As always good stuff, problogger

I think possibly I’ve gone too commercial too fast, and have changed the flavour of my blog, and this may have put some off.

Still, it’s early days, I’ve only been up an running commercially since October last year when I bought my domain and moved over from Wordpress.

Kaila’s article has caused me to reflect, and, hopefully focus more on being a tortoise and not a hare.

As ever Problogger provides me with hope and inspiration.

Cheers!

Alex

Being patient is very difficult sometimes. We all tend to be wanting an overnight success.

I’m a little obsessed with stats and also tend to give too much care for small things (design and xhtml/css coding validity and stuff).

What’s more important is quality contents… I often forget this. This article is good reminder.

Thanks!

@Mike King, you’re so right about most bloggers doing well with 20 months under their belts; imagine how well they’ll be doing with those seemingly unattainable 5 or 10 or 20 years…

@Peter of Web Tool Tips, you’re hilarious! My two-step plan for you: 1) Get a rifle; 2) Shoot the tortoise.

I can’t help but notice that there’s a pattern in these responses; namely, that it’s easy to feel alone in blogging. @The Crazy Columbian offered a great step 5, so I’ll put forward step 6: get a training partner.

Blogging is not a glamorous exercise; it’s one that requires a lot of self-discipline without any immediate rewards. Having someone to share the journey with (like the people on this site) helps to keep us motivated.

Thanks everyone for keeping me motivated!

It lies true with regards to blogging..Patience is a need to all bloggers. Blogging earnings is not easily pouring out everyday especially if you are a newbie..

it really takes times before generating frequent visitors and buyers for our blogs…

Thanks again!
I will surely come back here again..

I would totally agree on that because blogging would not be easy without the help of other individuals.

In fact, there are times that we also view other peoples blog just to have something to post on our websites.

I may say that we could not credit all the success that we are having to ours alone.

Personally, I have so much fun doing this and actually building something from the ground up that I can’t see myself NOT doing it. It’s somewhat addictive and I think I’m finally getting to the point where I’m ready to participate in the community part of this adventure!

Sophie
:)

It’s more an ego thing really. I want to know that people are reading the site. That they like it….you know “they like me, they really really like me!”

Being patient is hard but good advice…keeps you from being discouraged.

I just started a month ago and it is hard to be patient when you have a friend with large readership who has been the tortoise and started two years ago. She deserves the higher rankings because she has been working it!

I would add that commenting on other blogs, putting your name into links, contests, telling your friends and family, etc. are all a part of marketing yourself. Marketing is key to success in any field including blogging and a lot of what marketing is about is building relationships.

This is a great post. Too often we hear of bloggers who have thousands of visitors a day and tens of thousands of RSS feed readers/subscribers, but we forget they have been blogging for years.

Your post puts it all into perspective. Patience, perseverance and determination pays off.

. Kaila’s post reminds me why I blog in the first place — to help people. I needed to be reminded to be a tortoise day by day and work for the love of doing it, not the results.

it serves as a really good reminder that it is not all for naught (as some dude told me recently – would you believe that)

I have come to really appreciate some bloggers I have met recently on my way up and I see there is value in link love.

Yes, there are many new blogs every day – but with dedication, one can stand out. This is my goal

very inspiring post :)

Thanks for the reminder! This was a great post and inspires me to keep going!

Even though I’m new, I constantly feel let down why nobody seems to be reading my blog. Let’s face it, we all write because we want to have our ideas heard (or in this case, read). Even the smallest experience would gain significance if somebody else somewhere adds his/her thoughts to it.

That said, at times, we personal bloggers find ourselves at a crossroads on whether to continue to write for ourselves or to write for our audience. Do you have any tips for this kind of situation? I’d really hate to have to close down my blog because it’s no longer going in the direction I intended.

Checked out your blog Kaila, and I like it :)

great choice for a guest post. I really liked how Kalia made very simple, yet profound points about blogging.

There is one more point I’d like to add to Kalia’s four (yes, for those that misunderstood the reference to ‘5 Easy Steps to Number 1′, let me add a fifth one for your perusal).

5. Reinvent yourself
For many of us, blogging started as a hobby with no defined purpose. Some will stop blogging within days/ weeks / months, and some others will keep going. For those that keep going, a subtle yet powerful transformation will happen over time. They will become more passionate about their readership, and start becoming more interested with the ‘Expressions of Interest’ from others: Page stats, subscriber counts, Number of comments to their posts.

At this point, a transformation often takes place: As per Skellie’s suggestion, we start re-evaluating who is our target audience, and what topics do we want to focus on for them. (link) As we follow this line-of-thought, we often re-invent ourselves.

When I started writing my blog, I was very broad on my intentions: I just wanted to put down some of the ideas and thoughts that occupied my mind while I was in boring meetings; I sort of started a series around paradoxes (see here and here for examples). Yet as I continued blogging, I decided to add more depth and research to my topics. I used stats & comments to help me make decisions on how to refine & improve my posts, and to some extent reinvented myself within the confines of my blog.

My advise: Re-invent yourself with some regularity. If something is not working, listen actively to what your readers “tell you” with their activity; and re-assess whether you are hitting the mark for your audience.