How to Stop Being Boring (and Why You Probably Are)
I’m boring and you’re probably boring too.
I just listened to this interview with Seth Godin. He gives really good advice about how to successfully run a business. You should definitely listen to the whole thing if you want to make more money with your blog.
One of the things Seth said that struck me is found at the 38:30 mark. He said, “If people aren’t talking about you, they’re not talking about you for a reason. And the reason isn’t that they dislike you. They’re not talking about you because you’re boring.”
These are harsh words, but the first step to solving a problem is admitting that it’s there.
If you don’t fit Seth’s criteria, if people are talking about your blog, congrats. Keep doing what you’re doing. But I think for most of us, people don’t talk much about our blogs.
So, what’s the remedy? Seth recommends being different.
Stand Out From the Crowd
If you want to be more interesting and less boring, you need to do something that the other blogs in your niche are not doing.
At the 39:34 mark, Seth tells an anecdote about a street in New York City with 18 Indian restaurants. One of the Indian restaurants claimed that they had the spiciest curry in the city. They had a deal that if you could finish a bowl, you got it for free.
Guess which restaurant had the most customers? The one with the spicy curry offer.
Yes, this advice of being different is not new at all. In fact, it’s become a cliche in online marketing circles. But how many of us are actually different from our competitors? If we’re honest, our blogs are very similar to other blogs.
We underestimate how similar we are to our competitors. Consider the following experiment.
Take a post from your blog and a couple posts from other blogs in your niche. Blank out the names and print the posts without the formatting and blog design. With just the printouts, would people be able to tell which post is yours?
Take Risks
To be different, we’ll have to be risk takers. It’s risky to break away from the crowd and do things differently. But like the Indian restaurant, we need to figure out our own unique offer. We need to find something to stand for.
Taking risks will leave us open to criticism since there’s always a group of people that doesn’t like change. Innovators have always had their critics but the critics shouldn’t keep us from taking action. As long as we have enough supporters, we’ll be fine.
My Application
Like I said, I’m boring. After listening to Seth, I realized that most of the content on my gaming blog can be found on other blogs. The main reason I still get a lot of traffic is because my competitors don’t do keyword research.
But that’s hardly a competitive advantage.
There are a couple blogs with much lower traffic that have more influence than me. They have more natural links, Twitter followers, and comments.
I tried to apply Seth’s principles and I came up with these three action items.
1. Narrow my blog’s focus.
I cover too many topics. This is a consequence of just being lazy and not taking the time to figure out the core of my blog.
I realized I’m only really interested in two topics, so I’ll only write about those. This should differentiate my blog since most blogs cover a lot of topics. My niche is pretty big so I should still have a big enough audience to support a business from the blog.
2. Cover a topic that doesn’t get talked about a lot.
One of my topics doesn’t get much airplay, so I was hesitant to write about it. But after some research, I think there’s a market for the topic.
I’ll probably have to sacrifice some short-term traffic. People are not searching for keywords on the topic and I get most of my traffic from the search engines. But by covering the topic, I hope to create my own keywords and make them popular.
For example, a couple years ago seo book was not a popular search term until Aaron Wall saw a market for a book and released his SEO ebook. Once his book was released, the keyword started to pick up and now it’s popular.
3. Sell my future product at a higher price point than the norm.
I’m working on a membership product that I hope to release in the next couple of months. I was going to charge the same price as other membership products in the niche. But I always felt those prices were too low. Also, my product will cover the topic that doesn’t get much coverage, so I should be able to charge more.
Over to You
Are you different from other blogs in your niche? If you are, please give specific examples on how you are different. If you’re not, how can you stand out from the crowd?
Performancing offers blog management services.
Productivity Tips For Bloggers From a Bestselling Author
Steven Pressfield is great example of perseverance for anyone in the creative field including bloggers. His first couple novels never saw print. But he kept at it and 17 years after his college graduation, he finally got a book published and received a paycheck. His later books became bestsellers.
In this podcast interview, he gives a couple productivity tips that have really helped me in my blogging.
The Writer Life is a Battle
At 1:41 of the podcast, Pressfield talks about the writing process as a war. To succeed, you have to have similar qualities of a good warrior; qualities like courage, patience, and long-suffering. He brings up the image of an infantryman that’s gaining ground on the enemy slowly but surely. In the day to day struggle, writing is like that.
This principle has helped me realize that blogging is hard work. Sure, there are days when the words come easily and I knock out a quality post in a couple of minutes. But those days are few and far between. Usually, it takes me awhile to get going. My first few sentences are pretty bad and I have to struggle to stay focused on finishing the post. By the time the post is done, I’m satisfied but I’m mentally tired.
Resistance is the Enemy
At 14:25, the interviewer quotes Pressfield’s book The War of Art:
There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t and the secret is this: it’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.
Pressfield goes on to talk about Resistance as the negative force that rises up whenever we want to start a creative task. Resistance shows up in many forms: procrastination, self-sabotage, excuses we make up, reasons we give ourselves that we’re not good enough, self doubt, etc. The most important thing for a writer to do is overcome Resistance.
Pressfield says that Resistance comes to us in negative voices. Our task is to ignore the voices and realize that they are bulls**t. They are keeping us from making progress.
I found this principle very helpful because it showed me that I’m not alone in the creative struggle. If a bestselling author has to deal with Resistance, then I will have to deal with it too.
Also, by identifying the enemy, Pressfield helped me not to be surprised by Resistance. I am prepared to deal with it because I know it’s there.
Turn Pro and Stop Being an Amateur
At 25:00, Pressfield gives a great metaphor for overcoming Resistance. He says we have to “turn pro.” When we see ourselves as amateurs, we will yield to Resistance when our circumstances become tough or distractions come up.
But if we think of ourselves as pros, we’ll have the mindset to carve out daily time to pursue our creative endeavors. As pros, we won’t give in to external influences.
Pressfield brings up Kobe Bryant. During the season, his knees may hurt and his back may be sore, but he still suits up and plays in the game. Pros like him don’t make excuses. They see their task as a job instead of a hobby.
Pressfield says a mysterious thing begins to happen when we turn pro. Inspiration starts to flow regularly as we persevere and make it a habit to work on our craft daily.
Further Information
Make sure to listen to the whole interview where Pressfield has more advice for writers. Check out his book The War of Art for an in-depth treatment about productivity and overcoming procrastination in the creative process. Also, he started a new blog, which includes writing tips.
Performancing offers blog management services.
How to Sustain Inspiration in Blogging
Jason Fried from 37signals talks about sustaining inspiration in this speech at around the 19:40 mark.
He suggests that inspiration is perishable. He contrasts the lifespan between the actual idea and the inspiration for the idea. The idea lasts forever but the inspiration can go away.
He likens inspiration to a perishable good like milk or fruit. Like these goods, inspiration has an expiration date and it doesn’t stay fresh very long.
He advises that if you’re inspired about something, if you motivated to do something, you need to take action as soon as possible. If you wait to do it later, you won’t be as motivated. Every day you don’t take action, your inspiration starts to rot and go away.
Also, you’ll have the most creative energy during that initial spark of inspiration.
Blogging and Inspiration
In blogging, I’ve found Jason’s theory to be true. I have many ideas for blog posts that I came up with in the past. At the time of idea conception, I was excited about the ideas. However, a couple weeks went by and I still hadn’t turned those ideas into blog posts. Now when I think of the ideas, I’m not excited about them and I wonder what ever happened to my inspiration.
On the other hand, if I come up with a good idea and then work on the post right away, writing is much easier and I have a good amount of creative energy and motivation to complete the post. This is why it’s a good idea to read only when you have time to act on it.
You’ll be more productive and your content will be better quality if you’re inspired and motivated rather than trying to “force out” a post after the inspiration has gone away.
Over to You
How do you sustain inspiration? Have you ever experienced “rotting inspiration”?
Performancing offers blog management services.
Improve Your Blog’s Brand by Creating New Jargon
Yaro Starak has some great advice for bloggers in one of his recent posts. He advises us to create new jargon for our niche. This strategy builds the perception that we are experts who know what we’re talking about. Also, a new term or buzzword can function like other branding elements such as a logo, blog design, or writing style since the term will remind people of our blog.
Borrow Terms From Other Niches
You don’t necessarily have to create something completely new. You can take jargon from other niches and apply them to your niche.
For example, Bill Simmons is a sports writer that’s famous for an NFL playoffs gambling guide. I think one of the reasons his guide became popular is because he gave it a unique name. Instead of just using a generic name like “A Guide to the NFL Playoffs”, he called it “NFL Playoff Manifesto”.
The word “manifesto” is typically used in politics, arts, and technology, but Simmons creatively used it for American football. The unique name of his guide differentiates it from other guides, which gives him an edge in perception and branding. Plus, “manifesto” sounds more authoritative than “guide”.
Help Your Readers Understand Abstract Concepts
Not only does new jargon brand your blog, but it can help your readers understand abstract concepts. For instance, consider Seth Godin’s term purple cow. He invented that term to help online businesses understand the classic marketing concept, unique selling proposition, or USP. USP can be a difficult concept to understand but the metaphor of a purple cow standing out in a field of regular cows makes the concept easier to understand. Also, the concept sticks better since it’s hard to forget a mental image of a purple cow.
Keep Important Ideas Fresh in Your Readers’ Minds
Sometimes a term gets overused and becomes cliche. You can give it a fresh, new name to keep your audience’s attention. For example, some of the basic advice for bloggers is to “write quality content”. We get told over and over that “content is king”. Yaro created a new buzzword, pillar article, to remind us the importance of quality content. Also, his term helps us think about quality content in a more concrete way. Chris Garrett and Brian Clark have similar words, flagship content and cornerstone content, respectively.
Make Your New Concept More Memorable
If you come up with a totally new philosophy or idea, you’ll definitely want a short, catchy buzzword to quickly describe it. A short phrase is much more likely to spread virally than a long-winded explanation. Consider Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Workweek. He uses the term lifestyle design to refer to his philosophy of escaping the 9-5 job and living your dream life. And he calls the people who are successfully implementing the philosophy the new rich.
Give an Unnamed Concept a Name
Finally, you don’t even have to actually develop the concept. You can take an existing but nameless concept and give it a memorable name. (Of course, give credit to the original source.) For instance, Malcolm Gladwell popularized the term 10,000 hours rule, which states that it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to achieve expertise in a skill. But he got the concept from chess. Studies have shown that it takes at least 10,000 hours of chess practice before you can become a grandmaster. Gladwell took this concept and applied it to many different fields in his best-selling book, Outliers.
Over to You
Have you ever created a new buzzword?
What are some ideas for new jargon that could work in your niche?
Performancing offers blog management services.
Why Being Self-Centered Can Actually Help Your Blog
Brian Clark from Copyblogger recently released a free report entitled The Lateral Action Guide to Becoming a Creative Entrepreneur. I just finished reading it and like most of Brian’s stuff, it was very good.
I was surprised though at one of his recommendations. He advised aspiring entrepreneurs to be self-centered.
He pointed to 37signals, a popular software company that’s become very successful by only creating products that they themselves would find useful. On page 14, he quoted the CEO, Jason Fried:
We just build stuff we want to use. If we need it, they need it.
It was surprising to see this principle from Brian because one of his main tenets is focusing on the needs of your audience. I was a little confused but as I read on, Brian demonstrated that self-centeredness and focusing on your audience doesn’t necessarily contradict each other.
If you’re like many bloggers, you’re in a niche that you’re passionate about. Therefore, you are part of the audience you aim to serve. If you can create something that will help you, it will probably help your audience too.
Consider one of Brian’s products, the popular Thesis theme for Wordpress. As a writer that’s not skilled in tech or design, he could sympathize with the barriers writers face when publishing online. Therefore, he partnered with a designer to create an easy-to-use, attractive theme.
Here’s another example. Pat Flynn setup a blog as a reference tool to record his notes for an upcoming architecture test. He was not looking to make money. But because of his notes, his blog attracted traffic and multiple readers told him he should write an ebook. He wrote an ebook based on his notes, did some research about online marketing, and then started selling his book. Soon, his blog was earning him a full-time income. You can listen to his story here.
I read somewhere in an interview that Perez Hilton, the popular celeb gossip blogger, blogs for himself and doesn’t really focus on traffic. He said he would blog even if no one was reading his site. That’s how much he enjoys writing and following celebrities. And there must be many other celeb gossip fans since his blog is one of the most trafficked sites on the planet.
I looked back at my best posts on various blogs and found that I wrote many of them as warnings to myself. For example, I reread this post when I’m tempted to overextend myself and manage too many blogs. And I wrote this post to increase my patience and to remind myself that successful blogging is a long-term project.
It can often be hard to figure out what your audience wants. But if you consider your own needs, you might just find that they are similar to your audience’s needs.
What do you think about the self-centered principle?
Performancing offers blog management services.
A Blogging Case Study: Covering a Big Event in My Niche
A couple days I tried an experiment in which I covered a big event in my niche.
My blog is in the gaming niche. More specifically, I write about Magic The Gathering (MTG), a popular trading card game. MTG recently had their World Championship Tournament. This tournament happens once a year and take four days to complete. It is the most prestigious event on the calendar with over a quarter million dollars in the prize pool. This year the winner received a $45,000 check.
I knew that many players would be following the tournament online so I did my best to cover it myself. My hope was to get a lot of traffic by ranking for the relevant keywords that would come up as the tournament progressed.
I was pretty happy with the results 
The graph above shows my visitors from the last 30 days. As you can see, my traffic had basically plateaued in the first 25 days. But during the tournament, my traffic grew sharply and the two days after the tournament I had my first ever days with over 1,000 visitors.
In the rest of this post, I’ll share what I did specifically. Hopefully, you can apply them on your own blog and get traffic spikes too.
Improve Your Speed
Speed is important because most of the topics from a big event are time-sensitive. The interest for the topics is high during the event but after the event finishes, people will quickly move on to the next big thing.
I found this out the hard way earlier this year. I was doing some work for the sports section of a site. The Super Bowl had just finished so I started working on an editorial piece about the game. I finished the piece five days later and sent it to sports blogs to see if they would link to it. I got a couple of links but some of the blogs said the Super Bowl was already old news so didn’t link. They said if I had published a couple days earlier, I would’ve gotten a link.
Once you find out some noteworthy news from the event, publish a post about it as soon as possible. Otherwise, the news will get old and you’ll miss out on the traffic from the initial buzz.
For the Worlds tournament, I published my posts within 12 hours of the news being released.
Work Long and Hard
You may have heard that writing more posts results in getting more traffic. That is usually true and the traffic is magnified when you write a lot of posts about a big event.
Typically, I only write 1-3 posts per week but during the tournament, I wrote 7 posts. Those 7 posts totaled about 7,000 words. This was a big change since I usually only write 750 – 1500 words a week. Needless to say, I sacrificed some sleep to keep up with the tournament and write all those words.
Therefore, if you want to get a lot of traffic from big events, make sure you have enough time to cover various issues and news. And be willing to work hard during that time period since you’ll have an increased workload.
Add Value
I don’t think it’s not enough to get people to visit your site. If all you do is cover the event, they may not have incentive to become a repeat visitor. There are going to be other blogs that cover the event too so you need a way to differentiate yourself from them. You need to give your new visitors a reason to come back to your blog. You can increase your chance of turning them to repeat visitors by adding value in your coverage. Instead of just rehashing the news, figure out a way to add something extra.
I tried to add value in a couple of ways.
During the tournament, the hosts interviewed players on video and asked them about their strategies. The videos did not include notes, so I took notes of the videos and added them to my blog. My hope is that people will bookmark my posts for reference since text is generally a better reference source than video.
Also, since I’m a winning player and I keep up with the tournament scene, I made sure to give my thoughts on the various strategies being used in the tournament. Instead of just reporting the strategies, I evaluated them. My hope is that people will come back to my site to see what I have to say about new strategies that get developed in the future.
Use Relevant Keywords
If you want to get a lot of traffic from the search engines, you need to discern the keywords people will be searching with. Then, include those keywords in the titles of your posts. I think most bloggers get too “cute” with their titles or don’t pay enough attention to keywords and post titles.
For each post, I identified a couple related keywords on the topic and included them in the title. For example, the winning player had unique strategy which he learned from a friend, who was not in the tournament. His friend had an interesting name for the strategy. He called it “Naya Lightsaber”. I used that term in the title of one of my posts.
The winning strategy always gets a lot of attention and I was fortunate enough to get #1 spot on Google for naya lightsaber. My post on the topic is only three days old but it is already one of the top 10 most trafficked posts on my blog for the last 30 days with over 1,000 pageviews.
Need help covering the big events in your niche? Performancing offers blog management services so you don’t have to do all the work.
Wordpress.com proves why you’re always at the mercy of free blogging platforms
The news that Automattic has finally rolled out email subscriptions on WordPress.com goes to prove the point that, no matter how good a free blogging platform is, you’re always at its mercy when it comes to features.
That might sound obvious, but it’s something that’s easy for new bloggers to overlook.
While it’s wise to keep a blog simple, features such as allowing your readers to subscribe via email are near essential when it comes to marketing, because many visitors don’t know what RSS or care to learn how to use it.
If you host your own blog, it’s not a problem because you can either find a plugin to handle email subscriptions, or get Feedburner, Aweber or some other third-party service on board, because you have the ability to add custom code.
You might think I’m about to negate the arguments I raised in my “Who is Posterous good for?” post. In fact, Posterous — though socially well-connected — currently offers even less features than WordPress.com, though it’s arguably a lot easier to publish multimedia rich content to.
I think the free blogging platforms are very good for allowing new bloggers to cut their teeth, despite the issues surrounding starting a blog without a custom domain name and then having to migrate later if the blog becomes popular (all major free blogging platforms allow you to use your own domain name, but I doubt many newbies take advantage of that).
Seeing what I consider basic functionality only just added to WordPress.com proves that, if you want total control over your blog, you do need to self-host.
And, if you’re serious about building a business from blogging, but don’t have all the technical know-how just yet, it’s still worth getting help to host your own blog, because it will be infinitely more customisable further down the line when you decide to tailor it to exactly your own needs.
Hats off to Automattic for adding this feature to WordPress.com. Just remember that you can do so much more with your own version of WordPress.
5 More Common Distractions to Bloggers and How To Deal With Them
Last year, James Mowery posted about five common distractions that bloggers face in the course of a writing/blogging workday. James cited TV, games, mobile phones, social networks and even the web as top distractions. There are a host of other things out there that can get your focus out of writing. Here are a few, and some tips on how to deal with them.
1. Chores
Most probloggers and writers I know work from their home offices or from their homes. While you get to save a lot on daily expenses when you work from home, one big challenge is managing your time between work and domestic life. Face it–there are just a lot of tasks and chores that one might need to take care of while at home. You might have to do some cleaning and organizing. You might need to prepare food for lunch or dinner. You would inevitably find some pressing task to do. Even when you’re not actually doing these, the mere fact that these are on your mind can take your focus off blogging and writing work.
One way to deal with this is to finish quick tasks as soon as you can, so they don’t accumulate and overwhelm you. As for the bigger ones–like cooking–you can perhaps schedule a thirty-minute break. Hey, you need to eat, too! Then, perhaps, you can relegate the big, time-intensive things to the weekends, like grocery shopping, washing the car, and the like.
2. Kids
One of the reasons I chose to run my work and business from home is so I can keep tabs on my kids. I bring them to school in the mornings, and fetch them before lunch–that way, I’m assured of their safety, the paranoid dad that I am. But as my kids are only starting to learn independence (they’re in their early primary grades), I find myself being asked to do this and do that every so often. Kids need snacks, after all. Kids need their bath. Kids need their afternoon nap.
A good way to deal with this is by blocking off a few minutes of your workday to spend quality time with your kids. This way, they don’t feel left out, and you get to do things together without distractions (yes, they need your focus, too). But make sure they understand that you need to work for a living, and that you shouldn’t be disturbed while on the job. Another good way to deal is by giving them activities to do while you’re at work. Let them play. Let them do their homework. Or how about assigning chores to them, if they’re big enough (distraction #1 and #2 solved!)?
3. Problems
Everyone has problems. These could be money problems, family problems, health problems, or such. Thinking about these big things can take your mind off your concentration. How could you write great blog posts, after all, if you’re constantly thinking of how to pay off a big debt, or if you’re coughing and sneezing all the time.
Why not focus on solutions, instead of the problems? This way, you might be more inspired to work. Money problems? Then being more productive would probably help solve that in the long run. Health problems? Do something about it–rather than worry, why not be proactive? Family problems? Talk!
I can classify problems as those that can be set aside for a later time, and those that need to be addressed urgently. If you have some serious illness, then you have to take care of it as soon as you can, especially if it’s debilitating and if it can sap you of energy you need to be productive. Some problems can be set aside for later. If you need money, why not just focus finishing your work now, so you can get to bill your client earlier, for instance?
4. The temptation to slack or sleep
Another big problem faced by home-based professionals and entrepreneurs is the allure of the bed. And I don’t mean this in a naughty way. When you feel sleepy and tired (and unfocused and uninspired, as well) there’s always the temptation to just sack it out. It’s not just the bed. There’s also the couch, the recliner, and even your desk.
Here lies the importance of dedicating a certain room–or at least a space–just for work. Don’t work in the bedroom. Keep it sacred: just for sleep, rest, and those other private things. Set your environment such that it’s conducive to work, and that it’s not too relaxing. Avoid dim lights, very soft furniture and boring environs. I sometimes find my office chair too comfortable, that I move to a less comfortable seat, so I don’t fall asleep.
However, sometimes, you just have to succumb to your tiredness. If you feel you’re too tired to be productive, then why not take a nap? After fifteen to thirty minutes, you’d feel refreshed and full of ideas to work on. If you’ve spent all day working, then you do deserve a good night’s (or day’s) sleep. When you wake up, take note of dreams or ideas you might have had, as these might be valuable later on. Early mornings are conducive to writing, in my opinion.
5. Work
Many multitaskers would agree with me that work can also be a big distraction. When you juggle a lot of tasks, every other ongoing task can take your mind off the important thing you want to focus at the moment. If you’re a freelancer, you might be working on more than one client or project, and you just can’t give 100% to just one at any given time. If you work for someone, then you might find yourself working on an ever-growing task list, that you’re confused with which item to address first.
This can be best addressed with GTD solutions, or at least by organizing your workflow. Keep a task list, and keep it prioritized. More importantly, try to keep it short. Why not get the small things out of the way early on? Those things that can be done in two minutes or less should only take two minutes or less. And once these are out of the way, you can spend big chunks of your time on the bigger stuff.
Dealing with other distractions
Sometimes, distractions are not all that unproductive, though. For instance, online discussions, forums and social networks can be great breeding grounds for great ideas and for connecting with the right people. Even downtime can be productive if you know how to make the most of it. For a writer, you can use this time to observe your environment, and take stock of current events–things that can help give you ideas on what to write about later on.
The best way to deal with distractions is identifying these, and knowing the best way to deal with them. It’s a matter of managing your time and resources such that you are productive in those things that matter.
Who is Posterous good for?
Posterous has caused quite a stir in the blogging world, because it all but removes even the moderate level of complexity that other blogging platforms tend to put in the way of simply publishing.
The service has even managed, somehow, to alter my view a little on using free, non-self-hosted blogging platforms, though I’d still say it’s not for everyone.
The fact is, most people can benefit from having a platform that’s easy to post multimedia content to on the fly and integrating with social networks even if they are au fait with the likes of WordPress, TypePad and Movable Type.
Of course, personal blogs will work just fine on Posterous, but also higher flying media professionals who want to share a lot of content with people, are often on the move with their smartphone, record and/or link to a lot of videos and podcasts, and whose personal brand is based more on the raw content than slick design.
Posterous designs aren’t shabby, by any means, and can be customised to a certain extent, but even if you use your own domain name or subdomain, it’s still obvious you’re hosting with a third party.
If you want to make money directly from your blog, by displaying ads for example, then you’re out of luck with Posterous (at the moment) though there’s no obvious restriction on linking to affiliate sites.
However, if you run a number of blogs on other platforms, Posterous could well be an easy platform for publicising them. With good social media integration, while your Posterous blog may not directly lead to increased revenue/sales, it’s another way of driving visitors to other projects.
You can post pretty much anything to Posterous, but it does seem to lend itself well to shorter or media rich posts. It’s also ludicrously easy to set up multi-author blogs, just by authorising the email addresses of all your writers.
Even if you use your domain for other types of content, such as a forum or a shopping cart, if you can change your domain name records you can set up a subdomain for the blog portion of your site, which then redirects to the Posterous servers, while the rest of your content remains on your own server.
In fact, the only time I’d suggest avoiding Posterous (unless you’re paranoid about the service shutting down and your content disappearing) is if you have a very strong design identity, or you need a more complicated blog setup that only self-hosting will allow you.
In reality, most of us could do with cutting down the complexity of our blogs, and Posterous might just be one way of doing that.
What do you think of Posterous? Do you use it for any of your blogs?
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.
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