How to Make a Successful Blog

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In the previous post, I talked about how I generated more than $5,000 of passive income online and I’ve received many questions and comments from the readers on how do they get started. In this post, I’ll like to share with you how to make a successful blog. Some of the blogs are generating like 2,000 – 3,000 unique visitors a day, and others are generating over 700 – 1,000 unique visitors a day.

No, I’m not a successful blogger – in fact, I hire writers to write for me for these blogs. I’m just pretty good in Search Engine Optimization to rank my website to the top of Google.

But I do aim to become a successful blogger with some of my blogs like the current one you are reading. I’m constantly learning from the successful bloggers and I’ll share with you how you can become one too.

Before we start, why become a blogger?

Building a blog and maintaining it isn’t an easy process. You would need to constantly search for new topics to write about and writing new entries consistently. And if you are not good at writing, or you don’t really love writing, you probably have a hard time blogging.

In fact, that’s what I feel too when I need to blog consistently. I’m not a good writer as I used to fail my General Paper in college and my writings usually have tons of grammar mistakes. And it usually takes me 2-3 hours to write an article for the blog (at this point in time of writing this article, I’m already near my 3rd hour). A good blog post usually takes a long time to research and write it out.

Why should you still blog?

With so many projects and time commitment, I came out with some strong reasons to motivate and empower me to keep writing.

1) A successful blog on average makes 6 figures yearly income easily. This is one of the most important reasons that motivate and inspire me to write. If done correctly, you can easily
make 6 figures income just from blogging. Even though ultimately you want to make from your blog, your primary focus should be a blog that provides value.

A blog doesn’t make you money immediately, it will need some time for it to take off. If you have the mindset that you will be financially free next month, then you’ll be doomed to fail from the start. When you don’t see the money coming in next month, you’ll tend to give up.

2) Connect with your readers. You may think why the hell do I want to connect with the readers? This is one of the most important aspects that most entrepreneurs fail to do. The only reason that businesses are successful is when they listen to their customers/target audiences. By writing your blog and tracking what your audiences are reading, as well as listening what your readers feedback to you, you tend to understand what your readers want. And by doing that, the chances of success are higher.

There was once a very good friend of mine asked me about his site, “why even though I have 2,000 – 3,000 a day of visitors and I can’t make money from it.” I suggested putting a live-chat on his website to listen to his visitors.

After a few days of gathering feedback, and listening to their problems, he knows exactly what his target audiences are looking for and position his product accordingly to their needs.

3) Opens up numerous opportunities. When you write a blog using your real identity, people know you better. Just like Facebook, people like to hear about what their friends are doing. For a blog, your friends and people like to hear from what you are thinking, what you have researched. As such, you are building your own branding.

Here are some of the possibilities opening up for you -
i) Be invited for interviews, speaking, media and events opportunities.
ii) Media coverage - Websites like CNN, BBC may quote your articles
iii) Joint venture opportunities – you may have the opportunity to partner with bigger players
iv) A subscriber base for you to tap into – When you build your blog to a certain level, you’ll have a ready subscriber base for you to tap into.

4) Capturing Targeted Readers from Search Engine Traffic. When you have quality content in your blog, search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, would love to rank your blog higher in the search engine. And you get highly targeted traffic coming from the search engine every single month!

Now I hope you’ll be motivated and empowered to build a successful blog. So here are some of the powerful pointers I’ve picked up over the years that successful blogs used.

1) Successful Blogs Attract Readers with a Strong Purpose

Take a look at some of the more successful blogs about page and you can find out their reason to create the blog. In fact, they have very strong purpose that their blogs follow and because of their strong purpose, their articles are focusing on helping their readers and it results in people tend to come back to their website over and over again for more information.

Thesimpledollar.com/
“I write it because I know that there are people out there who are sitting at a point in their life that they’re unhappy with, and often it has to do with the grip that money has on their life. I know exactly what that painful grip feels like and there’s nothing I want more in life than to make it possible for them to escape that grip and follow whatever path life has in store for them with less fear and more personal freedom.”

smartpassiveincome.com
“My businesses, my strategies and my income – it’s all out there for you to see. I’m not trying to show off my success. In fact, that’s exactly the opposite of my purpose here. I want to show you exactly what I do so that you can learn and be successful online too – from both my success stories and my failures.”

happiness-project.com
My happiness project has convinced me that it’s possible to be happier by taking small, concrete steps in your daily life. In my book and on this daily blog, I write about what I’ve learned as I’ve test-driven the wisdom of the ages, the current scientific studies, and the lessons from popular culture. Plutarch, Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin, St. Thérèse, the Dalai Lama, Oprah, Martin Seligman…I cover it all.

Every Wednesday, I post a list of tips about how to be happier; every Friday, I propose a resolution for your happiness project; every Sunday, I post a quotation to get you thinking more deeply about happiness. Throughout the week, I write about my adventures as I work to be happier.

copyblogger.com
Brian built three successful offline businesses using online marketing techniques before switching to a producer model that involves building, monetizing, and occasionally selling online media properties. With Copyblogger Media, Brian seeks to empower online writers and content producers to command attention, create engagement, and influence people.

celestinechua.com/
“The Personal Excellence Blog is where I share my best advice with others on how to achieve excellence and live our best lives.”

2) Successful Blogs Connect & Inspire the Readers

Imagine for a moment that you are a student searching for information on ‘how to pass your exams’. Your exam is just 2 weeks away and you have yet studied for it.

Which would you be more interested to find out
i) A website sharing all the general principles in passing the exams like
a) listen attentively to classes,
b) do your homework promptly,
c) do revision on a daily basis

Or…

ii) A ex-student who was once a failure in class but apply some strategies with his own experiences? But because of all these failures, this ex-student learn from this and ace the exams. And then he shares these strategies with the students.

Which scenario do you think would be a better site that would connect and inspire the readers?

In fact, one of the best ways to connect with your readers is by having gone through the same experience as your readers. You are able to relate to them and understand what their mind is thinking as they are going through the process.

3) Successful Blogs Have Authentic Personalities Behind The Blog

People are reading the blogs not solely because of the content behind the blog but rather, the stories behind the content. They want to know behind the website, there is a real person behind running it and not just some ghost writers writing it (if you want to outsource your articles, instead of treating your writers as ghost writers, give credit back to them to show that your website has more than just one person running it).

And most of the successful blogs are successful because they are authentic. They meant what they say and follow what they preach. Won’t you feel unreal when a person pretends to be another person when he is not?

You don’t have to hide or lie about your mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes in life and when you acknowledge them in your blog, your readers would sense that you are real and not just some perfect being.

For the newbies…

If you are a newbie who wants to start a successful blog, do take note of the following lessons most newbies learn.

- A blog should only revolve around a single topic – instead of writing every single topic on Earth in your blog, your blog should focus on one single topic. For example, don’t go and write about how to do gardening one day and how to lose weight another day. You will lose focus doing so and there goes the same for your audiences.

When you focus on just one topic, you become an expert in the topic and you will be able to provide in depth knowledge about the topic. Visitors would know why they want to come back for too.

If you want to write about another topic, simply start a new blog.

- If consistently writing a blog is too daunting for you, simply get 20 articles up first – You don’t have to constantly come with articles to write every time. Just come up with the articles batch by batch and it’ll still do the trick. If writing isn’t your forte, simply come out with the outline of the articles and outsource it to good writers to write for you.

Action Steps:

1) Think of the topic you want to write about
2) Research about the problems, needs and wants of your target audience
3) Brainstorm for a strong purpose to address (2).

I hope this article helps you one way or another in making a successful blog. If you like this blog entry, I would really appreciate it if you could share it with your friends or share your comments with me.

Tags: Blog, blogging