Facebook Pixel
Join our Facebook Community

See How Easily You Can Become a Successful Blogger

Posted By Darren Rowse 12th of April 2007 Miscellaneous Blog Tips 0 Comments

This post has been submitted by Neil Patel. Neil is co-founder and CTO of ACS) and writes regularly on social media issues through the company’s blog, Pronet Advertising.

Engadget, The Huffington Post, Boing Boing, and TechCrunch all share the common thread of being wildly popular and successful. While that seems entirely wonderful and we’d all hope for the same thing with our blog, the reality is that most of us will never have blogs that popular. I’m hoping that people will step up and prove me wrong and to give everybody a head start, here are some things we can all learn from the success of these blogs:

1. There is nothing wrong with blogging once a week, but the more you blog the more traffic you will receive. All of these blogs put some merit in quantity and blog a ton of content, yet they try and not sacrifice on quality either. This isn’t easy to accomplish by any means, but don’t fool yourself into thinking that quantity doesn’t matter.

2. Like any normal business, you are going to have a good amount of competitors or in this case people writing about the same thing and fighting for those RSS subscribers. Again, like any normal business you need to carve a niche of your own and really differentiate yourself in the crowd. Pick a passion and become a thought leader within the confines of your niche and your blog will grow in popularity.

3. If you want to make tons of ad revenue you need to focus the topic of your blog and capture a highly targeted audience. This will put you in the right place to charge more money for every thousand ad impressions. Another great thing about focusing your blog on a specific subject is that you also start making money from contextual ads such as AdSense or YPN.

4. Breaking news is an important factor to the success of a blog. If you can scoop others and break news first people will see much more value in your blog. Once you start growing your audience, others will start tipping you off however until this happens you’ll have to put in a lot of effort and let your fingers do the walking in order to get these scoops.

Creating a successful blog isn’t easy, but it is not impossible either. Just like any other business, you want to learn from others who have had great success and more importantly learn from others who have had multiple failures. If you can spot why blogs succeed and others fail you can increase your chances of success. Take a moment to really examine the successful and not-so successful blogs and try to figure out what works out there.

About Darren Rowse
Darren Rowse is the founder and editor of ProBlogger Blog Tips and Digital Photography School. Learn more about him here and connect with him on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.
Comments
  1. hmm, First it said, “most of us will never have blogs that popular.” I empahsie NEVER. Then at the end it said, “Creating a successful blog isn’t easy, but it is not impossible either.” Maybe I am just confused. ::)

  2. Intellgenius: A blog can still be successful without being as popular as BoingBoing and TechCrunch. Depends on what you’re aiming for.

  3. Yes, my blog on meditation can never be as popular as blog talking about Paris Hilton underwear :)

  4. Right… what is successful. some people today would say its someone with a big house, large car, all the toys and holidays

    Yet serving someone, helping someone through a hard time could also be seen as successful

    Its all in the eye of the beholder..

  5. Louis,
    Just depends-some day Hilton will not be as popular while you may be.

    There are many blogs that are reasonably successful, yet not as popular as the ones listed above. I do think at this point it does take a moderate amount of blogging to get the attention needed to become successful. Like the post said, one post a week will not get you there unless you already have some celebrity status that will get people to read you.

  6. Great reminder of stuff we have heard before. Its good to continue to reiterate the important parts to make sure we stay on our toes. Great post, thanks!

  7. A good post, but doesn’t tell us something we don’t already know. Then again some people might not know that…

  8. ummm…is the title of this post supposed to be ironic, or just a trick to get me to read? Sorry to be cranky but I’m getting jaded about titles that don’t deliver what they promise.

  9. Getting a focus for my blog has so far been the hardest thing for me. I’m probably getting more traffic than I’ve a right to, but my blog, like my interests (my life even?) is pretty random.

  10. Building a good blog is hard however building credibility is much more harder.

  11. I’ve found the most difficult thing is getting people to your blog in the first place, but also being conscious of having something useful when they get there.I think hot blogs are great, but a great idea will only be great once.

    I’m lucky that my blog topic, fatherhood, appeals to a large base of potential readers. Now its just finding an original and interesting slant to things.

    M

  12. Thanks for the reminder that our blogs are our businesses. I now that conceptually, but I have so much fun doing mine, that sometimes I forget a very important part of it – getting some revenue.

  13. Barbra,

    I agree, the title should be “It’s Hard to Create a Successful Blog”, a little misleading..

  14. I agree too. I would like to learn more about carving out a niche!

  15. It does not make sense to focus on the revenues in the start-up e.g. fist year. Like in all businesses, you need to invest first by offering an added-value to your audience.

  16. I’m glad you mentioned that it isn’t easy. It seems like most of the sites I visit say it is so easy to make money or have a popular blog.

  17. thanks for your tip, maybe i will try my best in all these things!

  18. I didn’t realize that getting traffic to a blog was so hard. I would like to be a sucessful blogger and I am still learning everyday. I haven’t found my Niche yet and I think this is the biggest hurdle. With the video game industry being so popular and a Multi-Billion Dollar Industry, I am having a hard time just getting traffic and readers and so many people are playing from kids to adults. Well back to the Drawing Board for me lol.

  19. I think we are all curious about how a blogger does what he/she does and how he/she became successful. Since most bloggers would like to know about the success and struggles of a blogger, from the blogger himself / herself, I started interviewing bloggers and posting their responses online at http://www.OneBlogADay.com . It has been quite interesting to hear their stories so far, and of course, a very good learning experience.

  20. So what your saying is that the tile and the content of the article don’t have to match? Hmmm. Isn’t this like the evening news reporting that your tap water could kill you and then tuning in to see that tap water is safe for drinking. Its one thing to have a leading title to draw people in, but it should actually deliver, not point in the opposite direction. My 2 cents.

  21. […] to this ProBlogger post, it appears to be the marketing blogosphere is divided into those who blog about blogging (or […]

  22. patrick says: 04/28/2008 at 3:00 am

    can anyone give me some advise to get started. I’m a teacher looking to get out of teaching and want to work at home blogging seemed right up my alley as I’m severely opinionated

A Practical Podcast… to Help You Build a Better Blog

The ProBlogger Podcast

A Practical Podcast…

Close
Open