Written on July 5th, 2009 at 12:07 am by Darren Rowse

How to Build a Successful Blog

Miscellaneous Blog Tips 90 comments

Tim Ferriss, author of The 4 Hour Workweek gave this presentation at WordCamp recently. His title – How to Build a High Traffic Blog without Killing Yourself.

Tim’s used his blog very successfully to promote his book and has a lot of wisdom to share – we spent some time together before Tim launched his book and it’s been great to watch him rise to the success he has now.

It’s not a short video so make sure you have 50 minutes to watch it (or at least listen while you do something else).

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90 Responses to “How to Build a Successful Blog” - Add Yours

  • Roseli A. Bakar

    July 5th, 2009 12:36 am

    This is awesome.

    Don’t miss this for the world bloggers !!

  • Shaun Connell

    July 5th, 2009 12:36 am

    Tim Ferris is one of the few people whose concepts and articles I’ve never disagreed with. The man is made of pure win.

  • Karl Foxley

    July 5th, 2009 12:42 am

    Super information. I think Crazy Egg seriously rocks! Also use Analytics and Optimizer. An interesting idea about changing categories and calling them topics.

    Thanks,

    Karl

  • Dave Doolin

    July 5th, 2009 12:52 am

    I saw Tim deliver this in person.

    Then I wrote a blog post about it, detailing specific actions people could take, based on Tim’s recommendations.

    Maybe 2 people have read it so far!

    This was before the video was posted.

  • John

    July 5th, 2009 12:54 am

    I saw this video on the wordpress admin page. It was truly mind-blowing. With this in addition to the 31DBBB course, there’s no way I’ll fail.

    Thanks for sharing.

  • Kristian Rodgers

    July 5th, 2009 1:21 am

    Some really good information here. Thankyou!

    http://mrlamius.blogspot.com/2009/06/bass-lesson-archive.html

  • Steven Finch

    July 5th, 2009 1:51 am

    This is quite an interesting video!

  • Eric Hegwer

    July 5th, 2009 2:00 am

    The end is the best! Esp, the “how do I Tim Feriss my Love Life” question.

  • Mike

    July 5th, 2009 2:01 am

    Can’t go wrong with Tim Ferriss. The guy is a genius.

  • Lee Ka Hoong

    July 5th, 2009 2:46 am

    Wow, it’s really a long video clip. Nevertheless, it’s worth to read! Thanks for sharing Darren! :)

    Regards,
    Lee
    Make Money Online

  • Alex

    July 5th, 2009 2:59 am

    Watched it last night. It was pretty good. Tim is a great speaker, and it was entertaining. Although honestly, I’ll save you 45 minutes since it can have been summarized pretty easily.

    Here’s my Tim Ferriss video summary:

    1) POSTING TIMES: Tim’s ideal posting times:

    7am PST
    6pm EST

    2) BEST DAYS TO POST: Best days to post to engage discussion and get trackbacks: Tues, Thur & Saturday.

    3) WORDING: Changing your “Categories” section to “Topics” encourages more browsing.

    4) SIDEBAR BOX & TABS: If you have “All-time most popular” as your first sidebar tab, then it becomes a fulfilling prophecy. Better to follow Tim’s model and put “all-tim” and your 2nd tab (see Tim’s site for the layout).

    5) Add a “Reasons to Subscribe” page near the top.

    6) POST DATES: Because of bias toward newer content, make sure your post date is at the footer.

    7) TIME ESTIMATE: For very long posts, give the reader an estimate (in bold) of how long the post might take to read (e.g. 3 min, 15 min, etc).

    8) RESOURCES: Consider using Evernote for your post research. (Havent tried it yet but it looks very cool)

    9) WRITERS BLOCK: If you’re ever blocked, write about what makes you angry (but never attack other people).

    10) WRITING THE POST: For long blog posts, print out first draft and edit by hand. Dont be concerned with SEO on 1st draft

    11) SEO: if your keyword is “steak” go to google analytics, search for synonyms and sort by average monthly value to find your choices.

    Make sure your post can only be described one way. Do not have 2 topics in one post. You end up splitting your anchor text.

    11) VIDEO & PHOTOS

    “Short” is good when it comes to video.

    Very rarely does he do standalone video posts – he generally has some value-add in the post. Nothing travels faster than text, text stays around and gets indexed. So have at least a “this is what I talk about in this video” text.

    12) CONTENT: Do evergreen content – dont chase the news.

    13) PHOTOS: To find cools photos, go to flickr, advanced search, creative commons, and sort by most interesting.

    14) COMMENTS:

    He uses askimet, and quickly scans thru comments to see if there’s any spam that’s been missed. Deletes abusive comments.

    Tries to save good comments because of hidden gems for use in future posts. Saves them to Evernote.

    Add a “comment rules” section.

    15) PLUGINS:

    Uses very few. One is the Redirection plugin.

    16) USABILITY: Also, embeds crazyegg to track where peope are clicking. It’s a free service.

    That’s my quick and dirty summary. Hope it helps. Enjoy!

  • Kayla

    July 5th, 2009 3:12 am

    Amazing information, and a lot of good tips. Thanks for posting this!

  • Nicholas Z. Cardot

    July 5th, 2009 3:34 am

    I just watched this video over at Daily Blog Tips. It’s long but it’s well worth the watch. Thanks for sharing it with us!

  • teratips

    July 5th, 2009 3:38 am

    Oh Great!, this guy really awesome
    Thanks TIM
    Money , Blogging Tips bu http://teratips.com

  • Jon

    July 5th, 2009 3:55 am

    Awesome presentation, lot of good tips/resources to use. I wish there were more videos like this floating around. Thanks for sharing :)

  • Tiger Singleton

    July 5th, 2009 4:07 am

    wow. I love how successful bloggers break the rules by following what they love. I think as we all begin to define more clearly what it is that we desire as we blog, our duties will unfold with that much more ease.

  • Sean Davis

    July 5th, 2009 4:15 am

    This was a really helpful video. It made me open up my mind to a couple of things that I am doing on my blog that I should probably change up. I’m sitting here with my buddy who has actually read his book. He just gave it to me so I’m pretty excited to read it.

    I only got to about 30 minutes and my internet connection slipped… but I got to the Q & A so I’m good.

    Thanks for the post.

  • Eric Hamm

    July 5th, 2009 4:50 am

    Great video by Tim. I’m really gaining more and more respect for him as I see more of his talks. I think some people see an arrogance in him and he may have a bit of that (or maybe not), but I think more than anything he’s just a really smart guy with a lot of drive and determination.

    Thanks for sharing this with us, Darren. Eric

  • Ebony Jones

    July 5th, 2009 5:23 am

    Excellent resource. Worth the listen. I forwarded this link to a couple of my bloggin’ friends.

  • Traffic Blogger

    July 5th, 2009 5:28 am

    Great information. Thank you for posting this Darren. Seriously, bald guys are good at making money (Seth Godin, Darren Rowse, Shoe Money, Tim Ferriss :).

  • Stephen Bateman

    July 5th, 2009 5:55 am

    He’s a really smart guy. I like that he really tests *everything* and it seems like he’s really got good stuff to say.

    Splendid.

  • Paramendra Bhagat

    July 5th, 2009 6:50 am

    I want mine to become a high traffic blog, sure.

  • Domain Name Blog

    July 5th, 2009 8:46 am

    This information has been posted by various bloggers, including Yaro and John Chow. The quality of information in the cast is awesome; definitely a recommended video.

  • Brandon Harshe

    July 5th, 2009 9:11 am

    I just posted this on my blog today, too! Crazy!

  • Isaac Yassar

    July 5th, 2009 10:07 am

    Why don’t you just write it? I hate videos..

  • S.K SHARMA

    July 5th, 2009 12:12 pm

    Keep it up !
    Keep your wheels turning on.I mean feed us as a blog guru.Really appreciate your tutorial steps.

  • Terrence Wright

    July 5th, 2009 1:00 pm

    Nice Post. I think more blogs should use video whenever possible. Tim Ferriss gives great “content” in this video, not 50 minutes of fluff.

  • Jessica Who

    July 5th, 2009 5:34 pm

    This is a great video.

    I came home from a road trip to St. Augustine Beach for the 4th of July, it’s 3:30 AM and I’m exhausted but I just had to check out the video.

    Great points and advice, I didn’t know Tim before this, now I will visit his blog more often.

    I really love that he drills home the point of having fun, I am definitely having fun while blogging :)

    - Jessica

  • Salman

    July 5th, 2009 7:12 pm

    Awesome video post
    I too want my blog to have high traffic from search engines and become a successful blog.

    Regards
    Salman
    http://www.tips4blogging.co.cc

  • ITrush

    July 5th, 2009 11:26 pm

    Wow, lots of info here, thanks for sharing this video Darren.

  • Gray

    July 6th, 2009 12:22 am

    Tim Ferris is my hero – haha. Can’t wait for his new book to come out, it’s going to be *huge*.

  • Manrevo

    July 6th, 2009 12:39 am

    I watched this last week when he put it up and he does say some very interesting thing.

    Particularly, the times of the day when you should post up articles. When you think about it, those are the times I tend to check blogs or websites most.

    And I’m definitely gonna start to adopt his Friday night posting habits.

  • David Stillwagon

    July 6th, 2009 1:00 am

    I have seen the video it is terrific!

  • fas

    July 6th, 2009 4:28 am

    I think he renamed his video recently. It was know as something else before.

  • LadyD

    July 6th, 2009 4:55 am

    Fun and informative… I’m learning!
    Thanks for sharing!

  • Kenneth Bruun

    July 6th, 2009 5:19 am

    Thanx for sharing this video. I´m sure many bloggers should see this before the start blogging.

  • Jade Craven

    July 6th, 2009 8:13 am

    I hesitated watching this because I was cocky and thought I knew a lot.

    I downloaded it and just listened to the audio but picked up so many little tips that I’m going to implement. I’d be really interested if there was other videos of him that were this useful.

    I now plan to call categories ‘topics’ and will be finding ways to test and monitor certain metrics so I can improve the user experience. Thank you for posting this!

  • ramaraobobby

    July 6th, 2009 3:23 pm

    what is the tool that Tim said he uses on his blog to track the click patterns?
    Is it craziag?? krazia?? or wat.
    I couldn’t find it in google search.
    plz mention the URL here.

    Thanks in advance and many thanks to Darren Rowse for sharing this video.

  • iWrite2Know

    July 6th, 2009 5:29 pm

    I’m sure the pointers suggested by Tim would definitely elevate the morale of bloggers across the globe.

  • Darren Rowse

    July 6th, 2009 7:53 pm

    ramoraobobby – it’s CrazyEgg

  • Kishan Bagaria

    July 6th, 2009 11:58 pm

    Awesome

  • Jacob Stoops

    July 7th, 2009 1:15 am

    One of the best things I’ll take away is the emphasis on conversion research using Crazy Egg.

    Also, Tim looks a lot like Steve-O from MTV’s Jackass television show

  • teratips

    July 7th, 2009 3:33 am

    Thanks again, i come it again for see and hear
    Money Blogging Tips by http://teratips.com

  • Angie (Losing It and Loving It)

    July 7th, 2009 4:12 am

    Excellent video. I really learned quite a bit from it. And thanks to Alex posting an overview above, I was able to grab some stuff that slipped past quick in the video.

  • Kartik@Melbourne dj hire

    July 7th, 2009 9:56 am

    Such a nice video.
    This video is helpful in making the blog.

  • Electronic Music News

    July 8th, 2009 4:34 am

    I have just started my blog and have been reading various websites related to the topic of blogging for tips and tricks that I can implement, and also to get a history of blogging. However, this video has by far been the most informative of any of the materials that I have reviewed.

  • encuentraTuJob

    July 8th, 2009 12:11 pm

    I share with all of you some tips for getting a lot of traffic to your blogs:

    Tip 1: Make a good content
    This point is very important

    Tip 2: Make a brand around your blog
    This point is very important because your visitors return to your blog in the future.

    Tip 3: Get high quality backlinks
    This point is very important because Google is a major search engine.

    Tip 4: Promote your site on social websites like facebook, myspace and news aggregators like Digg.

    Tip 5: Post frequently

    Tip 6: Be patient
    This is the most important tip because only with years of hard work you see a good results.

    http://www.encuentratujob.com.mx/jobCountry/JobUsa.htm

  • Matty @ PTC: Make Money Online

    July 8th, 2009 5:07 pm

    Wow nice share. I’m always looking out for tips and tricks to help improve my blogging and traffic so this is pretty awesome.

    Thanks again,

    Matty

  • Dubai Property Portal

    July 8th, 2009 7:24 pm

    Building a fresh and informative blog, You need to select an impressive title, then articles to comment on should be very informative and to the point.

  • photos on canvas

    July 8th, 2009 9:49 pm

    wow, amazing video. Now I have to think again where I’m going wrong with my blog. Surely it is a great video. I’ll also use the tactics to optimize my blog. Thanks again for such great informative video.

  • Alex

    July 12th, 2009 1:33 am

    This is really awesome! Thanks for posting this. I’m going to forward this to all my blogger junkie friends for sure…

  • BloggerDaily

    July 12th, 2009 6:16 am

    Having a successful blog is our dream. And I pray it comes true! One day we could talk about how we build our blog with our efforts.

    A genius guy. I admire him. Cool. Really cool.

  • Christian

    July 15th, 2009 5:14 am

    What a great vid. Solid, specific pointers and also good overall philosophy. Well worth all 50 minutes!

  • Rebecca Geiger

    July 18th, 2009 2:55 am

    I find the question: Besides the obvious, what other wordpress plug-ins does Tim use? .. I am such a noob, what are the obvious ones?

  • deniz

    July 18th, 2009 3:32 am

    Nice vid thx, got great ideas of blogging in just 50 mins

  • Bond

    July 18th, 2009 3:55 pm

    Awesome tips. I will definitely look to implement the strategies mentioned.

  • SURVEYS FOR MONEY

    July 18th, 2009 7:46 pm

    Just finished watching his presentation and it is amazing. Tim is a great blogger and his personal blog is informative and motivating. Great points were made in his demonstration especially about how you word your content and sidebar tabs. I’ll definitely be listening to his presentation again in the future.

  • Ed Hardy bags

    July 22nd, 2009 5:52 pm

    Just finished watching his presentation and it is amazing. Tim is a great blogger and his personal blog is informative and motivating.

  • Myersdp

    July 25th, 2009 3:58 pm

    Awesome video…
    It worth implementing the stragedy discussed

  • jacob watches

    July 27th, 2009 1:42 pm

    Thanks for all the great ideas about blogging, etc. I’m going to make some changes on my typepad blog asap! thanks again.

  • Sheikh Ahsan

    July 28th, 2009 5:43 am

    Its wayy to impressive….. got loads of stuff in my mind too now… great ideas… i just cant wait to apply them practically. Thanks for sharing!

  • Hudson Gets Paid Online

    July 29th, 2009 5:52 am

    That is an awesome video! It helped me so much! Thanks problogger!

  • Tee Riddle

    August 2nd, 2009 12:54 am

    Last time I checked crazyegg.com was not free. The Basic Plan was $9/month. Perhaps worth the money, but not free.

  • Richard Darby

    August 2nd, 2009 1:43 am

    Great post loads of information ….Tim Ferris is a great speaker…ive been making a few mistakes in my posts with titles ….trying to be clever or funny but not search engine friendly im going to take these tips away with me and ref my readers to this video

    richdarby

  • Fakhrul Alam

    August 2nd, 2009 7:13 pm

    Hi Darren, I have read you post “How to get backlinks” but unfortunatley could not comment on that as it was closed for spammers. ok, I would like to ask you a question? How would you judge a site whether they are best to get backlinks from and do you suggest to comment on each and every post of that site to get more backlinks, or is it that one backlink per site?

    Thanks
    Alam

  • marcus passey ( student of alex jeffreys)

    August 4th, 2009 4:10 am

    Hi Darren

    Wow great video

    let me just introduce myself first my name is marcus passey I am learning to be an internet entrepreneur this year by following alex jeffreys.

    You know I will have to get back here to watch that again so much I can learn here my friend.

    hope to speak soon

    cheers

    marcus passey

  • jessica sanders

    August 4th, 2009 6:31 am

    i would like to make money from home blogging how can i go about doing this im from clickbank.

  • Rohit

    August 4th, 2009 2:47 pm

    Hi Darren, Thanks for the video but above all I am thankful to Alex who did a quick summary and saved my 30 minutes. Still, I will try to have look at whole video whenever I get time.

  • Steven

    August 5th, 2009 12:15 am

    very nice!
    also thanks Alex for the summary of the video.
    pretty useful.

  • bill adam

    August 10th, 2009 9:54 pm

    Nice help full and informative video

    i just saw this video and there very helpfull tips i can utilize for my blog. I have web design blog but i just noticed that there are few mistakes i have done with my blog but i will correct them and going to launch a new hosting related blog with all this tips and tricks.

  • Home Business Entrepreneur

    August 18th, 2009 12:42 pm

    I have been blogging since last year but I could only make very small amount of money from it. After finding this blog, I get more motivated to streamline the focus of my blog and increase traffic to it. Thanks

  • Paul Norwine

    August 25th, 2009 1:45 am

    Thanks for putting this video up. Tim talks about “information overload” in the 4-Hour Work Week and this is definitely true about the amount of information I’m bombarded with regarding building my blog. Even though the video is 50+ minutes, it saves time that I would have wasted “weeding through” the rest of the B.S. Why not just learn directly from the source, right?

    Paul

  • Calvin

    August 28th, 2009 3:43 pm

    Really nice video. I just wanna add another thing. Matt Cutts said if you blog for yourself, you’re a winner already.

  • NFL live

    August 28th, 2009 5:12 pm

    This video is really helpful,
    Now I have several ways to build a great blog !

  • Jeronimo

    August 28th, 2009 10:51 pm

    Very interesting video, actually contains very useful information for bloggers

  • Manoj

    August 31st, 2009 3:02 pm

    Very good video for the beginners. It helped me a lots. Thanks problogger

  • Mas Dhani

    September 1st, 2009 11:47 am

    Thanks darren I know you are genius lbetter than Shoe Money and Yaro Starak

  • Professional Logo

    September 9th, 2009 3:02 am

    CEO – Steve Ballmer confirmed the purchase Tuesday at 10:49 PM PST for an estimated cost of 39 billion dollars. This is a far cry from the original offer of 44 billion. I guess it pays to wait for the perfect time to swoop in and take the bull by the horns.

  • Federal Grants

    September 9th, 2009 3:02 am

    if you have no audience? And if your motives for blogging are fiscally driven to create a secondary source of income, or at least to cover the costs domain renewals and hosting services, then it is going to take a lot of traffic to bring in the revenue

  • Small Business Grants

    September 9th, 2009 3:03 am

    It’s a win-win proposition. And I can’t be the only loyal Times-reading ISO who is standing by, just waiting for the invitation.

  • Earn Money Online

    September 9th, 2009 5:14 am

    Some great tips for building a successful blog, nice video!

  • batterie

    September 10th, 2009 8:38 pm

    Well, Thanks for sharing the video and it gave me some usefull information and it’s a must watch video for every bloggers………

  • Brian Baquiran

    September 14th, 2009 10:15 pm

    This is a great video for those of us aspiring bloggers.

    Also, thanks to Alex for summarizing the video.

  • cdr vierge

    September 17th, 2009 10:34 pm

    Blogs, even corporate ones, are personal. Bloggers put a lot of effort into their blogs, and many put their own personality into them. Most bloggers will be happy to correspond with you if you would like to talk about their blog. However, you must approach them in a personal manner, otherwise it could appear that you are just spamming them or attempting to get links to your own blog.

    Leaving comments is part of the foundation for starting a blog community. Generally, there is a link below each post allowing someone to fill out a comment form. In the form, you can fill out your name, email address, website address, and comment. Comments are fundamental for all blogs for several reasons:

    1. You can get discussions going on a blog post.
    2. It makes it easier for customers to directly comment on what is being discussed in the post.
    3. There is a field in the form that allows you to fill out your website address. This shows other people that you, too, have a blog, and people are likely to click on the link to hear what you have to say.

  • neilhoja

    September 18th, 2009 4:08 pm

    thanks for sharing TIM… an awesome video!

    let’s start ‘blogging’ (again)… ^^

  • Tony

    September 29th, 2009 1:11 am

    Great video for beginners. It helped me a lots.

  • Jaymie

    September 29th, 2009 2:03 am

    This was great – thanks for posting it (and for the warning about the time – it was nice to know going in how long it would run!).

  • moonwalker

    September 29th, 2009 9:12 am

    this is great,thanks

  • Annabel Candy

    September 29th, 2009 7:22 pm

    Well, this is going to be happening for me in stages. Watched 13 minutes so far and have renamed my topics and am planning to remove the link to my Twitter account. I had noticed that it was a popular click through. Thanks for telling me I need to rethink it.

    Re the title – Is it really possible to Build a High Traffic Blog without Killing Yourself?! Mine isn’t even high traffic yet and I have already killed myself over it many many times:)

    Thanks for sharing your top tips lads!

  • rohlinge

    September 29th, 2009 9:35 pm

    As a relatively new blogger, it’s great to read the story of someone who has built a good sized audience by writing about positive methods of self-improvement.


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