How To Split An Atom

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This is the final, and most important article in the “How To Blog” series. In it I will explain how to transform your blog from a hobby into a lifestyle, and how to take modest traffic and use it to approach the lofty heights of the A-List.

Let me begin by saying I am not by any means an A-List blogger. One of many reasons for this is that I have a day job, and thus am not able to devote a sufficient amount of effort to the task.

In order to make blogging your career, the first thing that you must keep in mind is that it is an uphill battle and no one is going to hold your hand. I am expanding on the concept that I introduced in the first post, the skills checklist to determine whether you were cut out for the A-List. Here is the addendum.

Skills

• Do you understand that a blog is a brand and you have to be a combination advertiser, marketing firm, programmer and PR representative for this product?
• Do you understand that trial and error are your bread and buttter? You are going to fail far more than you will succeed, and even when you do succeed in one aspect, chances are you have still failed in quite a few others.
• Do you love to write and can you write posts that really add value for your reader? Can you inspire them to be better or give them information that they could not find anywhere else?
• Do you have a unique voice, a unique message, a unique style that is yours and yours alone?

You can go a long way in blogging without any of the above, but without all of them you will never see the kind of overwhelming success that bloggers like John Chow or Steve Pavalina have. It’s a hard fact to believe in. That’s why I saved this post for last.

Enjoy What You Do

Before I scare you away, I have to mention a final point that is not on the list. You have to enjoy what you do. If you are writing about a subject for years, it better be a subject that you are excited about, a subject that is expansive enough to allow you creative freedom. I know I have told you that you should choose a niche, but you should ensure that the niche you choose gives you room to breath. Just think about how excited you would be to have to wake up every morning and write a post about Dog Grooming and you’ll see my point. If you aren’t excited about writing it, no one will want to read it.

Generate Great Content

I did not say good content, I did not say OK content, I did not say rehash the best articles of the blogger next door. I said, you must generate great content. If at the end of your post, you read it over and realize that someone, somewhere might have their lives changed (even slightly) by what you have written, then you know you have created compelling content. Now, even if your subject matter is not necessarily the most important thing in the world (Web 2.0) you can still generate fun, interesting and readable content that gives your audience a call to action.

Instead of just skimming the headlines and posting a link to someone else’s work, next time you are thinking of “what I should write” reflect on your own life experience. Honestly, if I wanted to know about the latest in technology news, I’d go to Arstechnica. I read my own blog because How To Split An Atom digs into subjects in a way that many of these blogs do not.

If you want a homework assignment, here it is. Take a look at your subject matter and for an entire day write content without referring to your RSS feed. See what you can come up with on your own, see what you can create that will truly provide a original spin on your subject of interest. Write a few posts and see how it feels not to just be summarizing the latest buzz. When you’re done with that, continue reading this article.

Eat Your Own Dogfood

This is an old saying, popular among the product development set. What it means is that when you create something, you should be your own best user. If you look at your blog objectively and cannot find a single thing in it that you couldn’t find in a more interesting form somewhere else, how can you ever hope for your audience to? The acid test that separates good blogs from great blogs is the question, “what is your featured content?”

Of course, unless you are the greatest writer on the planet, everything that you turn out will not be gold. However, there should be a set of posts that truly represent what your blog stands for. These are the posts that you want to drive readers to.

Every “Authority Post” that you write should have your branding all over it. These posts are your voice, your message, your little window to the world. Make them as perfect as you possibly can.

Community Building

Bloggers cannot exist in a vacuum, just as we rely on ourselves to wake up every morning to write, we rely on our readers to turn on their computers every morning and look at our articles. If you operate as if you are writing to the void, then only the void is going show up to reply. Your next homework assignment, my dear readers, is to really step out of the bubble and explore the blogosphere. Use services like MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog and find other writers in your area of expertise. Talk with them, network with them, form relationships and trade information.

Bloggers are, in general, a kindly bunch and we are very willing to help those who approach us with integrity. You are not going out there to spam the world with your URL, you are going out there to add value to potential contributors. In the last week, I have visited more blogs than I can think of and the point of all these visits has not been to hand out my link, it has been to see what else was happening in Web 2.0. Too often we get myopia, thinking that the big bloggers are the only ones that could possibly have content worthy of writing about. When we forget that one of the reasons that blogging began was as an answer to institutionalized journalism, we can clearly see our error.

Build your blog one reader at a time. Not only will this help you form a more committed user base, but it will also make you feel better about the task that you have decided to undertake. What is nicer, to write to 500,000 nameless faces or to write to 50,000 people who you know truly find your content valuable?

How To Use Social Media

Digg, Reddit and the rest are not a one stop solution to your traffic problems. On the off chance that you do get one of your articles published on these networks, you have to be ready for it. If the only other thing on your blog are pictures of your cute kitty, then chances are no one is going to come back to see the rest. Use every traffic influx as an opportunity to retain new users.

What I want you to do today is to come up with a list of things that you would like to change about your blog. Maybe you want to alter the font so that it’s more readable, or take out a few of the less useful sidebar widgets. Maybe you want to draw attention to your “Authority Posts” by moving them up, or improve your layout to maximize the visibility of your most important content. Regardless of what your final goals end up being, compose this list. Then, as soon as possible, begin acting on it.

You never know when one of your stories will be picked up by one of the major bookmarking sites, and you certainly don’t want to get caught with your metaphorical pants down when it does.

A final word on social media. The traffic you drive from Digg (just to use an example), is not nearly as valuable as the traffic that you generate from your community building efforts. Digg traffic is often in the market for one shot entertainment. There is nothing wrong with this, but only a small fraction of them will become regular users of your blog from a single Digg article. What Digg does allow you to do is play the law of averages. Since so many people are flooding your site all at once, you can be pretty certain that some small fraction of them will stick around for the ride.

Monetize

Why do you blog?

If your answer is to become filthy rich, might I suggest you consider a lucrative career as a consultant in your field of interest. I am not saying that you can’t become fairly wealthy blogging, I am merely pointing out that chances are unlikely that you will. What your blog can be, however, is a source of a good amount of discretionary income. If you look at it like this, you never know, one day you might wake up and find that your “discretionary income” is now your major source of real income.

There are a lot of other fine places to learn the ins and outs of each of the major Ad Networks. Might I suggest hopping over to John Chow’s site and giving some of them a look. What I will give you, however, is a brief overview of how to monetize at particular traffic levels.

Low Traffic

If you are pulling in a few hundred uniques per day, your major source of income will come in the form of Google Adsense. Adsense revenue is a function of scale. The more pageviews you get, the higher your income is going to be. If you happen to write about a “lucrative topic” that generates high paying ads, then lucky you. Everyone will tell you that for a good long time, Adsense is going to be your primary source of income. Everyone is right.

Another really interesting strategy for monetization is Kontera. They are one of several companies that use in-text, contextual advertising. If you have seen a double underlined piece of text floating around a blog, then you’ve seen Kontera in action. I mention them, instead of IntelliTxt, because they require far less traffic in order to accept you into their network.

Medium Traffic

When you hit PR 5 or 6 and are pulling in a few hundred thousand pageviews a month you should really start looking into Text Link Ads. Basically, advertisers buy a text link on your site and you’re paid a residual every month for the privilege of hosting it. The actual compensation is entirely dependent on the vital statistics of your blog. If you have a high PR, Alexa Score and Technorati rating you are going to receive more cash than if these numbers need a bit of work.

High Levels Traffic

Federated Media is the company that handles sites like TechCrunch and Digg, they broker ads for you and you receive large amount of revenue per thousand pageviews. At this point in your career, you are probably able to sell ads on your own and work out deals with interested companies. Use your discretion, keep on your guard and use some of the income to hire someone to manage your wealth. You’ll thank me later.

What About Sponsored Posts?

This is a choice you’ll have to make on your own. I am not personally against sponsored posting, traditional media has been doing the same sort of thing for years now. I don’t do sponsored posts on this blog, at the moment, because I feel it distracts from my content. Take a look at PayPerPost for more details on sponsored posting.

Another form of sponsored posting that you may have less of a moral aversion against are sponsored reviews. ReviewMe offers a service where people can purchase reviews from you for a set price. This price is based on the same traffic and PR metrics that advertising is.

Take The High Road

There are a lot of people out there who are going to give you advice on how to “explode your traffic”. What I will tell you is that there is just no substitute for good content. With the right SEO, you can make it to the top of Google’s search results page for whatever you want, but if people go to your site and find nothing but garbage they won’t be coming back.

Look at this from a business perspective. It is a lot cheaper to retain customers than to have to constantly go out and find new ones. It’s a lot more effective to use your time generating compelling content than to waste it looking for every new trick that someone is trying to sell you on.

Innovate

Whether it is coming up with great new topics to write about, changing your layout to be more user friendly or establishing new vectors to communicate with your readers, the single most important part of any business venture (which is what you should see your blog as) is to innovate. If you want your traffic to grow, you have to grow as a writer. It’s easy to believe that you are doing the absolute best that you can, but until you are impressed with every aspect if your site you know there is room for improvement.

You have to be willing to get rid of things that aren’t working and to highlight things that are. Did you discover that readers just aren’t clicking on your ads? Or maybe that they are only reading one article and then leaving? Find out why, use tools like MyBlogLog and Google Analytics to trace your problems back to their source and fix them.You might discover that one article is responsible for the majority of your traffic or that moving an ad unit up a little, substantially increases the click thru rate. Blogging is about being willing to be completely wrong and much like Google, being able to know when you’re right.

Be Honest With Yourself

After a while you’re going to have to realize that some blogs simply will not make you a million dollars or make you rich and famous. Either the topic is too narrowly focused, or the format you have chosen simply does not leave you room to write your best. As an “A-List” blogger to be, you have to be willing to use your resources in the best way possible. Even if your blog will never be the “best” in its field, you can still use it as a platform to generate contacts and network with people who may help to make your next venture all the better.

You can also use one blog as a springboard for your next blog, using everything that you have learned to assure that you don’t make the same mistakes twice.

Homework

Take an entire day to write content without referring to your RSS feed, see how it feels to be plucking something completely original from your brain.

Go and visit ten blogs you have never heard of before. See how they do things, take notes, comment, talk to these writers and see how you can help each other.

Come up with a list of features that you would like to change about your blog, be critical.

Summary

• Content is king, if you don’t believe that your content is better than your competition then no one else will.
• Go into the community and use other sites like your own, participate and communicate with other blogger.
• Social bookmarking sites are only one very small vector in an overall blog marketing strategy.
• Develop a monetization strategy, and design your blog to be ready for each new step.
• Innovate, do not speculate. If you want to build traffic you should grow as a writer, not try to trick users into visiting your site.
• Be honest with yourself, this holds true on all aspects of your life.

Web 2.0 Round

You have reached the end of the How To Split An Atom guide to blogging. Here is some required reading to get you through the rest of the day.

Required Reading

How To Blog: Beginners Guide
How To SEO Web 2.0
How To Build Traffic
How To Get Paid To Write
How To Blog Web 3.0