Back-of-Book-Blurb: A new blog comes online every 1.4 seconds. There are more than 70,000,000 blogs on the Internet. 99+% of them are unknown, unvisited and unprofitable. Far less than 1% generate healthy buzz, traffic and revenues. What’s the difference between the two? What if it were just a few relatively easy-to-do things?
Well, there are, according to the most successful maestros of the blogosphere people like Seth Godin, Jeff Atwood, Aaron Wall, Eric Sink, Neil Patel and others. These are the true blog black belts, bloggers whose creations garner plenty of visitors, notoriety, and in most cases, income! And as they see it, transforming a blog from “crash-and-burn” to blast-off isn’t rocket science!
She is Too Fond of Books’ Review: Let’s start with those statistics – “a new blog comes online every 1.4 seconds.” Wow! How can you compete (if getting to the TOP is your goal), or how can you develop a niche following (if simply getting noticed and starting conversations is what you’re after). Blog Blazers is a compilation of interviews with 40 blogging leaders in their fields, and addresses your goals, no matter their size.
Grenier asks the same series of questions to each blogger. This gives us 40 different opinions on each subject; after a while you can see if there’s a pattern to the answers (sometimes, but not always … opinions are individual after all; what works for one might not be important to another). I read each interview in order to get the aggregate of information and opinions that was expressed.
The first question of each interview is very telling, and one that every blogger should ask himself/herself – “What makes a blog successful, according to you? Is it traffic, reach, revenue, etc.?” Interestingly, not every interviewee indicated that revenue was the indicator of success. In this way, the book spoke to me, as revenue is not one of my current blogging goals (would it be nice? yes. But “working” my blog is not a goal at this point).
Each blogger shared his or her opinion on matters that should apply to every blogger, no matter your overall goals:
- what’s your definition of success?
- how do you know when you’ve reached it?
- what five blogs do you regularly read?
- recommended sites for new bloggers
- writing tips for a successful blog post
- how important are headlines?
- methods for marketing your blog
Although the book naturally leans toward interviews of bloggers in the software industry, there are several other sectors included (parenting, personal finance, weight loss, self-acceptance, library technology, etc.).
There’s even subtle humor in the book! Manolo Blahnik is interviewed for his Manolo’s Shoe Blog site. Instead of referring to himself in the first person (I), he calls himself “The Manolo”. Stephane Grenier, the author of Blog Blazers, wears two hats, since he is “Steph” as interviewer and “Stephane” as interviewee.
Reading Blog Blazers was a great way to start off my year-long Blog Improvement Project. I was able to pat myself on the back for things I’m doing “correctly” (one interviewee believes so strongly in the importance of owning your own domain name that he offered to pay for the first year’s $10 fee … sorry, the offer expired at the end of 2008), and where I definitely have room for improvement (the overall opinion seemed to be to keep posts brief … clearly not my strong point!). I now have a handful of blogging-specific blogs that I’m checking for tips and tricks … Blog Blazers is the ideal place to start your own Blog Improvement Project, as you will connect with bloggers who most meet your definition of success.
Stephane Grenier is the founder and CEO of LandlordMax Software and writes FollowSteph.com. His e-book How To Generate Traffic to your Website shows his passion for helping businesspeople maximize the power of their blogs and websites.
It sound like an interesting book. Why does he think owning your own domain name is so important? I know a lot of people have been switching to self-hosting, but I don’t understand the advantage of it.
sounds like an interesting book…though I wonder why there are no book reviewing bloggers included?
Kathy – Stephane Grenier (the author/interviewer who wrote the intro and summary) didn’t advocate for owning your own domain name, but it was cited by several of the contributors. I switched to self-hosted so I could have ads on my site. I don’t have a lot (just the few to divert to First Book), but Wordpress doesn’t allow any advertising or solicitation.
Serena – the closest we get is library technology! Maybe in the 2nd edition
Hi all,
I’m the author of the book Blog Blazers reviewed here, and I too strongly believe that self-hosting and owning your own domain is very important, just like the people I interviewed.
That being said, I think Andy Brice, one of the people interviewed, has a great post showing some of the issues you can encounter if you don’t go with self-hosting. You can find it at: http://successfulsoftware.net/2007/10/19/normal-service-resumed/
Basically it goes that along the lines that they can lock you out of your account at any time for any reason. And if they do that, remember that the content is on their network, so you could lose everything.
What he also didn’t mention in his post is that if you eventually do move to your own domain (above the self-hosting issue), then all the prior links you had going to your blog are no longer valid (for example http://myblog.wordpress.com will not point to your new blog myblog.com). You’ll lose all your SEO efforts, all your link building, etc.
Just a couple of things to think about
I don’t think I would like to be get to the top in the blogging world. I love it when I have commenters but I like being able to “know” my visitors. Or at least most of my visitors…
Good information. Thanks for posting about this book!
Stephane – thanks for visiting! yes, I switched to self-hosted after about 6 months on wordpress.com. It took several months to “catch up” to where I had been with Technorati stats, despite being diligent about updating links (and asking several people to update the links in their blogs)
ladytink – isn’t it something, that we can “know” other peole via our blog conversations …
Ali – it is very timely for me to read this, with my update/improvement in mind. The sites mentioned again and again by the interviewees are worth visiting.
I’m with Ladytink_534. This is just a hobby. I want to feel I can walk away from it any time I want. I honestly can’t see myself still doing this in three years…lol! Writing will be part of me always, but I hope to be in a better place.