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How to Build a Successful Blog

Posted By Darren Rowse 5th of July 2009 Miscellaneous Blog Tips 0 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).

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. This is awesome.

    Don’t miss this for the world bloggers !!

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

  3. 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

  4. 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.

  5. 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.

  6. This is quite an interesting video!

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

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

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

    Regards,
    Lee
    Make Money Online

  10. 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!

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

  12. 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!

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

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

  15. 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.

  16. 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.

  17. 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

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

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

  20. 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.

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

  22. 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.

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

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

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

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

  27. 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

  28. Salman says: 07/05/2009 at 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

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

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

  31. 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.

  32. I have seen the video it is terrific!

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

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

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

  36. 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!

  37. 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.

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

  39. 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

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

  41. 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.

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

  43. 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.

  44. 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

  45. 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

  46. 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.

  47. 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.

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

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