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Timothy Ferriss vs Gary Vaynerchuk – Two Approaches to Successful Blogging

Posted By Darren Rowse 4th of October 2008 Miscellaneous Blog Tips 0 Comments

One of the things I love about the blogging community is how there’s such a diversity of approaches being tried by successful bloggers in their pursuits.

Take for instance two well known bloggers – Timothy Ferriss and Gary Vaynerchuk. Both take different approaches but both have been very successful in building strong online presence.

Timothy is famous for his book The 4-Hour Workweek a book looking at the simplification of life, outsourcing and focusing upon the important tasks at hand. Tim certainly works hard for his money but his approach is certainly a little different to Gary’s.

For example Tim has written here at ProBlogger about how he finds that posting every 4-6 days on his blog is enough (and actually beneficial).

On the other hand Gary Vaynerchuck’s inspirational keynote at Blog World Expo showed a different approach with a guy working massive hours, arguing that you should respond to every single email you get and that you need to be producing content every day.

Both of these guys have built successful businesses and great online presences through their blogging and social media (and I’m sure that there are some similarities between them also ) but both have done it differently.

To me this is encouraging. There are not ‘formulas’ and there is room for a diversity of approaches!

Which bloggers approach do you resonate with most – Gary or Tim?

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. I so agree with this post. Everybody has different abilities and styles of working and playing. I felt relieved because sometimes I just enjoy working it feels like play. Then I’ve had enough and I HAVE to get out to the tennis court and blow off steam. A day without a creative process, learning something, accomplishing something feels empty. I don’t have to feel guilty anymore.

    Thanks Darren.

  2. After 5 months, I’ve realized I was wrong.

    I was the first person to reply to this article, and I have been a longtime supporter of Tim Ferris.

    However, I think both Gary and Tim are right in their own way – and for *bloggers* I think that Gary is right on the money. I cannot build a community without being involved in the community. My blog and it’s readership are shaped by my blog and voice.

    Now, I have been experimenting with outsourcing some more mundane blogging tasks – trackback/comment moderation, post formatting, post promotion, finding appropriate images, proofreading, etc.

    But I was wrong when I said I was on Tim’s side. I do agree with Tim that I should only do what I’m best at: being me, writing, interacting with readers. But I was wrong about being so hands off. I do reply to just about every email and every comment, and I do go out there and comment on related blogs and interact with other bloggers via email, facebook, twitter, IM, etc.

    Personality takes time. I doubt Gary does everything himself, I know for example he outsources development to folks for ruby on rails stuff (the recent Corkd issue), but all of the Gary Vaynerchuck brand is built by Gary, and all the Tim Ferris brand is built by Tim.

    Tim may not check his email often or take phone calls, but he’s everywhere – on panels, doing presentations, writing on his blog, on twitter, on Facebook. The difference I think is that Tim doesn’t refer to the time he spends “being” Tim as work, but that’s what it is. Gary on the other hand, does see being Gary Vaynerchuck as a full time job.

    Being Sid Savara, too, is a full time job. It has taken me months to realize it.

  3. I just love the fact that different bloggers can take completely different approaches to their blogging and get equally successful results. It just goes to show that there are many different paths to achieving great success in the blogging world and elsewhere.

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