This article is written by Suriel, a guest author here at Webhypes.
So you want to be a famous blogger, you want people to read about what you and share your knowledge? Good plan, here are some thoughts for starters. Mind you, they are just my thoughts, backed by my experience…
Photo by ino paap
Feel free to disagree! It’s multitude of opinion that keeps the world interesting. Post a comment if you like and start the discussion. Discussion and comments are the key that keeps bloggers going and so they are to me.
Know your topic
Before you start a blog – or any project at all – you should think about two things:
- What exactly is it you want to achieve?
- What can you achieve in a given time, with the resources available?
All too often the scope is admirable, but also unachievable. Don’t try to save the world!
If you want to start a blog about gardening and you know all the tricks about growing roses – try to leave the orchids out of it for now. Stick to what you know about your subject.
Know your crowd and know yourself
Web 2.0 eradicates the need for you to posses many technical/programming skills. You can safely assume that any 6 year old – once grasping the concept of how to write – can also grasp the concept of how to create and post to a blog. The same goes for the average willing-to-learn 60 years old.
Anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can contribute – and that’s a good thing. But anyone able to write could also write a novel – theoretically – but not all novels get published. With blogs apparently this is different. You are both author and editor of your blog, so you decide what will be published.
So there is a lot more responsibility on your shoulders. If you care at all. You might want to start a blog that is more or less a less-than-private internet diary or just a junkyard of brainstormed ideas. The main topic would be you. The crowd most likely your friends. Easy! And perfectly legitimate! I have a blog like that – and I enjoy it tremendously.
Most users out there are probably far too selective for that kind of blog, though. Yes, they might notice your blog on the top of list blogger-hypes list XY. They might pay it a visit. And most likely they’ll venture on again afterwards. After all, there is a few terabyte of data still to be explored.
Go out there yourself and seek your audience. See for yourself, what they are interested in. See what they can get already and prepare your blog as carefully as you would an evening dinner for your latest love.
Our rose-gardener might join some gardener’s forums. He might sneak in his blog via the signature or link to a helpful article on his blog from time to time. In the end it won’t bring him many spontaneous hits. But it will get him a loyal – and interested - crowd, that will spread the word. The power of good old mouth propaganda is easily underestimated.
People won over this way likely stick around.
Content is everything
Content should at its very best be fresh and new, with original insights and perspectives. At the very least it should compile knowledge in a new way, or people might as well visit Wikipedia instead.
Simple example; If I go out looking for a new recipe, I’ll not likely search for spaghetti with tomato sauce. Even if you can’t come up with something entirely new, you might spice your content with what no one else could provide: Your own experiences.
So, perhaps you know an easy way to color normal spaghetti black! This would not only attract a bunch of goths. Hey, you’d even get me interested! (So teach me if you know, I don’t like the ones made with octopus ink though…) Whatever you do, don’t try to go the old copy cat way.
First of all, it won’t do much to stimulate your brain or bring out your creative potential.
Second, if you’re more materialistically inclined: People will notice! They will get bored and move on and they will not easily be persuaded to come back. There are some bloggers who can easily post an article or two per day. These are mostly people with an interesting background or life. For example: Iranian exile writers, OS Kernel gurus – or perhaps mutant turtles.
For all others I’d suggest: Better write one good article than post nonsense, just to post something at all. If you want to ensure regular posts, split up a larger article into several smaller episodes.
10% genius, 90% hard work and belief in your idea
You know you’re good, you know you provide unique content… Why doesn’t anyone notice? Like everything else, a good web project – and even a blog – needs time to grow and be recognized. Even if it is a masterpiece from the very beginning.
Be patient! Believe in yourself and your idea, and in time others will believe in you and your project, if you continue to invest hard work in it. The real hard work starts once you are were you wanted to be. It’s easy to provide a good standard. Much harder to maintain it over time.
Bloggers are loners?
Could be right, but it isn’t. Many topics are so complicated, you need a bunch of experts to cover them. That’s what called a team work, a concept very popular since the first stone age hunter tried to kill a Grizzly bear all alone.
Never underestimate the power of synergy generated when several people come together to combine their ideas. You’ll have to live with the fact that it will not always be your opinion riding the top – but if you surround yourself with fairly open-minded people that shouldn’t be a problem.
Usually it is ultimately more satisfying to work in a team and will get you over those dry spells and writing blocks you will encounter all alone.
Do it for the fun first, think of profit… if it happens to come your way
Forget the big bucks and the villa on Hawaii for the moment. There are some very few bloggers and podcasters in the US earning big bucks at the moment, who hit a nerve.
The best earning bloggers/poddies I know about in Europe can live from their blog articles. But they certainly aren’t rich! (And went to great lengths to get their ads themselves instead of using Google Ads, but that’s stuff for another article.)
Stephen King wrote a fascinating book “On Writing – A memorial of the craft”. I can only warmly encourage bloggers or bloggers in spe to read it.
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nice article. Many people forget the amount of work involved in making and publishing a weblog.
But making and publishing isn’t all you need to take care of. What to take about maintaining and organizing comments?
With a large amount of comment, you can’t manage it by yourself. Just a small thing to think about.
Thanks! I think no one really wants to hear about “work” involved with something that is otherwise easy-going fun stuff - like a blog.
Web 2.0 just provides the tools. Anyone can buy a hammer, chisel and a block (blog? ;)) of stone. It doesn’t necessarily make you a good sculptor.
I’m happy to know that someone read through my little rant.
I think you can dive into your blog in many positions. If a sculptor buys a hammer, chisel and a block it will probably still cost some sweat to make it into something nice.
And even if you buy an automated tool to make the sculpture it will still cost you some skill to make it into the item you had in mind.
The fun part of blogging is that is lets you start without any investment or efforts. From there you learn by doing it, automatically increasing the demand for better tools (read customized design, own url, etc).
Great comment, I must say! That’s why new bloggers get in the blogosphere so easily, but at the same time it illustrates how hard it is to stand out of the crowd as a blogger (and start making some money)!
Yes, I agree to Oeroek’s comment. Blogging is fun and anything that starts is fun is in my opinion:
a) a worthwhile thing to do
b) something you can grow into…
As for the money:
That would really make a good article. I read a SPIEGEL special article on american and european blogger/podcasters.
It doesn’t look like there’s many people earning mucho the blogging-way in Europe.
Those few who have a decent income from their blog seem to have gone the old way I once did with our school newspaper (some 15 or so years ago).
That is: Get out there as a real life person, show people that their ads would be content related and work something out. (Including: Layout-ing their ads…)