As bloggers, we know how difficult it is to gain the trust of a community. Way too many sites start off with a lot of enthusiasm and just fade within a year. Life gets in the way, and that’s fine. There are certainly more important things to do with one’s time than write all day. But for those of you who are serious about blogging, commitment and longevity is a must.
I no longer watch any TV shows live because the networks tend to cancel them arbitrarily mid-season without even an apology or excuse. After spending hours getting into the characters and story, to have a show ripped out from under me pisses me off. I feel like I ended up wasting a lot of time that could be spent doing something else. Now I only watch shows on DVD or Netflix after they’ve survived a third season. Three seasons is enough time for me to invest in the program.
The same thing goes with blogging. A lot of readers don’t fully invest their time on new sites. They know the survival rate for surviving past the 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years mark goes down at each step. Therefore, it is imperative for bloggers who want to make their sites more than just hobbies to survive for at least the first year. Otherwise, readers will tend to just stick with sites that have been around for years, despite having less interesting content. The Yakezie Challenge is six months long b/c it weeds out less serious contenders.
If you are a blogger looking to make connections with other bloggers, the same thing holds true about the importance of survival. Are you really going to bother spending a similar amount of time leaving comments and building a relationship if there’s a high chance the blog will fail? Of course not.
Giving up too soon is one of the top three reasons why sites fail. The other reason is simply unoriginal, unhelpful, uninteresting content. Write Whale Posts if you can instead. Let me discuss more about the third reason why so many sites fail.
ASKING FOR TOO MUCH TOO SOON
Asking for too much from your audience is the third reason why so many blogs fail. Asking for too much almost always stems from the desire for the blogger to earn money. The blogger probably doesn’t have much money to begin with and is dreaming about dollar signs when s/he launches instead of wanting to write and connect with a community.
Here is the editorial calendar of a typical blogger who asks too much:
Monday: Sponsored post about finding the best education in a random city in the world written by a staff writer.
Tuesday: Forex trading review by a staff writer, even though the audience has no care about forex trading.
Wednesday: Sponsored post on binary options by a staff writer, even though nobody is ever going to buy a binary option.
Thursday: Credit card review post by staff writer.
Friday: Options house review post by staff writer.
Three weeks later: “Hey what’s up guys! This is what I’ve been up to.”
This is probably the worst and most boring editorial calendar ever. And guess what? This blog will never been able to make a livable income stream as a result, despite all the posts being affiliate and sponsored posts because he’ll never rank in search, his community won’t trust him, and he’ll eventually get hammered by a Google alto update. He’s obviously working on something else because he doesn’t write any of the posts.
Before you can start dumping crappy content on your blog, or asking your community to read product review post after product review post, you’ve got to first provide lots of value.
The best formula is to give as much value as possible for as long as possible until circumstances change where you are required to earn some money, or you find that perfect affiliate product that goes hand in hand with your content.
Your chances of ranking for terms on the front page of Google and getting your work picked up by major media publications is MUCH GREATER if you are 100% focused on providing value and not selling a product. Once you’re ranking well and receiving recognition, then you can move on to introducing products to your community. They trust you for all your hard work already, and the efficacy (CTR) will be much greater as a result.
Yakezie.com is likely never going to be a major money making site. As a result, I care very little about ranking on the first page of Google, or having tons of traffic. If I did, I would have done more after five years in existence! Sponsored posts are fine on occasion to keep the lights on. But, what I do care about is Financial Samurai continuing to grow without fear of Big G bashing it to smithereens. I feel the hammer will eventually come, but I’m trying to make the best out of things when things are good by following my guidelines for providing value.
Related: How Much Can You Make Blogging By Traffic Figures
DON’T BE AFRAID TO GO FORWARD
After years of giving, you might feel embarrassed or afraid to try and make money from your site. Don’t be. You’ve worked your ass off to connect with others and create great pieces of writing. Just like how it’s important to have the right money mindset to get rich, you need to evolve to have the right blogging mindset to make your blog a success.
What is the right blogging mindset you ask?
* You always focus on providing value because without value, nobody will care to read, link, or highlight your work.
* You optimize for the best reader experience possible. This means including pertinent links within your post, making the layout easy to follow, orchestrating a logical editorial calendar that never fails to produce content as scheduled, responding and moderating comments, and keeping your site up to date and safe.
* You believe your hard work deserves reward. As a result of providing value for at least one year, you go out and find products that cohesively fit with your site’s message. You create and sell your own products. And you leverage your platform for other things in your life. Products are action items that make things better if you find the best ones.
CONCLUSION
There’s no absolute right way to create an amazing site. But there is a wrong way by quitting too early or asking for too much too soon. If you can develop multiple income streams online, you can potentially make a full-time living as a professional blogger. Many bloggers make more than bankers, techies, doctors, and lawyers! The key is to have patience and keep on going, no matter what. Good things will happen over time.
STARTING A MONEY MAKING BLOG
I never thought I’d be able to quit my job in 2012 just three years after starting Financial Samurai. But by starting one financial crisis day in 2009, Financial Samurai actually makes more than my entire passive income total that took 15 years to build. If you enjoy writing, creating, connecting with people online, and enjoying more freedom, learn how you can set up a WordPress blog in 15 minutes like this one.
Leverage the 3+ billion internet users and build your brand online. You never know where the journey will take you! This post has been updated for 2017 and beyond.
Regards,
Sam
That editorial calendar example is hilarious! I’ve seen a couple of those blogs before and they suck. You’re right. It’s tough, but to start out, it’s important to add value!
Yes, the editorial calendar example is funny (not so funny when I hit such a blog but then one can always get away). I fully agree with you, Sam, that a blog should be ‘giving’ to stay around and succeed. One can see it in a different way, if they so wish: for a very long time the exchange in the relationship with readers is ‘information for reputation’. This can convert in money but only after sufficient trust and reputation have been established. (This is what I see anyway.)
Definitely a turnoff when I stumble across such a blog. I don’t know why people would retweet or bother to comment on such content, but it happens all the time. So, the bright side is, if you aren’t one of those people, you can get much farther imo.
I think that the primary cause for failure in blogging is getting into it for the wrong reasons. Unless you have a true passion for what you are writing about (and for helping your audience) it is unlikely that you will be able to put out good content over a long period of time.
Having patience in reaching your goals is a challenge in itself, but it can often be because your goals are not what they should be in the first place!
The wrong reason is always money, and that’s hard as PF bloggers b/c money is the focus of our content!
But money is an undeniable desire. It’s just best to cultivate a community first.
Building up your audience and providing them value is something that so many money-seeking bloggers forget. I can’t tell you how many thin credit card posts I’ve seen over the last few months that offer little more information than what the credit card’s landing page offers.
I’ve gladly bought plenty of website tools, themes, services, and ebooks from blogs that I follow closely. But its because they are sites I trust – the owner writes their own posts and the evidence they provide for the value of the item is overwhelming.
Also – good points on the blog networking topic in the beginning of the post. I’ve experienced the same thing myself. I can’t tell you how many other bloggers I’ve reached out to only to see their blog fold after 6 months. Any more I give the new site almost a year before I start reaching out and networking with the owner.
I’ve had to cut down on my frequency of posting, but I’d rather do that and maintain quality versus publish a bunch of junk at a high rate. Getting past the initial 6-12 months weeds out a lot of folks, and then there’s another fade out period several years in where a lot of sites end up getting sold or the owner just stops putting themselves into the writing and farms out all of the writing.
I sent out a newsletter for the first time in ~2 years today! It’s embarrassing that it had literally been that long since I last wrote one, but hey I’m glad I finally sat down and pounded one out. It wasn’t as difficult as I expected and better late than never!
Happy Thanksgiving everybody!
Blogging is a labor of love. Very few get rich blogging, but many get tremendous satisfaction and the opportunity to serve the greater good by presenting useful information to the public. Personally, I’m very proud to be in my 5th year and the opportunities and contacts I’ve made are beyond my expectations. I’ve written a book on my own, with another due out this month. I’ve written a book for a major publisher. Additionally, I really appreciate the opportunity to freelance on such prestigious sites as U.S. News, Investopedia and Daily Capital. But like anything else, it takes a while to build up your reputation. And finally, I love the friends and contacts I’ve made across the country and the world. If it’s for you, keep blogging. If it’s not, put your efforts elsewhere.
I agree that creating value for the reader has to be the first step. It was incredibly hard for me to shift gears into thinking about monetizing my site. I don’t think it was embarrassment so much, rather an uneasiness about the process itself and then also what the readers might think. It took a lot of reading and asking tons of questions of fellow bloggers to understand how to best make money. Then you just have to go do it and learn by trial and error.