There are over 152 million blogs on the internet (hell of a lot more by the time you read this) – so what does it truly take to create a popular blog? First, let’s define what “popular” is since it can be quite subjective. For the purposes of this post, I will say that “popular” means you are able to consistently make a comfortable living off your blog strictly from it’s income alone. Now, by this definition, wouldn’t it be great to have a “popular blog”? Sure it would – the only problem is that the competition is fierce. So, how exactly does one create a “popular blog”? If you have a brand new blog with zero subscribers, this method should yield a solid base of loyal followers.
Content is still king (plus: 5-10 posts theory)
It is important note that, if you are interested in long term growth and attracting loyal followers to your blog none of it will work if your content is sub-par. Even with paid-marketing, you WILL see a initial spike in subscribers, but you are almost guaranteed to lose them twice as fast as soon as they realize that they were tricked into visiting your blog based on weak content. Focus on your content. If you ignore everything I say, just remember this one and you’ll be fine. With that said, what is the formula for creating a popular blog? Spend at least 30-60 days creating 5-10 top notch posts that will be tremendously helpful / entertaining. Remember, these posts will be the “base” for your blog, so spend some extra time polishing and eliminating unnecessary fluff. Once you are done with these 5-10 posts, you are going to post all of them within two weeks while trying to keep it in sync with your mini marketing campaign (see below).
Buy your way to the top (the geek mafia way)
I first heard about this method by bloggers like Neil Patel over at Quicksprout. Many popular bloggers won’t admit this – but a large percentage of them have spent hundreds (usually thousands) of dollars in initial marketing for their blog in order to get it off the ground. I will be accomplishing this primarily by using three services: ReviewMe, PayPerPost & StumbleUpon. Both ReviewMe & PayPerPost will allow you to pay others to blog about your blog. Also, if you have not used StumbleUpon’s advertising platform to market your blog, you are certainly missing out. Do not spend more than a few hundred at most in the beginning. Remember: measure what works and throw out what doesn’t.
A few more thoughts:
When you have ZERO subscribers, it can be daunting to just keep putting up new posts knowing that no one is reading your work. This is precisely the time in which most people call it quits and stop blogging. Why would you want to do that when you can strategically leverage other services & bloggers to increase traffic and subscribers to your blog? You shouldn’t feel a bit of guilt about spending some money on a little marketing.
