The keys to a blog success

You all know how it is: you hear in the blogosphere about making money from blogging. Then you find and read thoroughly the major league: the Problogger.net and JohnChow.com; and then you make up your mind: "I'm going to do that too. If they can make it, so can I".

And then, you go and read Darren's list of newbies tips, and John's ebook. But you decide that you're not ready to pay for the blog yet - after all, you're just trying out, right? So, you sign on Blogger or Wordpress, just to save a $100, but you do register domain, because everyone agrees that it is the most important thing you should start with.

And then you start posting. At the beginning, you're on fire. Finding everything you can on the net, posting like a crazy. But, for some reason, stats do not go up. Then you say to yourself, "well, maybe no one really reads what I write", and you post less and less. And then, no one really reads your blog.

Such a state of things would probably describe most of new bloggers (and that would include myself as well). The idea of making money out of blog is very attractive, but many do not succeed at making enough for cup of coffee. Why is it so?

The main reason is that many newcomers start with the obsession over statistics and the idea of earning the same money that big shots do. They check visits every few hours, they check how much cents they've made out during those hours. They put many ads into the blog, and wait until money and readership would thrive. Big mistake!

So, here's the list of things required to make any blog successful:

1. Create an interesting content

That's it. Nothing more (at least at the beginning). Everything else is the result of this action number 1.

But there are more things that I'm doing for my blog:

1. Listen more to Darren from ProBlogger and John from John Chow. These guys apparently know what they're doing.
2. Less is more: that recent post on ProBlogger made by Skellie from AnyWired, is really a good one. I decided to post not more 4 technology-related posts a week, including posts regarding the process of building the blog itself. In addition, I removed some advertisers which didn't bring anything in a long while, and just made a bad impression for being there.
3. Stop caring about statistics. Don't check it every few minutes. Its a stressful action: you wait, it doesn't rise up, you panic, you loose motivation. Just stop doing it. In 10 minutes you checking for statistics, you could have an outline for a new post.

In a nutshell: if you want your blog to succeed, you have to build it. Blog is a content, not ads.

I only have to remember that myself :-)

December 2007 blog results

Hi all

As I said earlier, I'm building this blog and also explain how I do it. So, this time I'll provide a little information about what I have done until now and provide also a little statistics information.

So, I will start with statistics. Statistic data I provide here is for the month of December, 2007. The main achievement last month was definitely due to getting on the (almost) front page of Digg. I've posted an essay there and it got at the moment of writing this post 788 diggs (which led to 16K visits in December), which is surprising and nearly destroys an assumption I had before (and even started a poll here on this blog. It's at a top right, please vote!). The effect of all these diggs accounts to nearly 73.5% of visits to my blog (and, in fact, almost all the earnings) in December. The surprise is that the same digg effect influenced other referring sites:

1. digg.com 73.47%
2. Stumbleupon.com 7% (this is the surprise. I though Linux Today will be higher ranking refferal)
3. Linux Today 5.84%
4. Direct 5.64%
5. Lxer 1%
   

Now, the revenue statistics. I am signed up and using the following revenue streams:

• AdSense
• WidgetBucks
• Kontera
• Amazon.
• Smorty.
• I've also signed up to PayPerPost, SponsoredReviews and LinkWorth, and got approved in all. Just haven't seen any action there yet.

Here's the revenue gains for December:

1. AdSense: $16.98
2. WidgetBucks: $5.69
3. KonteraLinks: $3.64
4. PayPerPost posting their default available offer: $20
   

Total income December 2007: $46.31

Money spent during December:

1. Domain name registration for 2 years: $14.30

In total I have: $32.01 made out of blog.

Now, to the other stuff. I've been trying to develop different social networking presence, and used with more or less success the following tools/networks:

1. Entrecard
2. BlogRush
3. StumbleUpon
4. Digg
5. Technorati
6. Blog directories: Blog Catalog, GetBlogs, Top Blog Area, Top Blogs and Blog Top List. All of them seem to bring some traffic as well.
   

I've implemented FeedBurner feed which led to some additional visits and visibility of things on my feeds. Also, I rearranged a little bit the placement of ads, which together with FeedBurner scripts gices nice total placement. I'm still waiting on review sites to approve my reviews or bids on some.

In general, all of this is very nice, although much less than I would like to. So, these are the goals for the January:

1. The content: this is the most important. I have few ideas cooking, and now I'm sure of this: not the quantity really matters here, but the quality. So if I have the urge to spill some thinking, always post it as draft first, so I can let it calm down and then publish.
2. The traffic: that's the main issue after the content. The more traffic gets to my blog, the more it returns. I can't take Devember as the example of traffic numbers because the digg effect, which acts like a spike in the norm. I'd try to keep, say, 5% improvement month-over-month rate. That would count to: 2,977 (November rate) x 1.05 x 1.05 = 3292, so I set my goal for January to 3300 visits.
3. Make 10% on the account of November. Because I generally started doing all this in December, there's only $0.93 income in November. So, I'll make an impiric number of $30 as a target for January.
   

And here are the ways to reach those goals:

1. Research for content. The web is reach for ideas, reviews, and other. Just think and get it out.
2. Research for blog implementation ideas. Read Problogger and other A-Blog authors, test my own ideas all the time.
3. Plan ahead.
4. Post at least 4 "content" posts a week, and 2 "blog building" posts.
   

So, that is it. December is done and finished. January is to go.

Wish me luck and feedback is very welcome.