Don’t Give Up
I found this article and it makes some
very good points for anyone that is just starting out in blogging. I
have been blogging for a good few months I have to admit that I fall
into the category of not being patient with my blog. It does take
time to build your blog and after reading this article I have decided
that I will stick with the blogging for a bit longer and become more
involved in the blogging world.
At one stage I was making good progress
and was up to about 10 or 12 visits per day after 3 months, not a lot
you might think but it is a start and something to build on. Since my
lack of concentration and determination for this blog started over
the last few months I have noticed that my daily visitors have
decreased. This is simply down to the fact that I haven’t been as
active in the blogosphere as I once was. Have a read of the article
below and hopefully you will learn from it.
Mike
My
Blog Is A Failure
By John
T Pratt
I
think I’ll just go somewhere and put myself out of my misery…having
similar thoughts? Maybe I can help.
I’ve
been working at this blogging thing for more than a year and I
haven’t really made any money and I don’t get many visitors and I
am a miserable failure. My blog is a failure and I think I’ll just
go somewhere and put myself out of my misery…
Have you ever read a blog post like that? I have, and I’ve seen
very similar ones all over (not quite as bad) from people that were
certainly discouraged by their lack of blogging success. That one was
about one of the most extreme posts I’ve read, and that person has
pretty much just given up. Have you ever been at the end of your rope
with your blog? You’re not getting any comments, you don’t get
many visits, you’re not making any money, you don’t know what to
post about, you’re not meeting your goals - maybe you don’t even
have any goals yet! You are thinking about the success you once
dreamed of as a blogger and you’re now thinking of yourself as a
failure.
That
post I read resonated with me because I’ve been at crossroads like
this before myself. Time and time again I was ready to quite because
I didn’t think I was getting anywhere. In the back of my head I
always remembered something Shoemoney wrote on his blog. It was about
people having the perception that he was some kind of “overnight
sensation†raking in tens of thousands on his site with ringtones.
He pointed out that the first two years he tried to make money online
me made nothing. Not a single penny. He even got fired from his day
job for working on his ringtone site at work (that wasn’t making
any money yet).
Success
is never overnight. Success is a learning process, and with blogging
it’s “learn as you goâ€. I think of Stevie Ray Vaughan who rose
to fame in 1981 with his first album and hit single “Pride and
Joyâ€. His success seemed overnight. Most had no idea he was born in
1954 and had been playing since the age of twelve. From 1970-1980 he
played, and played, and played, and played on stage some more
perfecting his craft. It’s not to say that he didn’t have true
natural talent. But his incessant passion for music and refusal to
give up on his dreams and goals drove him to never give up and press
on. The fact that he did nothing but eat, sleep, and breathe his
craft for more than a decade while practically living as a vagrant
made him into the talent that he was.
I’m
not saying you need to blog for 10 years without making money or
being successful in any way, but you need to be realistic about what
it is that you expect. I put this blog online in June 2007. I am
thankful for the growth I’ve had so far in the last 10 months and
look forward to the next year. I by no means think that I’m a huge
blogger (yet). I do think I’m in a position to tell you about what
I’ve experienced so far, and maybe it will help you.
What
to Expect Your First Month of Blogging
If
you’re brand new to this “blogging†think the first month is
where you will have your first challenging time. I think it’s
honestly where most people quit. They quit because they don’t have
a plan for blog success. The first challenge you actually have is
setting your blog up the first time, getting a theme you like, and
learning your way around your blog. The next issue you have is
posting content, and create quality consistent content that people
will read. My answer to “what to expect†your first month
blogging is “a lot of workâ€! Whatever you get, you get, but don’t
expect much of anything your first month of blogging in terms of
visits or money. Think of it as the first month on the job or first
term at school. You’re still trying to get acclimated to how things
work.
Here’s
a (very) short list of things to think about the first month:
-
Does
your blog have a (topic) theme? -
Did you ask a few friend
or fellow bloggers to test it and give you feedback? -
Is your blog sluggish,
or do the pages load fast? -
Did you post a least 2-3
times per week each and every week? -
Do you have a contact
page and about page? -
Are you tracking stats
somehow, like Google analytics? -
When you type your
domain name in Google - do you get results yet?
What
to Expect Your First 90 Days of Blogging
After
your first 3 months of blogging you should feel like you have a bit
of a routine. You should be regularly posting, and even have a few
ideas for posts stacked up. If you don’t (like I didn’t) you need
to get more organized. Keep a pen and paper handy and write down all
of your ideas as you get them for later use. Also read lots and lots
and lots of other blogs - and you will get all sorts of ideas to
write about. Make sure spending quality time blogging and not wasting
time. Now that you have some content (after the first month), get
your blog registered with Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Also learn to
track your search engine rankings to figure out where (and if) people
are finding your site in search engines. Signup for some of the
social blogging networks and reach out to other bloggers. Check out
myBlogLog, BlogCatalog, Bumpzee, entreCard, or one of the many other
ones out there. You can do this by messaging people, commenting on
their blogs, offering to guest post, or advertising on blogs. The
more you interact with other bloggers the more exposure you will get.
Explore
new wordpress plugins (if you use Wordpress), or figure out ways to
creatively expand your site and make it more useful for your visitors
with plugins and modules. Regularly vivew your blog stats and learn
which Google analytics are most important. You should be learning How
to do Basic Keyword Research, and How to Build Links. If you’re
using Wordpress Learn How to Manage Wordpress More Effectively, if
you’re using another blogging platform - learn more about it, how
to hack it, and customize it more to your liking. Also begin to learn
How to Monetize Your Blog if you haven’t already. Learning how to
convert your traffic into a monthly income is possibly one of the
most important things you can do - and may (in the future) be the
only thing that keeps you from quitting. Nobody wants to blog for
free forever.
At the
90 day mark you can expect to have some kind of regular traffic,
whether it’s 15 visits a day or 100. You should be on a regular
posting schedule and have posting ideas backed up. You should know
the ins and outs of your blogging software and be comfortable making
some customizations. You should have some type of monetization, and
be constantly learning how to promote your site in as many ways as
possible. You may or may not be getting regular comments on your
posts at this point, and your traffic may not be that great. You
might not even have a Google pagerank yet or good search engine
results, but you are in “build mode†at this point. You should be
both reading and writing a lot. Think of this phase as your “blog
internshipâ€.
The
6 Month Blogging Milestone
This
should just about be the turning point for your blog. If you’ve
been posting 2-3 times per week (at least) you should now have more
than 50 posts. For me, it just seems like that’s the point where
things start to get a bit easier. It’s like being on the job a year
or two or getting halfway through high school or college. You know
what to expect, you know what’s going on - you seem to have a
pretty good handle on things. If you did everything I said to do for
the previous two milestones than you should have 50+ articles with a
few “pillar†articles being the attraction and the rest
contributing a little bit each day. Hopefully you’ve got 50-100
comments on your posts at least, and 100-300 visitor’s per day.
You’re somewhere “in the mix†out in the blogging community and
you have some followers in your own blog community, and other
bloggers may know you as part of theirs. You should be used to
posting and writing, so it’s time to do a few additional things to
give you an extra push.
Check
Your Sitemap against your SERP’s to ensure indexing in the search
engines is going well. You should have enough posts now to think
about going back and making previous posts more profitable. Now that
you have lots of posts stacked up, think about organizing your site
using pages. Monetize your Search Results with products or Create
your own theme. You could even add content by creating an entire
affiliate store from a data feed. Now that you have enough articles
you can seriously consider submitting your best content by learning
how to do article directory promotion.
Create
Your Own Blogging Milestones
If you
haven’t already realized it, everything you do as a blogger is just
a building block. Like a lawyer building a reputation, a pastor
building a congregation, a mechanic building a customer base, or a
doctor building a base of patients - YOU as a blogger are creating
your own milestones. You should be making goals and plans to reach
them. Analyze where you are now and where you want to be. What will
it take to get there? Make a short, medium, and long term goal. If
you have 100 visitors per day now what would it take to get 200? If
you make nothing on your blog now, what would it take to make enough
to pay for your hosting bill? How many posts and comments do you want
by the end of the year? Goals that you achieve will be your own
milestones. Do what I did awhile back and analyze what are the habits
of successful bloggers.
Your
blog is not a failure. It’s 5,000 mistakes from success…
John
Pratt writes free guides and blog help at JTPratt’s
Blogging Mistakes. Additional
help and resources for this article can be found at My
Blog is a Failure. John also
reviews gadgets at Used
Cell Phone Bargains.
Article
Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=John_T_Pratt
http://EzineArticles.com/?My-Blog-Is-A-Failure&id=1105051
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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 17th, 2008 at 8:31 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
