Ive been thinking about setting up a blog as both a personal outlet/rant area and to help promote some other sites..Im wondering about the effectiveness of general blogs...say blogs that cover a wide variety of topics, over blogs that specialize. In all likelihood ill be posting about a wide variety of topics..from websites, to politics, to the environment, to domains, to games, to movies, to "classy" pron, cultural stuff, sport...you get the idea Would a general blog loose its value in passing on traffic to other sites?, and more importantly loose its potential to attract visitors if you dont keep it specific...?
Niche is always superior. General blogs will most likely not get too much return action--in my opinion. Let's say I am Mr. Political Science Scholar and I go to your website to see what your mind has cooked up. I find an interesting political post, but then there's all this other stuff. Since it looks like politics is only 10% of your blog, I never return. I really don't care about your dating action, your smut collection or your thoughts on last night's episode of Dancing with the Stars (WHY GOD WHY). See what I am saying? It's ok to talk about some linked items (example: politics and environment). The blog also will have much more value if it's niched and passing to a site in the similar niche. General content blogs are good for learning how to do things and making pages. Some people can't niche because coming up with content is a problem. Those that can Niche, those that can't Generalize. *these are just my opinions after 3 hours of sleep. Seek other advice.
My personal website is pretty much a general whatever I want to put down blog. Had about 20,000 uniques this month. Probably spend about an hour or two a week on it. I've got some ad's in there but it certainly doesn't pay as well as other blogs on other niche subjects.