Why Some New Blogs Succeed, And Others Fail
Day 10 of The 100 Days To Webpage Excellence Guide
By far the biggest reason that new blogs fail is that the bloggers lose interest in their creation. Many people have the ability to make a successful webpage, and to make money online. However a lot of people have a hard time sticking with their blog through the rough patches and emerging on the other side. By setting goals for your Blog you can help keep yourself focused, and not give up before you get your payday.
As with most things in life, setting goals for your blog are important. However setting the right goals are even more important. If you set unachievable goals for yourself, you are more likely to become discouraged than if you have no goals at all. So without further ado, here are some thinks you might want to set goals on, and what realistic goals are
1) Site Traffic - New blogs always struggle to get a sustained traffic going. Unless you have another established site or two and can feed the new site, traffic may be hit or miss for a little while. However you can still work to ensure that your traffic improves month to month. After your first month blogging, it is not unrealistic to assume you can grow traffic 30%/month, or more, for the next 6-8 month. 30% is a good number to aim for. If you keep that up, then a year later you will have 3 1/2 times as many visitors as you do now. Keep it up for two years and your number of visitors will have increased by an order of magnitude. Many sites can do better than this, so if you want to set your sights higher, go ahead, but 30% is an achievable number.
2) Number of Posts - In order to grow your site, you need to keep generating content. The more quality content you make the better. Setting a goal to create a certain number of posts a week can help make sure that you keep up with the necessary work. For this blog, I have a goal for myself of 5 posts / day and have been relatively successful at doing that. That rate has allowed me to post over 200 pages in a little over a month. Such a count would have taken me over almost a year at 1/day. However setting a goal of 1 post per day is a good rate for a new blog. It is a rate which will allow you to create a steady stream of content, keep your visitors happy, but not overwhelm you too much. 1 post/day is very much a happy medium.
3) Networking - You should set a goal of how many other bloggers you would consider your friends each month. Try and meet new bloggers whose sites you enjoy, and who also likes you sites. You can send traffic back and forth to each other and give each other ideas. Obviously it would be great to make friends with John Chow, but as that is unlikely to happen, try creating relationships with other new bloggers. As their site expands the links they give you will become more and more valuable. Creating 1 blogging friendship / month is a good goal. Try and read several new blogs each month and see if there are any which really catch your eye. If they do, there is a good chance you will get along with their writer as well.
4) Search Engine Rankings - Your blog will start out at a Google Page Rank of 0. Your goal should be to get a page rank of 3 after the next Google PR update. (External updates occur every 3 months or so.) You can use a tool such as PR Predict to gauge your interim progress. Making headway on PageRank is important for 2 reasons. The first is you want to climb the search results as quickly as possible. Searchers are the most valuable people to come to your page, they are the most likely to click on your ads, so you want as many of them as possible. Secondly Page Rank is one of the quick things which every one uses to judge a page. If people want to tell if a site is worthwhile or not, a quick look at Page Rank is commonly used to see what others think about it. PR 3 is the minimum to actually be taken seriously. PR 4 is a very common ranking for newish / less well known blogs. PR 5 is starting to become very well established in the blogging community. PR 6 is usually very popular blogs. Blogs tend to cluster at PR 6, very few of them tend to make it to 7 or 8 unless they have other features going for them besides the blog.
If you set those goals for yourself and track them, you will stay much more interested in your site. If you are a new blogger and are considering using any of these goals, let me know if you can meet/exceed them, and if they helped you at all.
on May 28th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
I keep a close eye on my stats but I also measure my progress through Technorati and feel disappointed when the numbers don’t move much. Do you think authority/ranking is a good way to measure progress, or are there too many variables?
on May 28th, 2007 at 8:36 pm
I think that Technorati is a very important stat to try to improve as many methods of monetizing your site (T-L-A & ReviewMe etc) rate it based on its Technorati authority and ranking.
However setting goals for Technorati is difficult. The reason is that Technorati goals need be on a timescale measured in months, as opposed to days or weeks. I have found that Technorati rankings tend to stagnate, as you are read by the same bloggers returning, and then jump as you post some viral content. Since its hard to know what will be viral, its hard to target and can be disappointing.
However since users are your end goal, I think focusing on users rather than Technorati ranking is a better thing to do. Although your users can still see spikes, in general it will be more smooth than Technorati
on July 26th, 2007 at 5:44 pm
Thanks for the advice
on September 12th, 2007 at 8:36 am
thanks man, this is awesome stuff once again. you are really helping us new bloggers out there.
on December 22nd, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Some fail because they are abandoned to their own devices for 3 years.
on April 9th, 2010 at 1:48 pm
For me the most important but also achieving a certain level of quality or value in the content.
on April 9th, 2010 at 1:51 pm
It needs to definitely be above “average” content quality.
on April 9th, 2010 at 1:53 pm
May be you’re going to find you disapprove some of the work by some outsourcers.
on April 9th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
I could add many other items as well such as building your sales skills, driving traffic.
on April 9th, 2010 at 1:55 pm
This is one element involved in the overall system, if you can sell, you won’t make money.
on April 9th, 2010 at 1:56 pm
One more point i want to mention is we like to watch videos of anyone which will help us bring more confidence than writing.
on April 9th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
That was a good video, when I look at a lot of affiliate sites.
on April 9th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Unique content is good, but no use if nobody.
on April 9th, 2010 at 2:01 pm
Most people wanting to become seen, popular, famous or rich on the internet. Thanks for sharing this idea.
on April 9th, 2010 at 2:02 pm
Original, unique content is nice, but that’s for those spinning their wheels.
on April 9th, 2010 at 2:04 pm
To be noticed, to be popular, to make money, the blogger has to target their niche make a good plan.
on April 9th, 2010 at 2:08 pm
Once they are successful with their lobby efforts, the success circle will be complete and they will make more money and be more successful. Thanks for sharing i learn a lot.
on April 9th, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Great to see you on video. You should do more of them since that can get your lots of free traffic from YouTube.
on April 9th, 2010 at 2:10 pm
It will come in time if you are prepared to work at it and ride out the hard times.
on July 8th, 2010 at 7:51 am
I also doing a daily post 1-2 articles a day, and now my site are up by PR2-PR3 now. Thanks for sharing a excellent idea.
on July 22nd, 2010 at 9:37 am
Scatt think “blogroll” link within the text or the tactics and we must receive the backlink?