Start afresh, modify or add to existing website? Advice needed

Hi all,

I’m hoping to draw on your expertise for some advice.

I started a blog a couple of years ago, on Wordpress.com without much knowledge or purpose. Having posted fairly consistently for about a year I ran out of steam and left it pretty dormant since Aug 2020. There are 35 posts, 391 backlinks (67 no follow), 159 organic keywords but low monthly traffic ~ 250 visits. Domain authority is also low at 10.

Having recently started a different website (for business) and fallen down the SEO rabbit hole, I’m inspired to now restart this blog but with a view to total redesign, refocus and starting to monetize in 6-12 months when I build some decent traffic. The existing blog posts are topic relevant but I’d like the new site to focus primarily on less personal and more evergreen content, that I can regularly update and build on. I’ll also be adding other topics, reviews etc. but could include blog content too.

As a final bit of background I’m going to move the site from Wordpress.com to wordpress.org so I can use plugins, better themes etc.

I’m two minds whether to just use the domain but not the content (ie. a blank slate) or keep the posts and rewrite /optimize them better to provide a starting base of content.

Questions: - Is there any real benefit keeping the existing content given the very modest traffic it generates? - If I start afresh and delete all the existing content/posts will Google penalise me? I assuming this negatively impacts backlinks? Should I set up any redirects or is there another best practice to consider? - When moving from wordpress.com to wordpress.org I am considering setting this up as a sub-domain on BlueHost (under my existing small business account). I know this is a budget host but it works okay for my budget. Does a subdomain impact speed? Does this impact future SEO prospects for either site? Does this negatively impact the primary domain ie. my small business site?

Any other advice or things I should think about?

Thanks in advance for your help