It’s not as if a reader is required to view the blog for work or a school assignment. They can choose to discontinue if they feel they’re not getting out of the experience what they’d anticipated.

My blog is titled “Happiegrrrl Climbing,” and so people rightly assume it will be about the climbing lifestyle. The tagline goes “Where I’ve Been and What Happened While I Was There.” I would hope that most people understand there will be “lifestyle” posts that don’t include climbing.

However, those lifestyle posts DO relate to the climbing scene. I include camp cooking recipes, tips on nature photography and my dog Teddy, who accompanies me on the road.

However, I would feel at odds with posting on something that has no tangential relationship. At one point, I made the decision to draw the line at what relates/does not relate, however loosely I may feel that aplies at any given time….

But…that’s just me.

So far, no complaints. I’ll take it as a sign of success when I start to get them!

Seriously, I kind of like a personal anecdote now and then, as long as it doesn’t go too far.

I do agree that John Chow can and should write about what ever he so pleases. It is his blog. Although he hardly ever writes about making money online he still has the right to write about whatever he wants. His blog is really not that useful or relevant anymore since he stopped writing about his main subject matter. I only occasionally check in on what he has written because he lost me as a subscriber sinec he keeps deviating from his subject. But this is my choice I can choose to listen to him or not and I choose not to.

It is called free will. Use it at your own discretion. Or not.

Ben @ Blogging Experiment, how much traffic did you receive from that comment thread?

Anyway, I don’t mind a little flaming now and then and in fact I’ve been told I’m a bit of an instigator. That being said, I do believe that you should deliver on your marketing promises. If you market your site as a site about TV shows, at least a majority of the time your posts should be about TV shows. I do “vote with my feet” so to speak and skip the posts that bore me and I suspect John’s stats would show that a lot of people do. However, we don’t really get that kind of info from John because it doesn’t play into the image he’s crafted. I don’t mind that so much but it frustrates me that all the people that emulate his blog will be learning a bad habit that John gets away with because of the popularity of his site.

And we have the control on whether or not we read it.

What’s the big deal? LOL.

I bet JC could write about cars and restaurants for an entire month and still earn 5 figures. His money making machine is well primed, so he doesn’t have to work as hard as the rest of us.

Bloggers can write what they want but a blog without readers is pretty pointless so keeping them happy has to fit into the plan somewhere.