How to Be Wildly Successful in Blogging

There are many things that go into being successful in the problogging arena. Things like putting in the time and effort, determination, hard work, writing chops, and marketing savvy have been brought up by many people. But I think the most important thing doesn’t get talked about a lot. For the most successful bloggers, their biggest trait seems to be the ability to consistently produce conceptually new content over the long term.

Check out the top bloggers in your niche and you’ll probably find that they’ve been around for a while. It’s rare to find a top blog that’s been around for less than a year. And most of them have been around for a couple of years.

But it’s not just the age that matters. During their existence, the top blogs produced unique, original content on a consistent basis.

One of the things I tell people who want to get serious with blogging is to imagine the following scenario.

You’re offered a book contract but the publisher is very small and not well-known. The contract states that you need to complete the book within a year. And there’s one more catch. You only get paid from the book sales. If the book flops, you’ll barely make anything. But if the book is widely successful, you’ll earn a lot of money.

Seems like a pretty bad deal, right? But that scenario is similar to most of our situations.

The net is getting crowded with competition as people are realizing how easy it is to publish. Therefore, it will be difficult to capture attention.

We’re often starting from scratch with our blog. No one knows about it other than family and friends. And we’ll spend a lot of effort upfront not knowing if our effort will pay off.

Let’s go back to our scenario. For the book to succeed, what kind of book would you need to write?

Unique Concepts

Say something new. Or least say it in a unique way.

The best way for your book to stand out from the crowd is to come up original content. If you’re just repeating widely known ideas, your book will flop and no one will read it. But a book filled with unique concepts has a chance to get traction and make an impact in your industry. This kind of book is able to leverage word of mouth marketing, which is almost necessary to do well if you don’t have a big publisher promoting your book.

In the blogosphere, there are so many blogs that just parrot the same ideas. For example, consider the make money online niche. You don’t have to look far to see that most of the blogs in this niche as just saying the same thing over and over again. But the top blogs like Shoemoney and Problogger are always delivering fresh new ideas.

The best post I’ve read on developing unique content is Sugarrae’s great piece, When Unique Content Is Not “Unique”. Make sure to read the whole thing. She writes:

Think of content like movie plots. When a movie is predictable or the basic plot has been done ten times before, you want to see something new – a new spin from the director, a better level of special effects or an unexpected twist to the plotline to name a few. If a movie is a repeat of five others you’ve seen before – and it doesn’t give you anything new aside from different actors, how likely are you to see it again or recommend it to others?

200+ Pages

You’re not Seth Godin so you’ll need at least 200 pages to flesh out your concepts and get your points across. Plus, most popular non-fiction books are 200 pages or more. If you write a shorter book, you might not get taken seriously.

In the realm of blogging, consider how much content the top bloggers have produced. Most of them have written enough content to span several books and they are still going at it. Every year they write enough content to fill at least one book.

Consistent effort gets rewarded. It’s just human nature. People will recommend blogs to their friends because they appreciate the value they’ve received over time. Like that favorite TV show that you never miss, a blog can literally become a part of many people’s lives. But that requires delivering value over the long haul – week in and week out.

But how often do new bloggers start off strong and then after a couple weeks, run out of original stuff to say?

So before you start blogging, ask yourself if you could write a 200 page book on your topic filled with unique concepts.

Count the Cost: The Importance of Experience and Knowledge

If you’re going to write this book, you’re going to need a lot of experience and knowledge. One of the things I’ve noticed is how much experience and knowledge the top bloggers had before they even started blogging.

Look at Shoemoney, Darren Rowse of Problogger, and Brian Clark of Copyblogger.

Shoemoney made a ton of money from internet marketing. Then, he shared his experience by starting his blog.

Darren was a prolific and successful blogger in many niches before starting Problogger.

Brian Clark had experience doing copywriting from his offline business before starting Copyblogger. Plus, he had a ton of knowledge in copywriting because he read the best copywriting books. So when he entered the blogosphere a couple years ago, he was way ahead of everyone else. Today, we think of catchy headlines as common knowledge but headlines weren’t really talked about by bloggers until Brian brought it up. He brought his old school copywriting experience (which places a lot of emphasis on headlines), connected it with blogging, and made a name for himself.

Therefore, don’t be afraid to do some preparation and build a strong foundation before you launch your blog. Gain experience. Do practical things in your niche that will give you more credibility. Gain knowledge. Read a lot. Immerse yourself in your industry for a couple of months by reading books and the top blogs.

There’s no need to rush a blog launch. The internet will still be around by the time you’re ready.

See managing a blog takes a lot of time. It’s hard to produce content consistently and gain experience and knowledge at the same time especially if you have a day job and family. Therefore, getting your experience and knowledge beforehand pays a lot of dividends. Of course, the top bloggers are always learning more about their niche, but they have the time to learn and gain experience since blogging is their full-time job.

Some of you may already have enough experience and knowledge. But don’t overestimate yourself. Writing a 200 page bestselling book is no joke.

Performancing offers blog management services to improve your blog.

How to Find People to Follow on Twitter

We’ve all heard of how awesome Twitter is for social media marketing, but you may not know how to get started. One of the most important and basic things for Twitter marketing is finding people to follow.

Here are a couple ways to do that, so you can start networking with active people in your industry.

1. Search Twellow.

With the popularity of Twitter, Twitter profile directories have started popping up. Twellow is my favorite one. It’s pretty easy to use. Just enter the name of your niche in the search box and you’ll get a list of profiles that are interested in your niche. The profiles will be ordered by followers so you can easily follow the most popular ones.

2. Search Twitter itself.

You can use Twitter’s search function to see which people are currently talking about your industry. Simply search for the name of your industry or other related keywords. Then, check out the profiles and see how often they actually tweet about your niche. The ones that are big fans of your industry are great candidates to follow.

3. Check out bloggers.

Check the active blogs in your niche to see if they have a Twitter feed or a link to a Twitter account. Many bloggers have become active on Twitter, so this method is an easy way to find people to follow.

4. Find out who other people follow.

Once you’ve found some quality Twitter profiles, browse through their friends and see who they follow. I’ve found great people through this technique. Oftentimes, there are quality Twitterers that are under the radar because they don’t follow a lot of people. However, you can find out about them with this technique since many people usually follow them.

If someone follows a lot of people and you don’t want to wade through all their friends, you can ask them for the top 10 people they like to follow.

Over to You

How have you found people to follow on Twitter?

This is a guest post from TwitQA.com, a twitter tool where you can ask and answer questions.

Bloggers: Are you engaging with PR people?

As someone who has worked for a number of blogs set up by traditional journalists with fairly large readerships and crossover into mainstream media (at least as far as companies’ public relations teams are concerned) I’ve been used to getting a lot of direct contact and interaction with PR people from the start.

However, something I’ve noticed recently is that I’m getting more interest from PR companies for coverage on some of my own personal projects – ones that are much smaller in terms of visitor reach and online influence.

I’m not sure how much of this has come because switched-on PRs have found a link between my higher profile work and the more low-key stuff I do, or whether PRs are generally more interested in appealing to smaller, more niche audiences now?

While my ego would probably like to think the former, as someone who cares about the reputation of bloggers and blogs, I’d prefer it to be the second.

Some bloggers (like journalists) get very irritated with the more traditional methods of public relations – phoning to see if you got an email, and then proceeding to explain the contents of the email even though you said that you’d received it – but for others, it’s great to be included because it gives a sense of recognition, even if sometimes you’re just another contact on a mailing list.

What do you think of public relations? (keep it clean). Have you engaged more with PRs in the last year? What could they do to better tailor their communications to your needs?

Finalists Announced In The Blogger Appreciation Awards

The 30 finalists have been announced for the Blogger Appreciation Awards contest. These 30 bloggers were selected out of thousands of nominations after they had survived a semi-finalist round in which the judges initially narrowed the field down to 200. These blogs were selected for their compelling content and active readerships: the two aspects of a great blog.

If you’d like to show your appreciation for one of the finalist bloggers, please make sure to participate by voting at the The Blogger Appreciation Awards voting page.

The finalists are:

• PZ Myers, of Pharyngula
• Jason Kottke, Kottke
• Steven Finch, Crenk
• Gayla McCord, MomGadget
• Phil Plait, Bad Astronomy
• Daniel Scocco, Daily Blog Tips
• Trent Hamm, The Simple Dollar
• Asha Dornfest, Parent Hacks
• Lorelle VanFossen, Lorelle
• Liz Strauss, Successful Blog
• J.D. Roth, Get Rich Slowly
• Yan Fortin, Geeks Are Sexy
• Kevin Palmer, Pointless Banter
• Thomas Peters, American Papist
• Gary Farber, Amygdala
• Laura Rozen, War and Piece
• Olliver Willis, OliverWillis
• Michael Totten, Michael Totten Blog
• Jason McIntrye, The Big Lead
• Brian Clark Howard, URTH Guy
• Deb Ng, Freelance Writing Gigs
• Randa Clay, Randa Clay
• Prince Campbell, Chartreuse
• Steven Snell, DesignM.ag
• Gyutae Park, Winning the Web
• Jonathan Bailey, Plagiarism Today
• Kevin Kraynick, Rump Roast
• Deb Nice, Nice Deb
• Carl in Jerusalem, Israel Matzav
• Char Polanosky, Essential Keystrokes

A Book All About Blogger

While WordPress.com is great, it’s not the answer for everyone. Thankfully, there are many different blog hosting sites to choose from such as Blogger. Speaking of Blogger, there is a new book available on Amazon.com called Google Blogger For Dummies written by Susan Gunelius.

The book weighs in at 384 pages and covers the following topics:

• How to choose a blog topic and personalize your blog

• What you should know about moderating comments

• How to maintain your blog with tools like Blog This! and Quick Edit

• Simple search engine optimization techniques

• Tips for tracking your blog traffic

• Where to find cool free templates

• How to make money from your blog

• Ten useful social networking sites

The book is scheduled to officially be published on February 3rd but you can already grab yourself a copy from Amazon for $16.49. So if you’re into Blogger and are the type of person that enjoys reading printed copy or likes to have a book nearby for quick referencing, certainly look into purchasing the book.

If you’re still not sure about the book, keep an eye on BloggingTips as Kevin Muldoon seems to have nabbed an early preview copy and will be publishing a review of it soon.

A Bloggers Worst Enemy

The other day, I performed a live poll on Twitter asking my followers what they thought a bloggers worst enemy would be? But before I publish their responses, I’ll tell you what I think a bloggers worst enemy is. Carpel tunnel. The reason being in order to blog, you need to type. If you can’t type, you can’t blog. If you can’t blog, you can’t make money. Therefor, I think this crippling syndrome is a bloggers worst enemy. Lets see what other people had to say.

Now I leave the question up to you and we’ll take your answers in the comments. What is a bloggers worst enemy?

Choosing A Perfect Blog Name

Choosing a name for your blog is like choosing a name for a child, choose carefully. How do you go about selecting the perfect name?

Names are tricky, along with choosing your niche a name can be one of the harder initial decisions. Surprisingly hard. When you do find a name that you like then you have to go back to the drawing board because the ideal domain is taken.

You can only do this well after settling on a niche for your blog. Only personal blogs can really successfully start with the blog name and choose the subject matter later! First have a think about what sort of blog you are writing. Take a look around at what sort of blogs are in your subscription list, here are some examples.

• Personal Blog – These vary from “Jo Bloggers Blog” to completely random names. Personal blogs are all about unique personality and the names are either unimaginatively the persons name or evoke the promise of interest and fun. Sometimes a mixture of the two works like in Gill Gunsons Gillianic Tendencies
• Whimsical Blog – If the aim is to be funny then choosing a dry business like name is not going to work. Hugh Macleod is a cartoonist who draws on the back of business cards but he also has made a name for himself with his snarky marketing content, he calls his blog Gapingvoid.
• Product Blog – Product blogs range from the random Woot to the obvious PVRBlog, mainly depending on the tightness of focus.
• Business Blog – Some business blogs are just extensions of the company website, others are consultants and authors who use their own name, or a straightforward nod to the target audience such as Darrens ProBlogger.

So have a think about what your blog is going to be and think about what type of name you need to choose. Descriptive, evocative, direct or metaphor?

I quite like the metaphor route, names like BitTorrent speak volumes to me, evocative names also work for me too which is lucky because I think Performancing falls under that category. They are not to everyone’s taste though, just look at some of the arguments about Seth Godins new Squidoo service name. Product blogs about a particular item or service I think might work best when the name is clearly bound to the product as in the PVR example. A lot has to do with your target audience. What will your audience be expecting?

When looking at evocative or metaphorical names it is sometimes useful to think what the benefit is that your blog will provide, or what problem do you solve? Performancing is clearly about helping your blogging (and revenue) performance. We could have been more direct and called it something with “cash” or “money” or “ROI” etc in the title but Performancing really stands out, even if you don’t like it.

What are your competitors names? If standing out is important then you need to consider what your competitions names are like. If they are all descriptive a more creative name might give you that bit of difference. Your name is very important in branding and positioning.

Will your blog always have focus or will you want to extend out? A more generic name might be necessary if you will want to have multiple blogs off the same root name.

Good names

A really good name for your blog will be

1. Readable
2. Pronounceable
3. Spellable
4. Memorable
5. Concise
6. Unique

Brainstorm

Look at what we have discussed so far and aim to invent more and more words as they spring to mind. Play with ideas. Combining words and creating new words, checking a thesaurus, getting the help of friends and family can all help.

Switch off your internal critic while you create. Jot down every name no matter how daft, at this point you are aiming for quantity, not quality!

Once you have a big long list go through and ditch the worst offenders then copy the remaining list and either choose or get friends to each score a top three. Those you take to the computer and check for domain name availability.

A word on search engines

While there may be a small benefit with search engines to have your domain use a keyword, I believe this is by far outweighed by the branding benefits of choosing a great name. If your best name does not contain your keywords do not sweat. I would much rather have a good name than a keyword-laden one.

Finally

The name you choose will be up to you, you have to live with it. In the end it is your choice so while I have suggested you take others opinions into account, you go with what you believe is right.

For more information on this subject check out my other blog naming articles creating catchy blog names and Better blog branding – what’s in a name?.

How did you choose your blogs name? What feedback do you get about your blog name?

Exclusive: Is b5 Media about to face a mass exodus of bloggers?

Performancing has verified reports with multiple sources that there is rapidly increasing tension between b5 media’s management and its bloggers. As more details emerge, we will bring them to you here.

Two months ago b5 cut over 80 blogs from its networks citing poor performance. Now there appears to be dissension among the ranks as people in the know are reporting the likelihood of a major pay cut coming for almost all b5 bloggers.

As this news spreads, we’re hearing reports of a planned mass exodus coming up among b5Media editors and bloggers which will only get worse once news goes fully public.

We’ll keep you posted as we learn more. Pretty ironic when you consider b5’s very public plea to save KnowMoreMedia a couple of months back. The real question: Who will save b5?

A Note of Clarification: My primary motivation in posting this news was to protect blogger interests. In my world, the two most important things are human beings and the truth. If bloggers are going to get shafted, then I wanted to do what I can to affect change. However, it has come to my attention that the new payment model coming out of b5 Media is designed to more accurately reward performance. If this is the case, and if it is a fair model, then I would heartily endorse the new system. I have always believed that there needs to be a delicate balance between sustainable business policies and worker interests. b5 should be able to modify their business model so that it rewards good workers. My only remaining concern is this: the new system should enable the best bloggers to make more money rather than exclusively rewarding management with the high-life.

Full Disclosure for the interest of Jeremy Wright of b5 Media

Since Jeremy pointed it out, I’ll make the supposed conflict of interest very clear: b5 sells advertising on one of my sites, PopCrunch.

Big freakin’ deal. It has absolutely nothing to do with the news I reported. A classic case of obfuscation.

Blogs.com – The Blog Directory For Popular Bloggers

Six Apart, the creators of the publishing tool MoveableType have recently relaunched their domain, Blogs.com. Blogs.com is labeled by Six Apart as "The Best In Blogs". Asides from having a killer domain name, especially in this day in age, Blogs.com serves as a human edited blog directory with one large post a day dedicated to the hot topic of discussion. The directory contains around 1,200 different blogs from which to search for content.

You may remember when I reported on Rojo, a free RSS and Atom Feed reader went belly up, only to be replaced by something else in the future. That ‘something else‘ is Blogs.com. Rojo was acquired by Six Apart in 2006 and much of the team as well as their ideas for Rojo have been implemented into the site.

Right now, Blogs.com contains a directory filled with blogging celebrities such as Marc Andreessen and Chris Anderson. In my opinion, the bloggers who don’t make much noise won’t see much benefit from being listed within the Blogs.com directory, at least not yet. Anil Dash claims that:

celebrity Top Ten lists let some of the best-known bloggers on the web guide us through the sites that influence them, helping dig up some undiscovered gems you might have missed.

That may be true, but in all honesty, the big boys and girls in the blogosphere all seem to follow each other in their feed readers so I’m not sure how helpful it will be to publish top ten lists from these people. A better alternative would be to publish top 10 lists from those bloggers who never appear on the radar. This would really give visitors a chance to check out some gems. Thankfully, Six Apart plans on rapidly introducing new blogs into the index and even provides bloggers an opportunity to submit their site to them. I’ve already taken them up on their offer and if you blog, I encourage you to do the same by filling out their simple submission form.

As a side note, if you are looking for ideas on top 10 posts, Blogs.com has an entire section on their site for recent top ten lists.

Blogs.com is no Technorati and they don’t rely on any algorithms to determine which content is highlighted on the front page of the site. However, how can you display hidden gems in the blogosphere without looking like you are irrelevant. There always seems to be a group of stories which make the rounds from one blog to the next, if Blogs.com doesn’t publish blog posts highlighting these stories, why will anyone care about the directory in the first place?

Last but not least, there appears to be a few bugs circulating their MovableType Pro installation. As I was searching for more blog posts on the topic of Web 2.0, I received this error:

Overall, I think Blogs.com is just another place for popular bloggers to become even more popular while lesser known bloggers are thrown into the rubble. Considering Six Apart plans on adding new blogs into the directory, I hope this becomes less of an issue and provides lesser known bloggers the chance to appear on the podium. I like the idea that the directory is human edited by a staff of people which will cut down on just about any spam. As for discovering gems and getting the best out of blogs, I think bloggers who know how to use RSS/FeedReaders do a good job of this on their own. With algorithms on Technorati, POPurls, and other popular data aggregation points, why bother with a hand edited directory in the first place? Are these algorithms not doing a good enough job in presenting the webs best content?

It will be interesting to see where the directory stands six months from now. I’ll be interested in the total amount of blogs within the directory as well as the different categories covered. If you have given Blogs.com a look through, please leave a comment and let me know what you thought. Do you think being accepted into this directory will gain you much in the way of traffic?

BloggerTalks Interviews One Of Our Own

BloggerTalks.com, headed by Thord Hedengren has published an inteview featuring our one and only Ryan Caldwell. The interview covers PerformancingAds, the redesign of Performancing.com, the Hive and much more. Here is a sample taken from the interview:

Selling ads is hard, most bloggers have understood that by now. Why will Performancing Ads bring in more money than, say, Google Adsense or Text-Link-Ads?

I think that the question goes in the wrong direction. It should be “How will PerformancingAds compliment and possibly exceed AdSense and TextLinkAds?” The fact of the matter is that we didn’t want to compete with current sources of income, but provide an additional stream that was substantial.

Two of the benefits of being part of PerformancingAds as a publisher is that 1) you get exposure in our marketplace and 2) we have a direct ad sales team working to sell ads for your site.

Be sure to check out the interview and let us know what you think.