Every so often, I get asked: so how do I make my blog popular?, the answer I often say is: patience.
I remember how I felt in the first 6 months I blogged. I was deseprate for hits, readers, PageRank and $$$. I joined BlogExplosion, accepted any link exchange which came my way, and joined BlogShares. I believe that joining blogging communities was a good move, but I think it’s not important to rush your blog’s growth, and not to accept any link exchange.
Many bloggers I know want growth, and they want it as soon as possible. A blogger should write to the best of their ability, be as original as possible, and should write what they enjoy writing. When I started blogging, I blogged about technology in general, making my blog’s name a misnomer, but at the start of 2006 I began to specialise in Web 2.0 and Mozilla. Since then, I’ve dropped the latter.
If you write high quality posts, and make yourself noticed, you are bound to gain readership. There are many ways of getting noticed: if you are lucky enough to catch a 9rules sumbission round, good for you! Other ways, which are probably easier, include commenting on other blogs, making sure to send a track/pingback to related posts on other blogs, getting to the Digg frontpage (not great for getting readers, but a good way to get hits).
I sometimes feel as if I’m failing as a blogger. Around 80% of my hits go to this post, and I only get about 1 comment a day on all my posts (bear in mind on the most popular post, my comments are closed).
Generally: if your quality goes improves, so will your readership.
Tags: blogging, blogs, blog, blog tips, blogging tips, web2.0, web 2.0, web2, web 2
Thanks for the tip!
Comments don’t necessarily mean you’re popular or not, especially when you blog about tech. Many people read blogs like yours and mine just for the info they contain…there’s nothing really to say about the content though.
But I certainly don’t think you’re failing as a blogger! I love your blog!
Sarah:
“Every so often, I get asked: so how do I make my blog popular?, the answer I often say is: patience.”
Well I have an ample amount of experience with that. Patience, yeesh, if you want something work for it, waiting for it to happen won’t work
Yeah, I completely agree with you. Time factor really makes the difference. I started blogging 4 months ago, hit digg frontpage 2 times.
But I switched over to a new domain, so i got to wait for 4 more months before i get my PR back.
Patience is key to everything.
Nice post Joe – and I agree with Sarah, comments aren’t indicative of ‘blogging success’. With RSS and newsreaders these days, people rarely have the time to write one out.
Oh, and patience – I’m sure everyone agrees that’s a must. :^)
Hi, I found your site while looking up some of the blogging communities you mentioned. (I recently submitted mine, wondering if it was really a smart thing to do. An short-term increase in traffic doesn’t always translate into more readers, I know.)
Thanks for the advice; funny, I couldn’t have figured it out for myself.
Can’t understand why you don’t get many comments. I’ve found your information about useful web sites to be invaluable. They have expanded my use of the Internet. Thanks for doing this.