Prague
Successful bloggers never cut corners.
Failing bloggers usually do.
As a rule, struggling bloggers try to take shortcuts by completely underestimating the four blogging success factors below.
Pros know differently from their intimately personal experience.
The following factors make or break successful blogging careers.
Deeply value each and you will be well on your way to becoming a professional blogger.
1: Simplicity
Most bloggers vastly underestimate the simplicity of successful blogging.
Bloggers often look for more strategies, techniques, steps and tactics versus sticking with the basics to go pro.
Most believe that succeeding “needs to” or “has to” entail more layers. Some actually seek out blogging confusion by refusing to believe that blogging is a simple activity at its core.
Making blogging complex leads to struggles, failure and quitting in most cases for the sheer overwhelm of doing far more than you need to do for the most basic processes.
For example, I sometimes hear of bloggers who spend weeks just to write and publish a blog post. Nothing’s wrong with this approach but a blog post is not an eBook. Spending weeks to write a 1200 word post severely complicates the process.
Stop making blogging far more than it is.
Keep it simple to succeed.
Blogging is:
- creating detailed, targeted blog content
- building strong relationships
At its core, blogging is highly simple.
Yet most bloggers completely underestimate the simplicity factor. The blogging masses deeply believe blogging needs to be more complex.
Some well-meaning but misguided bloggers add non-essential, complexity-inducing details to simple processes. After reading the average blog post I’d be completely overwhelmed as a newbie blogger for the difficult-to-follow strategies laid out.
For example, I have read blog posts stressing a wide range of complex, difficult-to-execute strategies concerning converting an email list. This is a perfect example of making a mind-numbingly simple process painfully complex.
Building an email list begins and ends with your:
- outstanding blog posts
- blogging reputation
- rock solid relationships
Simply do a good job publishing detailed content, building your blogging reputation and establishing strong bonds to boost click through rates and email conversions.
I use the subject line:
“New Update on Blogging From Paradise”
to get clicks and conversions for my email list.
Subscribers love my content, trust me and respect our bond. Why wouldn’t they click?
Meanwhile, most bloggers make the common error of tripping all over themselves by adding heavy complexity to the simple process of emailing your latest post to a hungry subscriber base who clicks seamlessly. Over-analyzing subject lines, poring over email introductions and deliberating CTA’s adds tension, doubt and layers of complexity to a process that can be over and done in minutes.
Do you want to make your blogging job tougher? Follow complex strategies.
Do you want to make your blogging job easier? Follow simple strategies.
Learning how to create detailed content and build strong relationships requires a heartfelt effort.
In truth, there are quite a few details to learn and practice.
But creating and connecting is never complex. Following the necessary details is never a complicated process.
If it seems complex you’re doing it wrong.
Simple actions yield blogging success.
Write detailed blog posts. Listen closely to reader needs. If you currently have no readers just follow top blogs in your niche to blog on similar topics.
Create long form content to hit the mark. Aim for 1200-1500 words per post.
Format posts for easy scanning.
Add:
- headers
- bullet point lists
- bold text
- italicized text
to create a pleasant user experience.
As for building relationships check out this post:
Doesn’t that sound simple?
2: Time
Almost every blogger wildly underestimates the time element.
Guilty as charged, here.
Doing simple things creates blogging success only over the long haul.
As a rule, pros spend 1000’s of hours doing simple things spanning years to actually go pro.
I know for a fact that most cringe on hearing the phrases:
- 1000’s of hours
- spanning years
because the majority thinks in blogging terms of:
- days
- weeks/months
Delusion reaches a fever pitch at times.
As a newbie blogger 15 years ago I saw myself sitting on Oprah Winfrey’s couch during my first year or two of blogging. What a story I had: laid off security guard morphs into island hopping pro blogger.
Who’d line up for the movie rights to my life story?!
The possibilities enticed me.
Reality slapped me upside the head quickly: becoming highly skilled, clear, connected and credible requires many years of blogging practice, creating and connecting.
Most dramatically underestimate how long it takes to thrive as a blogger for:
- greedy
- desperate
longings.
Greedy or desperate bloggers want success now, not later. Desiring instant success deludes one into actually believing that bloggers can:
- Â get rich quickly
- succeed overnight
- take successful shortcuts
- skip blogging work
Believing something does not necessarily mean that something is true.
Bloggers may want quick success. Bloggers may desire quick success. Bloggers may even try to get rich quickly.
But everyone deluded by their own fears learns eventually how underestimating the time element actually puts them back years in terms of effort.
Imagine wasting 10 blogging years trying to succeed quickly with:
- thin content
- a multi-niche blog
- shortcuts
- cutting blogging corners
- no blogger outreach
After 10 years, when:
- 10 people visit your blog daily
- your blogging income is still 0 dollars
you will need to begin blogging the right way at that point to begin using successful blogging strategies.
Perhaps you gained 10 year’s worth of blogging experience in doing what did NOT work.
At the 10 year mark, you begin doing what does work, in essence starting from day 1 from a successful blogging perspective.
Never underestimate the time factor in blogging terms or you may just add years to your blogging workload.
3: Engagement
At first, this sounds ridiculous.
Most bloggers seem to know that engagement makes bloggers successful.
People need to:
- visit your blog
- stick around your blog to read your content
- buy your premium offerings
- hire you
for you to become a professional blogger.
Visiting, sticking around, reading, buying and hiring are all forms of engagement.
However, most bloggers completely underestimate the amount of engagement through blog comments and/or social media necessary to build a thriving, loyal blog community who grows referral traffic and referral business.
No blogger needs comments and social media engagement to thrive. Bloggers can succeed quite nicely through email list traffic and Google traffic.
However, if you are struggling like hell to stimulate any type of engagement and you:
- close blog comments
- behave in anti-social fashion on social media
you all but dig your blogging grave by wildly underestimating these potentially invaluable engagement channels.
My friend Lisa Sicard and I discussed this in response to my recent YouTube Short.
Unless you are absolutely rolling in it (aka wildly successful), deleting comments:
- cancels out critical user-generated content
- kills blog engagement
- cuts the legs out from your blogging community
- stalls relationship-building
- starves you an an on-demand source of blog post ideas
Highly successful bloggers have the luxury of deleting or closing blog comments. Traffic and income seem to be no problem for them.
Struggling bloggers who fear receiving spam more than benefitting from the 5 bullet point factors above need to think long and hard before closing blog comments.
If people do not seem to visit your blog, stick around, buy your stuff or hire you, give them a reason to visit your blog, stick around, engage, share their thoughts, buy your stuff and hire you. Open blog comments. You need that engagement to boost sickly blogging metrics. You need their help, their friendships, their support and the power of collaborations to get your blog up and running.
As for social media engagement, 4.9 billion out of 8 billion human beings on planet earth use social media.
If you underestimate engaging on platforms with 5/8ths of the world’s population as its user base I don’t know of a more convincing argument.
4: Distribution
During my leanest blogging years I lacked a powerful distribution strategy.
Any time I experienced greater worldly success I distributed blog posts effectively.
I currently take distribution fairly seriously. Sharing each post through a heavy volume of targeted channels, commenting genuinely on blogs, guest blogging and engaging freely on social media distributes Blogging From Paradise blog posts effectively.
Most bloggers grossly underestimate distribution. Emailing your list, tapping a retweet button, sharing a post on Facebook and LinkedIn and Pinning it is simply not enough in a world of bloggers who spend serious energy distributing posts aggressively.
Inevitably, successful bloggers who market effectively run circles around these folks.
Think big.
Distribute posts far and wide to a targeted audience.
If you build it they will not come.
Marketing it in front of the right eyes through a wide range of channels influences people to visit the building.
Err on the side of being a maniacal distributor.
It’s far better to ruffle a few feathers as a highly successful blogger who appears to be everywhere than a blogging genius who publishes a cyber diary.
Conclusion
Keep blogging simple.
Put in the time.
Keep blog comments open and engage on social media.
Distribute posts freely.
Never underestimate these critical blogging factors.
Stick to these basics to build a successful blogging career.
