I belong to a segment of bloggers who , Post, Sit and Wait. We dream of some influential A List Bloggers stumbling into our blog and giving us the much needed boost by mentioning what great articles we have in our blogs. We live in world of fantasy, fantasising how great our articles are and why people are not noticing such a fantastic blog.
We try various cheap methods like mentioning big names in our post, hoping to lure them to our blogs. Sometimes they come, most of the time, they ignore, because there are thousands of others like us trying to bait them to their blogs too. Even on rare occasions that they do come, they leave after seeing what they saw, which I think to them is as common as a common cold.
Most days, we go scouring around the sphere, hoping to find that non existent killer tip that would propel our blogs to kingdom come, while we sit and enjoy the flight without doing too much. We simply refuse to believe the fact that if any blogs were to be successful, there is hard work to be done and great sacrifices to be made. We hope for a miracle that will never be forthcoming. And why do we behave like that? It all boils down to 1 core reason:
We are too lazy and wants a short and easy path to success.
We refuse to follow the 3 main methods that could possibly make our blogs a little bit more popular.
Free Methods.
Doing all the things in Dosh Dosh’s Secret to Building a Popular Blog is really too taxing and too much work.
Socialising Methods.
Though we read that using social networks like Facebook, MySpace and of late, Twitter, is one hell of a way to increase popularity, trying to digest all of the 7 parts in Caroline Middlebrook’s The Big Juicy Twitter Guide is really too time consuming.
Paid methods.
Spending money for traffic as Daniel advised in his 7 Ways to Promote your Site with a Bit of Money seems totally infeasible to us.
We are adverse to all this 3 areas that many A Listers use to popularise their blogs. We blog diligently everyday, waiting for the big break to fall from the sky. We keep wondering why the day never comes after all the “hard” work we have poured in.
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Great read! I often wish I could write copy as well as that, its just not my strong point. I Think what really drives successful blog traffic is focusing on a niche. Say you want to blog about “blog traffic” in the hopes that you will get “blog traffic”… I would say to instead focus intently on a topic that search engines find related to that in a core way.
Using the clusty.com search engine is helpful for that. So lets say I at askapache.com had a goal to rank highly for “web hosting” so that I could profit from the high-paying hosting ads.. well I would examine the industry and maybe discover that by targetting something not very exciting like Apache Web Servers I could really start to build a solid foundation that grows organically… no tricks at all.
And I was just using the “web hosting” thing as an example, I want to go for the “ringtones” haha jk
Every blogger’s definition of success is very different.
I agree on the niche part where it does help in SEO but at the day, you got to think why you blog in the first place. Is it for fame, money or just pure passion?
Costa, many ppl have regarded you as a successful blogger. BUt then like Patrick said, every blogger’s definition of success is different.
Unless there is an universal blogging ’success’ benchmark, the question of being a successful blogger is controversial.
Sure is helen.
If you are an “A-list” blogger, have you thought what’s next for you?
Continue blogging? Sell your blog? Teach others?
To me, blogging is just a platform to Bigger things. ^ ^
Patrick, Helen,
Every new blogger has great ambitions. They want the world to know them, to read their blogs. No matter what they say, that they blog for pure passion, that they blog for themselves, are all spoken with a self deceiving tongue so that they will feel very much better if no one visits their blog.
Many dropped out when they realised that getting noticed is not just a matter of posting and they will be known. Many also hung on, because they manage to garner about 50 to a 100 people to their blogs daily. In my books, that is not considered successful.
Many blogs stagnates at that point, unable to move forward. It is blogs like this that I consider a failure. They can keep on blogging happily and even make a few bucks from the blog They can even start bragging that they are making money with their blogs, like so many I see in PPS, like as though they are super bloggers, creating a false impression that they like to cheat themselves with.
No, that is not the way, I don’t want to end up being such a blogger. My defination of a succesful blog would be a blog that does not stagnates. It should be a growing entity. It should improve as it ages. As it is, I have 2 stagnant blogs and that is not a good measure of my defination.
That’s why I pay special attention to this blog and if every article I churn out could be as well received as this, with 5 diggs and 4 stumbles, though the number of comments don’t do justice, I think this blog has an equal fighting chance.
There will be a time which a blog you wrote just got stuck. From then, you have to make a decision of whether you still want to blog for it, hire people to blog for you or just sell it to make some money back.
The thing is that if you want your blog to work for you or you want to work furiously in your blog.
I prefer the first option which I dedicate to a blog for a period of time and then either leave it to someone write for me or sell it for a profit.
Usually most bloggers have only 1 or 2 blogs that they really like and will want to blog for them for the long haul.
Frankly, most personal blogs will FAIL because only your friends come to look and interact.
If you really want to make some real money from blogging, you got to target niches and diversify.
In this way, you don’t have to care if Nuffnang is sitting on your blog for months as you have other streams of income.
If there’s Nuffnang ad, then that’s a bonus to me. If not, I won’t feel sad or get pissed off.
In all, making money off the internet has been a lot easier with blogging.
Yeah, ok. But the real issue is how you define success. The blog enable normal people to broadcast their ideas and media. If you seek to have a personal blog, it’s a lot easier to define and achieve success. i recommend it! BTW, to help your cause I submitted this to all the sites.
Thanks Damien!
No problem dude. You have a cool blog. I read about you on Mr. Endoh’s blog. Got ya on the RSS now. Keep the faith!
Subscribed.
If for no other reason than the fact that I’m also the type of blogger this article refers to. =P
Great post, and from what I can see you’re doing a fantastic job. Keep it up!
Don’t worry, I;m lazy too
Ever think that if you made your blog not look like shit it would do better?
Eric,
Thanks for Subscribing!
LOL, aren’t most of us.
TaxX,
LOL.
Becoming an “A-list” blogger is most definitely hard work ongoingly. Also, depending on your niche, it can go one way or the other. Some markets like mine don’t have too many savvy subscribers or visitors interested in becoming part of a blog community
That is so true. Another part that plays into why blogs get traffic is because everyone and their cousin writes about how to get traffic.
There are hundreds of ideas on how to make it work; do they work? Don’t know, but you need to actually do something to see if it works. Don’t just try it for a week and declare it doesn’t work. Test for three months and then see.
Nice stumble bait for bloggers
I often find myself posting every day without a clue as to where this all is going.
Costa:
Your site is great, and you a great blogger. Don’t give up, just define success as you see it. Perhaps your blog does not have the commercial or personal pull, but that takes time and effort. Keep blogging-its all relative and yur efforts will be measurable.
I loved your tongue-n-cheek wry humor in this.
Thanks for those links to the Dosh Dosh article and the Middlebrook Twitter thing, I’ll be checking those out after I post this.
I’m now at Alexa 345,786 and attempting to whittle it away. If ever I hit 100,000 I’m totally throwing myself a big BIG party!
I will declare success only when my blogs are still alive and kicking five years later. By then I’ll be a hard core addict blogger to give up on blogging
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