quite enjoyable, too. When I find material for each post, I get this nice little feeling of achievement.

And lately I’ve been having a run of success with some of my older blogs, ones that I hadn’t actually been blogging at very consistently. Sales are up, impressions are up. (Don’t ask me why. I don’t know. Yet.)

New ideas to expand on things are now brewing. Bringing me back full circle to thinking about making money.

So I’ve decided that I’m just going to go with what feels best for me.

I enjoy my new blogs, and readers seem to be interested in what I write - I’ve been getting quite a lot of feedback, especially through email. I’m finding that I want to keep enjoying my new blogs. Not feel forced, not feel constricted.

So I’m going to commit the blogging heresy of writing when an idea comes to me, and not forcing it otherwise. At these blogs, I don’t see the point of posting “stuff” just for the sake of posting regularly. I have the feeling it’s not really what my readers are looking for.

And I’m finding that my focus has shifted back to the money. It’s just too tempting, all these new sales and the increases in traffic that some of my niche blogs have been attracting.

Not to mention, it’s prime time now to gear up for the Christmas season.

So this week, I’ll be spending time adding links to monetize old posts. It’ll be quite a chore, but I’ve been finding that there IS gold in my archives.

And I’ll be writing at my new blogs when inspired. I have this funny feeling that I’m going to be more inspired than not, now that I’ve made this decision.

Of course, I reserve the right to change my mind yet again anytime in the near or distant future.