Originally posted by Darren Rowse, Updated for 2024
Starting a blog is an adventure—a journey I’ve embarked on more times than I can count. And along the way, I’ve learned a thing or two about what it takes to keep that momentum going. Today, I want to share some updated insights on maintaining your blogging momentum, reflecting on today’s digital landscape and planning for success from the get-go. If you already have a blog, reading this article might help you refocus or unlock the solution to a problem that has been standing in the way of your success.
1. Choosing Your Topic Wisely
The breadth of your topic can make or break your blog. Too broad, and you’ll be overwhelmed. Too narrow, and you might quickly run out of steam. Here’s how to find that sweet spot:
Modern Research Tools: Beyond Google News, tools like Ahrefs, BuzzSumo, Google Trends and Answer the Public can offer a wealth of insight into what’s trending in your niche. Use these to gauge the pulse of your potential topic.
Real-world Success Stories: Let’s learn from blogs that have nailed their niche. For instance, look at how “Minimalist Baker” thrives by focusing on simple, delicious recipes requiring 10 ingredients or less, one bowl, or 30 minutes or less to prepare.
A practical exercise that I encourage you to do is to simply brainstorm what posts you could write on the topic. Simply put down on paper as long a list of post titles as you can as quickly as possible. If after 10 minutes you only have a handful of potential post ideas you might want to either widen your topic or find another one. To get your imagination going, you could start with a mind map.
2. Fueling Your Passion
Does the topic excite you? Are you motivated enough to write about it for the long term?
The energy you bring to your blog is its heartbeat. Without genuine interest and passion, your blog might not withstand the test of time.
Ask yourself what your passion and energy levels are for the topic you’re considering blogging about. Be brutally honest about this because as I found, we can sometimes fool ourselves into thinking we are interested in a topic when we are not.
Here are a few questions you might like to ask:
Can you honestly see yourself writing on the topic in 2 or more years time?
Is the topic one that you’re proud to be covering?
Do you want to be known as an expert on this topic?
I’m not saying that you can’t start blogs on topics that you don’t want to be known for or that you’re not interested in – but these questions will help you to work out what your motivations are which is an important step in the process of building a sustainable blog.
If you’re not interested in your topic your potential readers will sense this and the chances of success will fall.
Successful blogs are almost always long term efforts and most do not really begin to see significant ‘success’ for 12 or more months. They take a significant investment of time and energy and I guess all I’m saying is that it’s worth considering if the topic is something that you want to invest your life into for such a significant amount of time.
Here’s what to consider:
Align With Your Personal Brand: Ensure your blog reflects what you’re passionate about and how you want to be perceived professionally. It’s not just a blog; it’s a part of your identity.
Community and Engagement: Joining blogging communities and participating in online forums can reignite your passion and provide fresh perspectives. Platforms like Reddit or LinkedIn groups are gold mines for such interactions.
Balancing Blogging and Life: Remember, your well-being is paramount. Embrace tools and practices that support a healthy balance, ensuring your blogging journey is sustainable and enjoyable.
I’ve written more extensively about “Finding Your Spark” on my own personal blog. In that article I identify four places to look first for inspiration.
3. Realistic Time Management
How much time do you have? Do you have time for this blog?
Every blog demands time, but how much can you afford? Here’s how to ensure you’re not biting off more than you can chew:
Leverage Time-saving Tools: With Trello, Asana, or Notion, you can streamline your blogging process, from brainstorming ideas to scheduling posts.
Automate Where Possible: Use tools like Buffer or SEMrush to automate social media posting and SEO tasks, freeing up more time for writing and engaging with your audience.
Quality Over Quantity: It’s tempting to run multiple blogs or post daily, but focusing on creating high-quality, impactful content will serve you (and your readers) better in the long run.
Wrapping Up
As we look ahead, remember that blogging is a marathon, not a sprint. Embrace the journey, stay adaptable, and never stop learning. Whether you’re refining an existing blog or starting a new one, these considerations will help you build a solid foundation for success.
Stay tuned for our next post, where we’ll dive into strategies for sustaining momentum once your blog is off the ground. Happy blogging!
A fundamental principle in marketing and relationship building is that people tend to do business with individuals or companies they know, like, and trust.
This is particularly relevant in the context blogging which involves personal branding, networking and a readership.
A Quick Definition of The Type Of ‘Successful’ Blog I’m Writing About
It might be worth stating that the type of blog that I’m talking about in this series is a blog that isn’t purely about profit or traffic – but a blog that has influence in its niche.
It is certainly possible to build a profitable and/or well trafficked blog without Trust – in fact I know a few bloggers who blog purely for Search Engine Traffic who don’t really care about influence, brand or loyal readers but who just want traffic that they can convert to cash.
These bloggers are certainly ‘successful’ on some levels (I guess ‘success’ really comes down to your goals) – but that’s not the style of blogging that I do and is not what this series is on about.
What I’m on about is helping bloggers to not only be profitable and have traffic but to build blogs that have profile, influence, authority, credibility, respect and a brand that opens up opportunities beyond quick profit.
By no means is my approach the only way to make money blogging – but it’s where I’m at and as a result is what I write about.
Why Building Trust is Important
OK – so now we’re on the same page lets talk about Trust.
I’m not sure we need to spend too much time talking about ‘why’ building trust is important as it’s pretty much common sense – but in short – if you’re looking to build influence, to build a brand that is respected and you want a site that is authoritative – you’re going to have a lot better chance if people actually trust you.
Yes with some clever copywriting and good positioning in search engines you can probably convince people to buy certain products – but in order to build lasting influence – trust is going to need to play a part.
On the flip side – many businesses today have seen the way that a lack of trust or even worse, broken trust can hurt a business, destroy reputations and ruin years of hard work.
So building and maintaining trust is paramount for bloggers wanting to build influence – so how does one do it?
One of the best resources on the topic of building influence through trust online is Trust Agents by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. However as it’ll take a day or two for Amazon to ship you a copy (and I recommend you get one) I thought I’d jot down a few principles of building trust online that I’ve gathered over the years both from my own experience of trusting others and building trust with others.
A Quick Exercise Before You Read Any More
Before you read my thoughts on how to build trust – here’s a very quick exercise to do.
On a piece of paper or in a text document – jot down a blogger or blog that you trust. Under the name – list 2-3 reasons why you trust them.
OK – read on.
4 Principles of Building Trust Online
1. It usually takes time to build
I’m a pretty sceptical guy – I don’t really want to be but after years of being bombarded with marketing messages and experiencing disappointment at expectations not being met by people making big promises my guard is up. I suspect I’m not alone.
While I’m sure there are people who are more trusting than others – I’m pretty certain that most people in my generation (and the generations that come before and after mine) are a fairly suspicious lot. We are capable of trust – but it usually takes time to get there.
2. It is Earned
I do have the capability to trust you – but more often than not it’ll only come once I see that you’re worthy of that trust. An example of this principle hit my inbox this morning – it was from a reader who had just bought my 31 days to build a better blog workbook.
Her email included this:
“I’ve never bought an ebook before, partly because I don’t trust people with my credit card information and partly because I’ve always suspected most ebooks are just fluff…. But after reading your blog for 12 months and being on the receiving end of useful information every day over that time I decided you were probably a credible source of information”.
The sense that I got from her email was that she only made the purchase based upon her previous experience of what I do – something that was earned by providing her with help day by day over a year.
The take home lesson for bloggers is to give value, be useful and prove that you have something worthwhile and authoritative to say on your topic.
Look for ways to genuinely and generously improve the lives of your readers – do this over the long haul and your deposit in the trust bank with readers grows over time.
3. The recommendations of others are important
I still remember (but can’t find a link to) a post by Seth Godin a year or so back where he talks about how he sells a lot more books through a blog post when he’s talking about someone else’s book than his own.
It was the perfect illustration of how the words and recommendations of other people promotion you carry a lot more weight than you promoting yourself.
We’re social beings – we make decisions together – we buy things that others recommend – we trust those that others trust….
This means you have a couple of tasks to do:
Build relationships with others. Some bloggers take the attitude that other bloggers are potential competition and as a result they stay clear of them. However a recommendation from someone else in your industry could be gold – build relationships.
Find Ways to use this social proof. If someone does recommend you it doesn’t hurt to highlight it to others. You don’t need to do it in an ego driven or big headed way – but do find subtle and relevant ways to share it with those in your network.
4. Be Yourself
One of the fastest ways to destroy trust is to be caught trying to be something that you’re not.
Make a promise that you can’t fulfil
Present yourself as someone that you’re unable to be
Make a claim that’s not true
All of these things set up expectations in the eyes of others that can’t be met which will lead to disappointment, anger, disillusionment and as a result – broken trust.
Not only that – I find that people are pretty good these days at picking people who are presenting themselves as something that they’re not. You might not even have to get caught out to have people suspicious (and untrusting) of you.
As a result it’s best to be yourself.
Let people know what you do and don’t know.
Be transparent about your motives.
Share your stories of failure as well as your successes.
Admit your mistakes.
All of these things make you more human, relatable and help to build trust.
What Would You Add?
I’ve only scratched the surface on Trust with this post – there’s so much more to say and I’d love to hear what you’ve got to say on the topic.
What bloggers do you trust (who did you write down in the exercise above)? Why do you trust them?
How do you build trust with your readers?
What stories and experiences do you have to help illustrate these principles of building trust?
This is a guest contribution from Joen Rude Falsner.
Most of us have been there: we’ve all had this job where the financial compensation was the absolute single motivation to even show up.
Luckily for most people this, usually, low-compensated, uninspiring and numbingly boring job is characterized by being temporary. Something we do only for a short period of time.
Not for me.
For five full years I was rocking the position of a full time phone supporter specializing in assisting surprisingly helpless people with their TV setup and broadband service subscription.
“Have you tried turning it off and on again?”
I hated it. Oh my God, how I hated it.
A little bit about me
So I’m Joen. A now 30-something-year-old dude from Denmark who has an opinion about most things in life. I wrote this article a few years ago but the story is still relevant today, because my blog is going strong and continues to support me and my lifestyle.
Whether the topic is bear hunting in Alaska or how to keep tropical flowers alive in a costal temperate climate, I will find a way to ask questions that I am genuinely interested in knowing the answers to while also insisting that I know a thing or two about the subject.
The struggle of saying no to the system
This is who I’ve been most of my life. In my mind I have always had all the answers, but never when the topic landed on me. When the topic was ‘Joen’, I instantly became mute.
I was okay with this for a few years, but then I started to realize that my friends were moving up in the world.
Everybody around me seemed to be thriving with fancy degrees, fancy grades and eventually fancy titles. They had their life paved already, while I was digging my own hole deeper and deeper using faulty modems and TV boxes as a shovel.
At age 25, it would be fair to describe me as a rather depressed individual primarily due to the fact that I didn’t seem to have much of a bright future.
I didn’t have any formal education other than high school and a 2-year-short piece of garbage degree in marketing that was worth nothing more than a seat behind the register in your nearest supermarket.
See, that’s the thing. I never wanted a formal education, because it simply wasn’t for me. I just couldn’t care less about it.
I wanted to create. They wanted me to read.
Saying no to the system was a huge deal that I am forever grateful I did. It was also something that was incredibly difficult. Everybody expects you to do what society expects you to do.
Because if you don’t do what society wants you to do, then what are you going to do?
Entering the digital universe
Regardless of my state of depression I was eager to dig my way out of the hole.
My close friend, Frederik, who is kind of a SEO and PPC hero told me about blogging and affiliate marketing. He actually introduced me to the whole digital universe a few years earlier, but it took me two years before I summoned the courage to act on it.
Finally, I decided to start a blog.
February 7, 2014, I started Stayclassy.dk, a fashion and lifestyle blog with focus on quality over quantity and the good life.
I was determined to be successful.
From dinosaur to digital dude
Back in 2014, when I started my blog, I think it would be fair to say I was kind of a dinosaur.
Of course I knew how to work my way around a computer and I have always been pretty handy with ‘basic stuff’, but I had no idea just how big the difference was between casually using a computer and understanding the incredible opportunities the Internet offers.
Getting started with blogging
When I started blogging I was only familiar with basic tools.
I knew that it was important to make a keyword analysis in order to identify the best keyword for an article so that it would be easier for it to rank. I also knew it was important to create a lot of content.
Quality content of course.
But that was pretty much it. Those were my tools. Creating content and using the right keywords. Looking back, I actually like the simplicity of my starting point.
Because creating content is really the most important part of getting started with blogging. Forget link building, guest blogging and what else you got.
There’s no point of reaching out to people if you haven’t already built a solid platform to show.
My goals when I started the blog
I’m not gonna lie.
Getting into blogging was mainly incentivized by the possibility of earning money. I wanted to get out of my day job badly and in order to do so I had to earn money.
I started the blog while also working my full time job. In other words, my schedule just got a lot busier. It was three hours of blogging before work and 3-4 hours of blogging after.
All together that made my average day ~3+9+3=~15 hours long.
The goal from day 1 was to create one quality article a day. An article that had to be at least 1000 words long.
I knew that text heavy articles weren’t necessarily a goal in itself, but setting this rule was important as I was also forcing myself to write.
A lot.
You have to remember that when I started blogging my only writing experience was chatting to girls on Tinder. I had zero experience, although I’ve always been all right at putting together a sentence or two.
The strategy
By writing an article a day, and sometimes even two, I knew that in a year I would have 365 articles in the bank. That’s 365,000 words or the equivalent of 3-4 good books. I liked the sound of that.
Content before anything.
That was my basic strategy to begin with. It wasn’t until I had +45 articles that I began thinking in terms of getting links.
With 45+ articles I had something to show. I had already created a blog that I was really proud of. People would also take my blog seriously and that made my link-building effort a lot easier as more of my guest post enquiries were granted.
Along with the consistent output of quality articles I started getting links. My blog started to become authoritative-ish.
I remember how much I hated the link-building game.
I thought it was so lame that links were the all-important factor in getting those much desired organic rankings. This was also one of the reasons that I didn’t put too much effort into it at that point, which, in hindsight, was a really bad decision, but more on this later.
Affiliate blog posts for the win
That was my mind-set.
If I wanted to earn money, I had to monetize as much as I could without of course making my blog appear spammy.
So the majority of the articles I wrote were affiliate blog posts, however I would complement them with lifestyle blog posts of various sorts in order for my blog to maintain a dynamic range of content.
Mainly it was affiliate articles in the fashion department where I had one particular affiliate program that would turn out to perform extremely well.
I already knew that, as this was the online go-to-fashion retailer for most Danes, but I didn’t know that it would become ~70% of my combined affiliate income almost three years later.
Spending a lot of time analyzing all the available affiliate programs as well as testing them out has been of great importance to the success of my blog.
If you don’t keep a close eye on this, you will consequently earn less money. Less money that over time will accumulate to a huge loss.
Earning my first dollar
Exactly 14 days was how long it took me to earn my first affiliate dollar after having started the blog.
My first sale was worth exactly 7 euros.
I was ecstatic. Just two weeks in and here I am already living the passive income dream.
Okay not really, but I could immediately see that this “earn money online blogging”-thing wasn’t just a fairy tale pipe dream.
It could be done if using the same technique as Andy Dufresne in Shawshank Redemption (best film ever by the way), who dug a hole through the wall by applying only pressure and time.
Pressure and time
That is all it really takes and although there isn’t any hole to be seen right away, you will eventually hit the other end of the wall.
Although I was seeing dollars only two weeks after getting to work, things were moving slow. Painfully slow actually, but it was easy to stay on track as I continued to grow my audience month after month.
The first 11 months of Stayclassy.dk
The first dot on the screenshot above marks the very beginning of Stayclassy.dk with virtually no traffic. Eleven months later the dot had jumped 16,193 steps in the right direction.
This was the time where I finally quit my beloved phone supporter job.
And not only did I quit. I moved to Australia. Away from icy Denmark and on to the deliciously warm continent where endless summer is always thriving.
I was not earning a full time living by any means at that point, but it was enough to get by as I also had saved up a bit of money.
Suddenly Joen was moving up in the world. Life was looking up. It felt great, to put it mildly.
Affiliate Marketing is great, but…
… it takes time and an abundance of hard work to get there.
Being one year into my blogging journey I was still not making enough to fully rely on it. Far from it actually, but I was okay with that. I knew it was only a matter of time, if I kept doing what I was doing.
Nonetheless, it was time to diversify my income stream.
So I engaged in sponsored content. I was getting more and more enquiries from businesses who were seeking promotion.
This was terrific as I was able to supplement my affiliate income with a tangible here-and-now income. They would pay me immediately as opposed to the hundreds of affiliate articles where I was still waiting to reap the true benefits of my hard work.
Given my blog’s good image I didn’t even have to approach businesses. They approached me. That was a solid pat on the shoulder and a strong indication that I was doing something right.
So I carried on.
The digital dude
That’s who I was starting to feel like. After a year of hard work, I was beginning to get a real grasp on blogging and this digital universe in general.
I was suddenly able to have “academic discussions” with my friend, Frederik.
I knew what was going on in the world of blogging and the wide variety of things you need to consistently keep an eye on.
After just one year I felt like I had learned incredibly many things that no school could ever teach me.
The main reason for this was that every time I wanted or had to implement something on my blog, I had to learn about it. Combining theory and practice was apparently the way to go. At least for me.
Becoming a successful blogger
So basically, in year two of my blogging career, I was kind of living the dream. I was travelling around Australia living in Darwin (not that much of a dream spot by the way), Cairns and Melbourne. I also spent six weeks in Bali and a month in Thailand.
Was this it? Had I made it?
I think most people would agree that I had indeed become a successful blogger, but to me I was only getting started. I was comparing my blog to a successful start-up. Things were going just fine, but it was nowhere near enough.
In short I kept maintaining the outlook of treating my blog as a real business: that strong growth was the only acceptable outcome. I think this has been an essential ingredient in getting to where I am today.
Being a successful blogger isn’t a static thing. It’s a constant battle that requires a continuous effort.
Very quickly things can go the wrong way. You can get hit by the Google bus (yes, that was a metaphor for losing rankings) subsequently affecting your income. There can be a drought where businesses are not interested in having sponsored content on your blog.
So many things can go wrong along the way.
I’ve been through all of this.
Several times. Up and down. Down, down and then up, up and up. It’s a never ending rollercoaster that will sometime make you feel sick and other times euphoric.
Dealing with the hardships of blogging
So yeah, blogging is no walk in the park. I have been through quite a few hardships.
Oh God, the discipline…
Call it what you want, but I call it hardship. One of the biggest challenges I have faced, and still am facing, is discipline.
It is so much easier to get up in the morning when you have a boss, who expects you to be there at 9am sharp.
When you are your own boss, it is so easy to allow yourself to sleep way past 10am. It is so easy to browse through hilarious cat photos instead of doing what you should be doing.
I have definitely not solved the problem of procrastination. I have, however, become more self-disciplined. I am constantly trying to improve my self-discipline by the use of various techniques.
Urgency
Because life seems so long, it is really hard to work towards your goals with a sense of urgency.
The mind seems to think that there always is plenty of time to do something else, which is why it is okay not to do what you should be doing right now.
I tell my brain every day that I need to have a better sense of urgency. This actually helps me with being more disciplined.
Mental toughness
Everybody talks about motivation. “You need to stay motivated”. “Read this book so you can get motivated”.
Of course motivation is a good thing, but I have come to the realisation that motivation is something that comes and goes as it pleases. It is a temporary state of mind and you have no control over it.
Instead, I have learned that the key to becoming a disciplined blogger (and person in general) is to work on your mental toughness.
Convincing yourself to write when you reeeaally don’t feel like it. Convincing your mind to finish a blog post although it tells you to stop right now. You get the point.
It is a draining exercise that will only be fruitful if applied repetitively.
It is a quite complex topic that I am by no means an expert on, however I have found it easier to work on my mental toughness when combining it with meditation and cognitive behavioral self-therapy.
Yeah, that was a pretty advanced word, but it’s actually not that complex.
In essence, it is about analysing your own thoughts and rationalising the why and what’s: why am I feeling this lack of doing anything productive? What is the consequence of not doing this work and what is the positive outcome if I do? By working right now, I will move closer to my hopes and dreams.
This exercise is really helpful as I simply get more shit done.
Delayed gratification
It’s about working hard now and then at some point later be rewarded. It makes sense, but the waiting time can be daunting. And it usually is.
At least for me as I am notorious for being impatient. When I hit publish on a blog post I want it to rank immediately, but fact of the matter is that it usually takes months before it sits on page 1, IF at all.
When getting into blogging you really have to be okay with delayed gratification.
I have been dealing with this hardship by always celebrating the small victories. It can be a little improvement in my rankings. It can be a few new e-mail subscribers, new fans on Facebook, a little increase in affiliate sales and so on.
Don’t be too hard on yourself just because you have yet to reach your big milestone.
Surviving ‘the dip’
You are probably familiar with Seth Godin’s terrific book, The Dip. Basically it addresses how every new project, business and hobby is all fun and games in the very beginning.
It’s exciting and you are as motivated as can be.
Pretty fast, though, the excitement fades. Suddenly obstacles are starting to build up. It’s not as easy as it was yesterday and you actually have to work hard.
Few people are lucky enough to avoid the dip and I sure as hell wasn’t one of them.
When I started the blog I had already read Seth Godin’s book, so I was aware of the concept.
That was a good thing as I therefor was expecting the dip. I was prepared for it and knew that this was simply just a state I would have to hustle my way through.
By keep telling myself that surviving the dip is an essential part of becoming successful, I was able to power through.
Having to do everything yourself
Most bloggers who start out have very limited resources. That means they have to do everything themselves. Outsourcing is generally not an option.
Right from buying the domain, setting up the first blog post to sending business proposals to potential partners, fixing various technical aspects and understanding how SEO works, everything is on your plate.
And you have to be really hungry if you are going to chew your way through all of it.
Having to do everything yourself has been one of the most valuable things I have had to do. You learn so incredibly much so incredibly fast simply because you have to.
The downside, however, is that you easily will find yourself overwhelmed. You don’t know where to start and it all just seems too much.
What I have done in order to not go down Overwhelm Lane, is to break down the tasks in what is super important and what is not so super important.
Then I will start with the number one super important task and solve it. When I have somewhat solved it, I move on to the next one. And then the next one.
It’s so much easier this way as opposed to starting from scratch with five different things you have zero grasp on.
From successful to thriving blogger
Even though I felt like a successful blogger after only twelve months of blogging, I wasn’t thriving. The blogging hardships were still of too great proportions.
I was still waiting for the blog to properly take off. I also still had so much basic stuff to learn.
Fast forward to the beginning of 2017
That’s today.
2 years and 10 months later I am still blogging away. I have written more than 700 articles. I have published more than 700,000 polished and edited words.
Stayclassy.dk has become the largest men’s fashion and lifestyle blog in Denmark with more than +60,000 monthly readers.
Blogging is my bread and butter, but my blogging income allows me to eat steak and béarnaise – and quite often actually!
I feel like I am thriving. I understand the blogging business. I know how it works. I generally just find it easy to connect the dots. Getting to this point has also sped up the growth of my blog.
2024 Update
In terms of age, I am in my early 30s. Geographically, I now live in Portugal. On a daily basis, I deal with various things and cases, which can probably best be described as a mixture of ideas and developing concepts as well as online marketing.
Alongside Stay Classy, I also help my girlfriend’s blog, AmalieRohde.dk , which has since become an integral part of Stay Classy – namely Stay Classy Kvinder . Likewise, we also run Stay Classy Vlog , which is the associated website for our YouTube channel , Stay Classy Vlog.
The most valuable tools I use
Consistency
It might seem self-explanatory, predictable and whatnot. I don’t care. Consistency carried out with persistence is by far the best path to destination successfulness.
And everybody knows that, right?
I think they do. The problem is that most people don’t understand just how important it actually is.
Or maybe they do.
They just don’t have the stomach to stay on course by moving one feet in front of the other every day. Because it is by no means an easy tool to use. It requires self-discipline on a daily basis, and yeah, we’ve already been over that.
The most incredible SEO-research tool available
Right up until six months ago I have been a cheapskate when it comes to the many online research tools available. No way I was paying $200+ a month just so I could look at competitor backlink profiles and keyword rankings.
Boy, has this been a poor decision, and not only a poor decision, it has also been an expensive one.
I’ll tell you why.
In the jungle of SEO-tools I was referred to Ahrefs.com by a friend of mine who was doing an unbelievable job with building links and domain authority for his own site.
I signed up with a paid profile and started looking at backlink profiles of competitors and people in the Danish SEO-industry, who I knew were building lots of links.
Immediately, I saw how many quality links that were just laying there. Up until July 2016 I really hadn’t done much about building quality links to my blog, so I figured it was well overdue I put in an effort.
And so I did.
I picked all the low hanging fruits to begin with, however sticking only to relevant and natural ones. I moved on to approaching strong websites where guest posting made sense.
Quickly, I got into the game of doing white hat link building. So many strong websites were suddenly pointing to my blog and then, BAM, I saw the effect.
The annotation next to July 2016 marks the day I started putting effort into link building. Two months later my blog took a massive jump. And then again.
Essentially I had doubled my organic traffic. This naturally had a pleasant effect on my affiliate income.
It was great to see this boost in traffic and earnings, but I am still cursing myself for not putting in this effort much earlier. I wonder how much money I have lost.
Oh, well.
Expensive lessons are sometimes the most valuable ones. And here the lesson was that links are ever important, whether you like it or not.
I know that everybody knows this. I’m not sharing any wild information that will shake the blogging or SEO industry. I just want to remind people that as ridiculous it can seem to spend an entire day on getting a single link, it is most likely worth it.
Another great thing about Ahrefs…
… is that their ranking system works as daily motivation for me.
Being able to see your Ahrefs rank, but also domain rating and organic search movements is fantastic.
It makes me want to work even harder as the daily effort I put into my blog translates to these Ahrefs statistics. Everyday they are updated.
Here is one of the Ahrefs graphs I follow religiously. Notice how it started going upwards in July, when I signed up.
What blogging has given me
Getting into the blogging business was in many ways a desperate measure.
Back in 2014, I would never have guessed just how many good things that would come out of it.
Because fact of the matter is that blogging has done so much more for me besides giving me juicy do-follow links, a bunch of traffic and a passive income.
I’ve become an independent dude
Almost three years of experience with running my own business has made me very independent to the point where I will never work for another person.
The joy of seeing my own business grow and grow is more fulfilling than anything I can think of.
The independence has also given me clarity.
I am more focused on what I want to achieve with my time on this little planet of ours. I will always have doubts about the decisions I make, but I have become confident enough to follow through and take the risks regardless.
Being a good writer is incredibly valuable
I will probably never be the Mark Twain of the 21st century, but I think that I have become a pretty decent writer in the course of the last three years. A writer that keeps improving.
One of the things that I have realized and thought a lot about lately is how valuable it is to be a good writer.
Writing not only allows you to tell a compelling story, it enables you to reach out to other people with a much higher rate of success. Here I am talking about creating appealing proposals to businesses, but also communication in general.
Additionally, writing has made me much more creative simply because I have forced digital ink on the screen every single day. Coming up with blog post ideas and putting them to life is one of the best ways to exercise your brain’s creative muscle.
Freedom to do what I want to do
Although blogging is no 4-hour-work-week gig, it comes with a tremendous amount of freedom.
Yes, you have to spend a lot of time in front the screen, but having the freedom to choose where in the world you want to sit and when is priceless.
In many ways it is the ultimate thing in life. Being able to do what you love from anywhere in the world.
I wrote this sitting on a roof top bar in Melbourne with the sun in my face.
I moved back from Australia to Denmark in December last year as I wanted to have a steadier base to work from. That hasn’t stopped me from bringing my laptop around the world.
In the last 12 months I have brought my laptop to Dubai, Italy, Greece, Berlin, Switzerland and now Melbourne where I am spending two months before moving onto an epic road trip around the southern parts of Australia.
The doors that have opened
Blogging has opened so many doors for me. It has led me to bigger and better on a continuous note. I get to work with amazing companies.
One of the best experiences was a company that wanted me to do an article on their insane collection of whisky, rum, cognac etc., where I was literally paid to taste some of the most expensive drops in the world. Is this real life?
I have established a network with talented, interesting and reputable people that stretch much further than the blogging environment.
My blog has given me a strong résumé that makes a formal education irrelevant. Although long educations in Denmark are free, I have also saved a lot of time and money by not wasting the last three years on a bachelor degree that won’t serve me.
Most importantly, blogging has made me a happier dude
And not just happier. Happy.
Blogging has given me a sense of purpose in life. I feel like I make a difference doing what I do, which is a feeling that gets emphasized by the many messages I get from inspired readers.
Okay, I’m gonna stop now with the happy camper poetry. It gets a bit much, doesn’t it?
Is blogging for everyone?
Certainly not. And I don’t mean that as in ‘not everybody is talented enough’. I am pretty sure most people could create a blog with decent content.
The problem is just that blogging is much more than creating content. As we talked about earlier there are so many strings to pull, if you want to become successful.
Of course everybody can blog on a hobby level. Nothing is stopping you from writing about your love of gluten free unicorn shaped candy, but if you want to make a living off of it, you will have to go beyond the content.
You will need to treat it like a business. Are you up for starting a business?
What’s next?
For me, you might ask? Only three years in, I still have a lot to learn. I feel like I am still just getting started. After all, three years really isn’t that much.
But to answer your question, I will continue to create content relentlessly although things are beginning to head in new directions. Directions where the format isn’t necessarily text-based, or at least where I don’t have to create all of it myself.
This means that I am in the process of expanding the team from 1 (me) to 2 or 3. This would allow me to take things to the next level and move closer to the ultimate goal, which is becoming the leading fashion and lifestyle magazine in Denmark.
Right now I am in the early phase of starting a vlog.
Something that scares the shit out of me. Putting myself in front of the camera and figure out how to tell a story. Am I even interesting enough? Hardly, most of my friends would probably say.
But I don’t care.
It’s time for Stayclassy.dk to work on even higher engagement. In a world where people can’t seem to get enough of videos, it is increasingly difficult to keep your audience interested only via text formatted content.
People want variety.
Although I have zero experience with recording I decided to jump straight into the vlogging world. I bought a Canon 70D, Røde VideoMic, various tripods, lenses and the whole shebang.
I am on really deep water, but I think I will manage to find my way to the shore.
This is the first vlog of Stayclassy.dk. One of many adventures to come.
So this turned out to be quite a long read. 5000 words actually. That’s a pretty good length if you want it to rank high. Google loooves rich content.
Remember, though, it’s not about the word count. It’s about the message.
I’m sure you got what it takes to become a successful blogger. Really all it takes is to get started, be consistent and passionate, and carry on.
Joen is the guy behind Stayclassy.dk, which is the biggest fashion and lifestyle blog for men in Denmark. He writes articles with the main purpose of inspiring his readers to become the best version of themselves. Connect with him on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.
Is your blog getting the attention you know it deserves? Maybe you haven’t started your blog yet because you can’t settle on the right name or theme. Perhaps you’re thinking of starting a second blog, but want to “do it right” this time…
Whichever camp you’re in, you need to consider five basic factors in naming a new blog or business.
You’ll need to weigh up the branding pros and cons before you settle on a name. You’ve only got a few seconds to make an impression with your web site visitors, or potential visitors. If your blog or business name doesn’t capture what you’re all about, then chances are that people will just click away.
You didn’t start your blog to have drive by visitors did you? No, you want to foster a community, get comments, and get people to subscribe and come back for more. All of that starts with your branding, and more specifically, with your blog or business name.
Let’s look at the options together, shall we?
1. Just be yourself: the pros and cons of using your own name
There are many bloggers and business owners who chose to brand their blog using their own name (or a pseudonym). Blogs like Johnny B. Truant, Steve Pavlina and ElizabethPW come to mind.
The benefit of using your name as your domain or blog is that it’s not likely to change. Plus, you’re getting people to connect with you as a person and not a business entity.
Another benefit of using your name is that if ever you decide to switch gears and blog about new topics, your readers will stick around, because they’re there to read what you have to say. Oh, and you won’t need to have people change their links if you decide to stop writing about your chosen topic and start another blog.
In a way, using your own name is more about creating a strong connection with you as a person and blogger than it is about delivering a particular type of advice or information. This doesn’t mean that you can’t deliver value or targeted blog posts — it simply means that you’re not as tied down. You can always create a tagline that describes your main area of expertise.
The downsides of branding as yourself are that you need to train people to remember your name. If your blog name is memorable, you won’t have this problem. You also need to ensure that yourname.com domains are not already taken, and you might also want to buy common misspellings of your name.
When using your name, you also need to keep in mind that potential employers, family, and friends can easily find your blog. Now that might not be much of an issue, but it’s something to keep in mind if you aren’t ready to announce your blog to the world. Here’s more about whether you “Should You Blog Anonymously or Use Your Real Name?”
2. Picking a targeted name that’s catchy and relates to your topic
The other blog-naming strategy is to choose a name that describes the topic you’re blogging about. Some examples include Problogger, Ittybiz, and Escape from cubicle nation. You can tell just from reading the name of the blog exactly what the blog is about and what you can expect.
There are many benefits to choosing a targeted keyword and title. There’s definitely a search engine optimization advantage to including a common word or phrase in your title. Plus, people are more likely to remember how to spell your domain name.
If you come up with a fun, memorable brand and blog name, you can set a new trend in motion. Today there are people calling themselves probloggers, referring to the ProBlogger blog. Just like White Hot Truth started a tribe of “fire starters”.
The disadvantage of using a specific blog name is the limitation on what you can write about. If your blog’s name is Dolphin Rescue and you start talking about manicures, you might throw your your readers off course along the way … not to mention negate some of those SEO benefits we talked about earlier.
Another common issue with specific blog names is that we are all human beings who evolve and change. We can’t expect our blogs to stay static any more than we can expect our cells to stop regenerating.
One way to deal with your changing views is to expand your blog name — like the blogger who made the switch from Illuminated Mind to Illuminated Mind & Body.
You might also lose some of your blogging mojo if you get burned out writing about the same topics year after year. (Though there are great tips for battling bloggers block.) In the end, it’s best to pick a specific name for your blog only if you can see yourself sticking to your topic for at least a few years.
3. Pick a niche or market because you care — and not just about the money
Before you choose a blog name, you’re likely going to think through what you’ll be writing about. I want to caution you not to get sucked into certain topics or niche markets just because they’re currently hot.
There are definitely trends in the blogging world, and you don’t want to be one of the latecomers to the party.
Avoid choosing a topic because you think it will monetize well. If your heart isn’t in it, your readers will be able to tell. Nobody wants to spend tons of time setting up a blog and then giving up just a few months down the line.
Pick a topic that you’re really passionate about and that you can see yourself writing about long term.
4. Create a meaningful name that says something
Another thing I’d like to caution you about is picking a name that doesn’t really mean anything, or worse, that has a meaning your readers aren’t interested in.
Try to stay away from bland, no-real-meaning names like “Positive Living” or “Thoughts on Leadership”. You don’t want something that is so generic that people will forget it immediately. This isn’t to say that you can’t pick a great name that is both simple and conveys your topic well.
Let me tell you the story of how my old blog’s name came to be. I initially chose the name Raw Food Switch, because I wanted to help people make the switch to a raw food diet.
I discovered that I was actually antagonizing my readers, because I was assuming they wanted to switch their diet. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone who was just itching to voluntarily change the way they eat.
Usually the changes come about because of a health challenge, or other life changing experience. So you see the name of my blog was not talking to my people the right way. That’s why…
5. Listening to your friends and family works … sometimes
At this point I had received a couple of suggestions from friends and family members about the name of my blog. In general I try not to be too influenced by people who aren’t in my target market (and some of my family members are not into raw foods at all!).
My boyfriend had a great insight. He suggested I move the “s” from the word switch to the word food, and become the Raw Foods Witch. At first I resisted his suggestion, since it’s hard to see the genius in someone who is so close and potentially biased.
Yet as soon as I took his advice and decided to make the witch switch, everything fell into place. Martin Whitmore illustrated my new witchy logo, and I got tons of great comments, new subscribers, and more overall connection with my readers.
So my advice here is to listen to your friends and family, because although they may be biased, they probably know you well enough to see things that you can’t see yourself.
Pick something and go for it
If you’ve been stuck in the planning stages of your blog and have yet to create one, there’s no better time than the present. You can always tweak your name over time, so dive in and create that blog of yours!
Remember that you can choose between branding as yourself or creating a memorable targeted name. Don’t pick a topic just because it’s cool, and plan to write about your topic for many years to come. Finally, listen to your friends and family’s input when picking your name.
How is blogging in 2023 different from being a blogger five years ago, ten years ago, or more?
Is it still even worth starting a blog in 2023?
It blows my mind that as I write this the ProBlogger book is 15 years old. To say a lot has changed would be an understatement of the highest order!
Even back when Darren and I started discussing a potential book, blogging wasn’t new, and we had already seen the community undergo several changes. Each subsequent edition considered the evolution of blogging at the time they were published.
Darren and Chris promoting Problogger the book in 2010
As you can probably imagine, I have a lot to cover and what was to be one article quickly became over-sized, so instead I have broken it into a series.
In this series, I would like to answer the following questions (plus anything else you would like me to cover):
Can we learn from how blogging has changed from when we started writing the book in 2007 to now?
What advice would we give to someone starting today?
How have some successful bloggers remained successful while others have faded away?
First, a question I am asked all the time …
Is it Worth Starting a Blog in 2023?
Is it still worth starting a blog today? Yes!
You might think the blogging ship has sailed but you would be wrong. People start new websites every day and make a success of them.
Part of the reason is that people also give up blogging every day. It’s sad but true. Life gets in the way, their passion fades, they are not successful enough fast enough, their interests change, or something happens to the site that they can’t recover from.
Another reason you could start blogging today and be successful is there are always new people entering every niche. People who have been writing about a topic for a long time move on to more advanced elements and forget about the beginners in their blog content.
There are also new blogging topics popping up all the time. Even a couple of years ago we could not have predicted that there would be consumer-level AI tools available that people wanted (needed?) to learn how to use!
Finally, search engines are a moving target. Ranking at the top of the search engine results today does not guarantee that you will get a ton of traffic tomorrow. This gives new players an opportunity to grow and take a share of the pie.
Definition of Blogging: What is a Blog Versus a Niche Website?
Back when the ProBlogger book came out I would be asked “What is the difference between a wiki and a blog?”, but now people ask “What is the difference between blogs and websites/niche sites?”
A blog is a continually updated website made up mostly of articles (blog posts) around a single subject, usually by a single author or a defined set of main writers.
Darren wrote this in 2005:
A blog is a type of website that is usually arranged in chronological order from the most recent ‘post’ (or entry) at the top of the main page to the older entries towards the bottom.
I would say, while there are lots of exceptions, this is still true. This makes the distinction between a blog and a wiki easy to detect, it makes it harder to tell the difference between a blog and a niche website.
To make things more complicated, many websites include a blog where they add new posts as a matter of course, as a way of adding fresh content for their audiences (and search engines).
The Difference between Niche Sites and Blogs
For me, the main difference between a blog and a niche website is the intent to continually put out more and more, fresh articles, and to keep happy a community of readers.
Darren defined 4 pillars of pro blogging, and niche sites check off only 3 of the four:
Content ︎
Readers/traffic ︎
Community ✘
Monetization ︎
Niche websites tend to be aimed at monetizing search engine referral traffic, and are less likely to develop a community of readers. A great many are built as a one-off project and are then only lightly maintained, sometimes through “programmatic SEO” or other website automation techniques.
Of course, there are hybrids, and niche sites that start out only for search traffic and then they find they attract a community or grow email newsletters after the fact.
The Evolution of Journals and Weblogs to Blogs
Blogs also tend to have an informal, conversational writing style. This goes back to blogging’s roots as an early form of social media.
Being a blogger in 2023 is very different from when I started blogging back in the 1990s, but the core desire to reach people with our writing is still the same, even if we don’t need to hand-code HTML to do it.
The first blogs were called “personal homepages”, mostly an “about me” plus a list of links for personal use. Most internet service providers offered a small amount of web space for personal use, and search engines were not really a thing back then. If you wanted to go back to a website that you enjoyed you needed to make a note of it somewhere.
Digital Marketing at the time didn’t consist as much more than this either. Companies would sign up with a hosting company, use one of the new HTML editor apps, and put up a static brochure website.
Only the most advanced would publish much more than press releases, and most of those would use an email list. Many business owners were still to be convinced that the World Wide Web was not a passing fad.
This was a time before Google Analytics so reporting up to the C-suite of site success required analyzing web server log files. Updating the site, doing backups, analyzing logs, and the like fell to the new job role of “webmaster”. If the webmaster was also the self-hosted website server administrator this was especially hard work because most of the modern conveniences afforded by hosting control panels and pre-configured Apache/Nginx were science fiction at the time.
After the initial bookmarks phase, personal websites became more online journals or diaries, a mixture of “I found this cool thing”, “what I think about that thing that happened” and “here is what I have been up to”. This is when we started calling these sites a weblog. Even with this evolution, the main call to action might still be “post a message to my guestbook” rather than “buy my thing”.
A weblog owner was the original “influencer”, this was social media before all the video streaming platforms created millionaire personalities. We would link to each other, remark on trends from popular forums, and comment on each other’s posts.
Getting started in the late 1990s and early 2000s consisted of signing up for a blogging service with a username and password. Going viral was when many people linked to the same thing at the same time. Brainstorming blog post ideas most days consisted of reading the news and your favorite blogging niche writers via an RSS feed reader.
Getting Started Blogging in 2023
Back in the day, it was the norm for a new blogger to sign up for a free blog on a free domain, something like myblog.blogger.com and there was no shame in that. Even back when the book was published, many influential bloggers used services such as Blogspot or Tumblr or started out on free services and then upgraded for more features on services such as Typepad.
Today it is more expected that you would have your own domain name, even when using a free blogging service such as WordPress.com, or a website builder such as Wix, Squarespace, and the like.
Many bloggers skip the free WordPress blog phase and go directly to signing up for a WordPress web host. Discount web hosts like Dreamhost, Siteground, Hostgator, etc allow you to get a domain, set up the self-hosted version of WordPress (WordPress.org), add an SEO-friendly WordPress theme design template, and often come with a bunch of plugins and other add-ons.
Make sure whichever host you choose is actually good and not currently the one paying out the highest commissions to reviewers!
Owning your own blog and your own blog content is vital today. So many people start a new blog or social profile, build up an audience and then have it taken away from them because they triggered some false positive tripwire in their blogging platform or social media service.
Blogging platforms are for most people the first content management system they use on a regular basis, and you only need to browse LinkedIn to see that this familiar functionality has made its way into most businesses, if not the largest enterprises who prefer to pay huge licensing fees.
In my opinion, and I am sure Darren agrees, while you COULD go and set up your blog right this minute and start writing, it is worth doing a bit of research and preparation first if you really want to make a success of it. Even back in the day, those of us who just started writing were lucky if we gained traction, blogging in 2023 means being a great deal more intentional about what you want to achieve.
What Types of Blog Are There?
For every type of content, there are as many types of blogs. There are bloggers and communities out there for all the blog topics you can imagine, and many target audiences that exist but you could not dream of in a million years.
Darren’s Mechanical Keyboard Photography
Food blog – What to eat, what not to eat, recipes, where to eat. Recipes are huge on the internet, not just in written form but in short-form video too.
Hobby blog – I am big into roleplaying games and Warhammer. Yes, I play with plastic toy soldiers, sue me! I also collect retro computers from the 1970s through to the late 1980s. Every hobby will have blogs and communities that are absolutely obsessed. Darren builds and collects mechanical keyboards, and my wife has a big Instagram following around knitting. Whatever the interest, people will want to discuss it and learn.
Personal blog / online journal / online diaries – The traditional journal, though if you just write me-me-me content you will not gain a huge following. Personal blogs need to have wit, adventure, an aspirational story, drama, or some other hook to keep anyone beyond friends and family entertained.
Parenting blog – A lot of parenting blogs start out as diaries but morph into communities, niche down, or offer advice to other parents.
Content marketing for business – One of the main types of blogging today, especially for freelancers, is promoting products, services, and business news for a company you work for or own.
Podcasts and Vodcasts – Yes, podcasts are a type of blog, but in audio form! Here you can also consider YouTube channels, TikTok, and so on.
Travel blogs – People love to go on exotic vacations vicariously through other travelers, but also learn about the places, travel tips, and what to see and do. Darren Cronian has turned his travels into a whole business around remote working.
Technical step-by-step guide tutorials / How-to – This is my go-to. I admit it, I am a nerd and a mansplainer at heart. One of the core reasons people search is for instructions on how to do something, how to fix something, what does this warning light mean …?
E-commerce / Product News and Reviews / Affiliate marketing – If you have ever made an expensive or complex purchase I am sure you have done some internet research for trustworthy reviews and buying guides. Heck, people watch “unboxings” just purely for entertainment. Both Darren and I heavily got into photography and nerding out about cameras which lead us to start photography and camera blogs. Darren’s was successful.
Inspirational blogs – Darren started a new blog called Find Your Spark – a place where I’m going to share weekly prompts to get unstuck. He wrote about the process of starting it here.
Do any of those options spark your interest or inspire other ideas?
Do you have knowledge or a passion that might attract other people with similar interests?
Are there already people being successful in those niches?
Could you find a way to be different and offer a unique angle on the subject matter?
Start thinking about these questions now and we will circle back to how to analyze and choose your niche, plus how bloggers can get paid for their writing today.
Blogging in 2023 Part 1 Conclusion
There is still an opportunity to be a successful blogger in 2023 if you start right now. Blogging in 2023 is very different from when Darren and I first hunched over our keyboards wondering if anyone would ever read what we wrote, but there are also many new opportunities and exciting options for those willing to go get them!
I am not for a moment suggesting that it will be quick or easy, but if you can enjoy the process of blogging then I believe you can find it rewarding in many direct and indirect ways.
In the next parts of this series, we will go into how to get started and how bloggers make money.
If you want to launch your blog properly and really make a go of it, stick around and I will guide you through setting up your blog, gathering an audience, and getting paid.
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