4 simple steps precede blogging success.
Watch this video from New York City as I explain how to build a successful blog:
I detailed the 4 steps. If you skip any of the steps it’s like skipping 1 or all of the steps from the 2nd floor of the NYC apartment where we are living now down to the street level. Skip 1 step, I could break an ankle. Skip all the steps and I’d likely die from the injuries.
Ditto with your blog. Skip 1 step and you will struggle some, skip all the steps and your blog will die.
1: Have Fun
Having fun is the foundation of all I do online. Having fun makes the work the reward. Having fun ensures I practice honing my skills. Having fun is the table setter, the energetic component, the passionate fuel that goads me to do what I do online.
Most bloggers skip to step 2 or 3 or 4 or skip all the steps, which is why most bloggers struggle.
Having fun is step #1. This fun energy fuels you for your blogging journey. Blogging mainly for fun also inspires you to do the sometimes scary, uncomfortable things you need to do to create the foundation for a successful blogging career.
2: Practice
Practice.
Develop the skill of blogging.
Blogging is a skill. It is not a way to make money as much as it is a skill through which you create and connect with folks and receive sweetness in the form of money and traffic and people to help.
Like any skill, it takes time, energy and a full commitment to practicing the skill until you get really good at the skill and earn a living from the skill.
I have written 1000 to 10,000 words daily for years. Naturally, I have developed my blogging skills to where I have written and self-published 126 eBooks. Practice preceded the profits. Practice preceded the success.
Open a Word document. Write 1000 words. Just for practice. Trash the Word document. Practice in silence to develop your blogging skills for the big stage. Ditto on video. Ditto for any skill you want to develop to augment your total blogging skill set.
3: Create
Creating helpful content through a range of online channels inspires people to see you as being helpful. Helpful bloggers tend to be seen as authorities or experts in their niche of choice.
Go ahead. Try to get traffic or profits or list subscribers without giving helpful value to your readers. See how far you get.
All of my success flowed through me creating helpful content via a wide range of online channels. I wrote blog posts, guest posts and film videos and create podcasts and write eBooks and create online blogging courses and offer consulting services to create both free and premium content for people.
Creators rise above a competitive, low energy, fear-filled plane.
Create. Be helpful. Publish value to be seen as valuable in the eyes of your creators.
4: Connect
Build friendships with top bloggers in your niche. You don’t become connected. You don’t get connected. You seek folks out, serve them, become their friends by promoting them on your blog and through social media and by commenting on their blogs, and you build strong connections that benefit both parties.
Out of the 1000 plus guest posts I have published on various blogs I only pitched 3 bloggers on placing the guest posts. How do you think all of the other opportunities flowed my way? I was invited to guest post on these blogs by my buddies. I became buddies with these folks by promoting them, by endorsing them, by commenting on their blogs and by generously serving them.
Your Turn
Are you following these fundamentals? How are you building a successful blog? What tips can you add to this list?
Video for Struggling Bloggers
If you are struggling to build strong connections you may be making this common error.
Watch as I detail this mistake from beautiful Bali: