Incheon, South Korea
Bloggers drop like flies.
Bloggers typically have the shelf life of an ice cream cone in the desert.
Bloggers spoil more quickly than a glass of milk in the jungle.
Why?
Reasons abound.
But one secret evades most.
Not knowing the secret, the masses struggle, fail and quit stupid quickly.
What is the secret?
Bloggers with longevity make their blog home base. The source of their success is their blog.
I created Blogging From Paradise in 2014. Running one blog for a decade speaks of some stick-to-it-tive-ness.
But I have blogged since 2007. Or 2008? Who cares? Irrelevant. Mainly because blogging for 16 or 17 years in a world of bloggers who quit in weeks or months more often than not seems impossible.
How can you achieve longevity in a world of bloggers who rarely reach their first anniversary?
Make your blog home base. Make your blog the priority. Make your blog the center of your universe. Run everything through your blog.
Make:
- your email list
- YouTube
and all traffic channels relevant yet not nearly as important as your blog.
The only way you stick with blogging for 6 months, or a year, or 5 years, or 10 years, or 17 years is by making your blog the granite-like foundation of your:
- quality traffic
- blogging income
- referral traffic
- referral business
Do that and you are golden.
Who makes their blog the center of their online success?
Almost no one.
Logically, almost no blogger blogs for 10 or 15 years for this very reason.
Stop Googling Yourself
Most bloggers Google themselves into a stunned submission.
I do not mean running a Google search for their name.
I mean worshiping Google as the source of their success and backburnering their blog in the process.
Peep the latest algorithm update.
Bloggers seem ready to take a New York Swan Dive after any algorithm update because most make Google the source of their quality traffic and income. When the traffic and income disappear from the source it seems like *all* blogging traffic and income disappear.
The decision to make Google and not a blog that you own, set the rules for and fully customize is insane. But since most minds are largely insane, following insane advice makes perfect sense and following sane advice sounds dangerous, risky and foolish.
If you want to blog for 17 years your blog needs to be the priority. If you want to blog for 17 years your success needs to depend on a website that you:
- own
- control
- fully customize
- fully monetize with no constraints
because that site is the rock, granite, firm, stable and impossible to shake.
Google is pudding. Facebook is sand. Twitter is as fluid as roaring rapids. People who own these sites change the sites according to two prime metrics, sooner than later:
- popularity
- profitability
When the algorithm or narrative changes for each site – and the shift is a formality – then your traffic and income change and this usually means dwindling traffic and income. Most bloggers decide to quit after the first massive shake-out or maybe the 5th.
Bloggers quit because bloggers attempt the impossible: trying to control the uncontrollable is a lesson in insanity.
You Cannot Stop an Earthquake
I spent 2 months in Panama earlier this year.
We lived in a seismically-active region.
Experiencing roughly 10-15 mild shakes with 1 relatively stout number that jerked the whole foundation of the house for 5 seconds as if a Sherman tank slammed into the place at 30 MPH taught me a lesson: even with a calm mind, you cannot stop an earthquake.
That 5.3 earthquake:
- startled us out of a deep sleep at 4:55 AM
- knocked down picture frames
- agitated the dogs into barking
because it felt semi-strong. No avoiding it, folks.
Building traffic and income primarily on sites that you do not own, control and customize is like trying to stop an earthquake. The earthquake will arrive. You will be shaken out. Guaranteed.
Be Wise. Own. Make Your Real Estate the Priority. Stick Around. Succeed.
Spend most time and energy building your blog into the center of your traffic and income.
Then, after it seems pretty much complete, you will be wise to spend a hefty chunk of time and energy promoting blog posts, online courses, eBooks, services and whatever else you offer through the blog.
Of course you will work offsite traffic streams too. But you will never make the offsite traffic streams the source of your success after considering the earthquake analogy.
Your blog is the source of your success. Not Google. Nor is Facebook. Nor is Twitter.
In the past month before the publish date of this post, Facebook and Google dropped bombshell stories questioning the credibility and stability of each. Twitter-X is a study of shakiness with its heavy focus on politics; talk about an earthquake!
I continue to use these offsite channels. But everything runs through my source. Everything runs through Blogging From Paradise Dot Com.
If one or all disappeared today, tens of thousands of backlinks point to Blogging From Paradise Dot Com. For my blog to become irrelevant, unseen and not detected one bit, a small but decent chunk of the world’s blogging population would have to stop paying their domain and hosting bills today. That would erase their blogs, my backlinks and my blog.
I made that scenario highly unlikely by my resolute decision 10 years ago with BFP and symbolic decision 17-18 years ago as a blogger.
My blog is my success.
All else comes and goes.
This is the only way to achieve genuine blogging longevity.
