This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
If a blog falls in the forest, does anyone read the old posts? Today's caller started a blog with enthusiasm. They wrote a lot of posts, created a lot of content, but then it fell into decline. Hey, it happens to most of them. Most blogs, most online projects.
You're all excited, you work on them for a while, but then you start doing something else. Totally normal. But now our caller is wondering, what, if anything, should she do with that project? So if you have ever started something only to stop doing it after a while, you too would be a terrible person. Just kidding, actually you'd be human.
So in this situation where you have some kind of creative work out in the world, should you close it down, or in this case, delete the blog entirely, or let it live on just without any further updates or attention from you? Now, of course, this is Side Hustle School, so we're looking at money-making projects. Is the answer different if this project is still producing a small amount of income? Like, do you want to just keep it up and earning some passive income, which is usually a good thing, of course, or does it bother you so much that you need to actually close it out entirely and move on to something else? That's our question today.
My name's Chris Guillebeau, thanks for tuning in. The detailed question and my answer is coming up in this short action-packed episode. [Music]
Hello, Chris, this is Jane from Boston. For a couple of years, I had a blog and wrote on it almost every day. It didn't make a ton of money, but it did make some, which was nice.
I finally just got tired and stopped. Now I'm working on a new project and wondering if I should completely delete the blog. I feel torn about it. Part of me thinks, well, I spent a lot of time on it, and maybe some of those posts are still helpful to someone. But another part of me thinks, move on.
Delete everything and do something else. How would you handle this? Thanks for your help and looking forward to hearing from you. [Music]
Well, Jane, it's kind of like this. If we make a list of the reasons to keep it versus deleting it, if we say keep it, well, it's a living archive of something you made.
And that was exciting, right? It was fun and creative and rewarding when you made that thing and put it out in the world, presumably it mattered to you at some point. And so if it can still make money, even if it's small money from time to time, that's pretty cool. Free money is free money after all. So those are some reasons why you might wanna keep it as to why you might delete it.
If you're like, no, I really wanna move on. Well, it might bother you to have something out there that's no longer current or relevant. And I've been through this myself. I'll explain more about that in a second or I'll share a quick story. So you might just want a fresh start or you might find that it's impossible to ignore it completely.
Like it's still out there, doesn't require a lot of active attention, but from time to time, you have to fix something. You have to fix the website or you have to respond to email inquiries about it. So it still takes up some of your attention, like even if it's very little. It's out of sight, but it's not completely out of mind. So I think the important question to answer here is what are the real benefits it's providing to you or someone else by being out there?
And I would also suggest you think about deleting it and consider how that might make you feel. Like you just think about the idea of, okay, it's gone now. How do I feel? Do I feel sad or do I feel relieved? And there's your answer.
So in my case, a few years ago, I had a business called Unconventional Guides. I had spent a lot of time on it for a number of years and then it kind of went into passive mode where I wasn't making new products, but the website was still out there. The products were still out there. They weren't selling a lot, but they were selling some, and so it was nice to have this passive income. But just like I was explaining in that scenario, it still required some occasional maintenance and that maintenance drove me crazy.
Like I just really didn't wanna do it. And so in the end, even though it wasn't a lot of work and it did have some benefit to me to keep it online, I realized that the much greater benefit was the sense of relief I felt upon actually closing the store and like turning off the shopping cart and putting up a page that said, it's been fun. It's been real, but now we're moving on to other things. So I think what it comes down to for Jane or anybody else out there who has a project and it's been published or shared in some way and now you're doing something else, do you completely delete it, archive it, whatever it is, or do you just leave it out there? How are you going to feel with both scenarios?
And that's your answer, basically. So Jane, good luck, listeners, good luck. And if you have a question, come to sidehustleschool.com/questions. I so enjoy making this program for you every single day. Let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions, and I hope you'll subscribe or follow wherever you get your podcasts.
My name is Chris Guillebeau. You're listening to Side Hustle School. [Music]
- From the Onward Project.
