So many times we see someone come on the blogging bandwagon… gung ho to make a mark in history. Their blog is big and bold and brash. They are making a statement to the world. The first posts are frequent and interesting… but soon they become less frequent and sometimes drop off all together. Within a month or so they start to have blog apathy when they realize just how much time blogging takes. Their blog dies a slow death.
Blog statistics are overwhelming with over 70,000 new blogs coming online everyday. Most of these are on one of the free blogging services such as blogger or my-space. My guess is the lifespan of most of these 70,000 blogs is one or two posts. They get their name and info up and then lose interest quickly.
Anil Dash has a famous post about Blog Cycles that points out many of the iterations that a blog community goes through. Min Jun Kim lists out a humorous but pointed look at the lifecycle many bloggers take. I came away laughing but realizing that many of the points were oh so true.
While many blogs come and go, some find amazing life and prosper
One of the great success stories I have witnessed in blogging is Steve Pavlina. I’ve been a regular reader of Steve’s blog since last spring when I started this site. Steve’s success formula is simple… write informative content and keep the interface simple. Steve’s blog has lots of content and very little flash.
The blog interface is a modified WordPress shell in a very simple blue and white template. There are very few pictures to distract and google Ad-sense ads are placed at strategic locations. Steve just posted some fascinating statistics that point out the attraction of good content. Steve writes…
In November StevePavlina.com received 1.2 million page views and chewed through 106 GB of bandwidth. I still have plenty of bandwidth capacity left, but once it doubles again, I’ll probably offload the audio files to a separate server. In January this site received only 36K page views, so now it’s getting more traffic each day than it used to get in a month.
Cashflow. Last month this site generated over $4700 in income for me, about 98% of it from advertising and the rest from affiliate programs. My income goal for the year was to reach $3000/month (from this site that is – this isn’t my primary source of income). In January of this year I made less than $10 from this site, so that’s a nice increase. Aside from adding new content, every month I dive through the metrics and do more experimenting and optimizing.
I looked at the site stats for Fire Up Today for November and found that they resemble Steve’s from back in January. This has given me something to shoot for in the coming year. When I actually looked at Steve’s entire website I was amazed how much content he has archived. It is laid out in an interesting and logical manner.
One of the truly amazing things about Steve Pavlina.com is the two posts that reached a tipping point status back in the summer. The titles were How to become an early riser and how to get off coffee. Who knew that so many people would be interested in these common sense topics? I wrote an article at the time about why I though they took off. It’s funny when you try and think of things that other people will be interested in. I have written articles that I figured would generate numerous comments only to have them come up silent.
One of my goals for this site in the coming months is to offer some content about success and tie it in with some life experiences that I have had. I would like to get your feedback about some of the following topics and see if any sound interesting to you.
1. How to buy a beach front timeshare vacation home for less than $3000.
2. How to buy a used car for under $7500 that will save you money and perform like a new one.
3. How to plan and take a vacation in paradise for under $500 for an entire week.
4. How to save $50 a week by changing one simple habit.
5. Lose 5 pounds by increasing your intake of this popular drink.
6. Put your money in this simple container each week and see amazing savings.
7. Join this popular club and get a job advancement before you know it.
8. Install this free software enhancement and see your productivity soar.
9. Stay at this wonderful house and be treated like a king
These are all things I have had personal success with. Leave me a comment if any of these strikes your fancy.
