So you want to find out how to succeed as a blogger? You are currently searching every possible search engine for tip on how to attract more visitors, or how to make money blogging. Now you have ended up on the one guide that will show you the reality. Not just another top 10 list.
1. Most of the how to succeed guides are crap. They are written by either people, who have been at the right place at the right time, and they quite do not know how they became a success, or they are written by people that found a way that worked for them. Neither of the guides will be an automatic success for your blog.
2. Pay for traffic will give you traffic. StumbleUpon is great for that: http://www.stumbleupon.com/ I tried it out. For $50 I got 1000 visitors within a few days. Great. But the bounce rate was almost 100 %, meaning everybody watched my site for a few seconds at most. Meaning they did not manage to read anything. The average visitor pr day before the campaign was 45, after the campaign it was 47. I do not think that this is the result of the campaign, rather than just the natural evolution of my blog. You could be in luck with such a stunt, and it is not all bad. If you follow my blog you will find out why, in the future.
3. Comment on other blogs is one of the few tips that make some sense. This will drive traffic back to your blog. Wrong! This will drive some rare but good traffic back to your blog, but it won’t create heaps of visitors. I have commented on high traffic sites, only to get a few visitors in return. But it is still important to do so, because of a ton of other reasons besides traffic.
4. Get listed in search engines. Unless you are a search engine wiz you won’t succeed with this. I am a search engine wiz, and know all the tricks, so do a lot of my competition, and I find it hard to get noticed in search engines. But by all means you should optimize for it, but do not expect great traffic in return, but you will get quality traffic, people who are interested in reading what you write. I get about 40 % of my traffic at Never Mind the Manager from search engines and with Google being the number one visitor provider delivering good traffic.
5. Content is king. This is one thing I do believe in. If you got something wise to say, write it down. Produce great articles and the readers will come to you, but not in huge crowds, you are not rich yet. A couple each day might come to you each week. If you write something unique and outstanding the visitors will come to you faster. How many blog posts do you think there is about my topic of the day? “Make your blog a success”. I’ll guess I have a lot of competition, and this one is just as useless as all others. But please keep on reading, as this is important to know. And I will soon reveal my secret to successful blogging to you.
But first here is a nifty little hint; Even if Shakespeare has not published in a while you should. Do not cramp out articles. If your blog is new, and you write seldom, do remove dates from the blog, as you have 80% new visitors anyway the content will be brand fresh for your first timers. And for each post your write there will be additional readers to your blog. Imagine 2 people visiting each blog post every single day. Providing 200 blog posts that 2 people find in some way each day will attract 400 readers to your blog on a daily basis.
6. Is a big audience the motivation for you blog? Then you might be in for a challenge. It is easy to drive traffic, but hard to gain readers. I rather have one new reader than 10.000 new visitors for my blog. And you should want this to, because the fans that subscribe and the fans that keep returning to your site are your true friends in the blog world. Cherish them and love them.
7. Myth Update frequently. A lot of how to blogs says that you should update each day or at least 3-4 times a week. If you got nothing to say, shut up. If you write 5 great articles a year I still would like to read them. Huge masses still read Shakespeare today, and he has not published anything new for centuries.
8. Why do you blog? This is something to think about. What do you want to accomplish? Who do you want to be your reader? The real and true reason why you blog will be your drive and motivation to continue even when you are still writing for a little few. I have two blogs, at one I want to share my knowledge about leadership, motivations and work life. At this blog I want to write about blogging, as I love to blog, share my experience and maybe I can help a few creating great blogs.
9. …time. It takes time to gain followers. I have been running one blog for about two years slowly growing from 1 reader to about 130 readers. The blog has an average of about 50 visitors pr day if there is no stunts going on.
10. Stop searching for “How to make a successful blog” or “How to attract readers to my blog” at google. Start searching for “How to write great articles” or “How to reduce bounce rate” If you don’t you will end up reading crap like these steps that will take you nowhere.
11. Find blog post that you disagree with. And publish a response at your own blog. And then comment the other blog, saying that you have just made a response. This will attract readers to your blog, and those that agree with you might rather read what you are publishing, as they agree with you.
12. My secret is really not a secret. I am a webmaster by education and know a lot of technical stuff that you will benefit from knowing. Keeping your code tidy is one of the important steps you need to take. And you need to be patient, it takes time. And you should blog about something of great interests to you. Start participating in online forums, grow your online community and you will get readers.
What do I do next?
I hope this article shows that there is no shortcut to making your blog successful. You should make sure that the technical flaws don’t get in your way. I have seen some great content on almost unreadable blogs. You could ask me to take a look at your blog if you like. Or you could keep reading some of my earlier writings about bounce rate or read about 10 things your blog needs. And if you like my blog and would like to keep track of my writings, do feel free to subscribe by e-mail or by RSS. I am also on twitter.
