An Unusual Guide To Blogging Success, Traffic And Fame

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

I stood on the internet marketing hill watching, watching how the blogging success game is played – traffic flow, social media influencing, backlinking strategies…

What I saw was shocking!

You wanna know what I saw right?

Here is it: I discovered that massive traffic flows to particular blogs.

Maybe like me, you also noticed.

Like a ring, traffic rotates and flows forth and back to those blogs.

Do you know these few blogs connected to the traffic-benefit flow? I call them the influential blogger’s blogs.

The Influential Blogger’s Blog

So, what’s so special about these blogs? Because talking about the content you write. Backlinks, you try so hard. So, what’s the secret?

You are not entirely perfect, but you’re doing a good job.

Social Media presence? You are very active in sharing a thing or two.

But your blog is still struggling to take off.

You’ve implemented all the strategies and advice by the “Interner Gurus” who give advice on the internet on blogging success.

So like you, I thought to myself, there must be something about these elite blogs raking in thousands of readers on a daily basis.

The worst part?

I settled for a piece of solid and tested advice, which is? To write more content on my blog, but did anything change? Hell No!

Either the experts are not telling us the truth or they are keeping secrets from us.

Is Content Truly King?

Do you remember the phrase “content is king”?

And that you should write more pillar articles on your blog?

You do, right?

But after about 13 months of blogging and following this advice, it became clear to me that quantity content idea is stupid advice and a complete waste of time for newbie bloggers.

This is why I said content is not always king.

The truth is that blogging has gone far beyond publishing daily content.

Why?

We have over 500 million blogs in existence today and we also have over 2 million blog posts on a daily basis.

And out of 2 million, the search engine is only interested in posts that will outsmart the already existing high-ranking successful blogs.

So, as a newbie blogger, you wonder if you have a chance. You wonder if you can outsmart 500 million Blogs overnight. It’s Very possible

But the truth is:

The search engine also looks at some factors like domain authority, website authority, Backlinks, Doman Age and others.

So, how do you outrank other sites and rake in the traffic you need to make income?

The answer:

It is not only about content anymore but strategic marketing, what is the use of content if no one is there to read it?

It’s time to wise up and play smart, time to be smart and strategic

Getting Strategic – (A Noodle Company Case-Study)

I know of a noodle company.

After their lunch, the noodle company needed a way to break through the highly busy and competitive market.

They are bringing something new to the market, but no one ever gave them a chance.

They hired professional marketers and nothing seems to work.

How do we sell?

How do we convince the market that we are introducing is better than our competitors?

They decided to do more aggressive adverts, in every way possible.

They went ahead and invested more in prints, billboard Ads and of course word of mouth.

Guess what:

After a while, it was all efforts in futility, but they still could not gain the attention of their customer.

Suddenly, a young vibrant marketer gave this suggestion”.

“Why try reaching the adults with our Noodles? After all they don’t care”. Guess they are better off with their spaghetti and other noodles.

Let’s refine our strategy, let’s go through the young and upcoming generation.

It was risky, but I’m sure they had no option.

They started going from school to school, giving out free cooked noodles, and they gave schools free signboards and even branded books.

The pupils fell in love with their fast-cooked and tasty noodles, they insisted their parents had to make it a home meal.

And guess what?

Within 6 months, they outran their fellows.

This noodle has since then become a household name in Nigeria, consumed by both young and old.

That strategy won.

If you want to succeed in this crowded blog sphere, you must get smart

Why?

You are not running or competing against the search engines, No you’re not. You are competing with other blogs

And the only way to win is to get strategic and be the master of the game.

It is a game – Play it

I cannot really overemphasize this.

You have to get dirty, go outside of yourself. Send that email, follow that authority, buy that course, comment on that blog post – you must create the relationship.

Hey! you must never play the selfish game. Go there and create genuine relationships, and help people. I felt stupid when I had to create time to write a guest post on other people’s blogs and barely had time for mine.

The master player always wins!

Develop a strategy for blog growth – no one stumbles on blog growth, it is most times intentional.

I am tempted not to write this, but I have to if I want to be sincere.

There are 1 million and 1 ways to succeed as a blogger, several strategies out there, you have to pick a particular blueprint – one that has worked.

Don’t dabble!

Don’t go from one strategy to another, do your homework well to find a strategy that resonates with you and stick to it.

Another ProBlogger may disagree with my approach to blogging, it doesn’t make any of us wrong, we just have different strategies.

How To Build a Popular Blog From Scratch

Building a popular Blog isn’t much of a big deal if you know the working strategy.

The real truth is that the strategies are not constant. They keep changing and evolving

For example, it used to be strictly content is the king approach. Now, I believe it is more strategic marketing and social media influencing

And so it continues.

So how do you build a large blog audience Blog within 6 Months?

It’s simple:

Stop focusing on your domain name, backlinks, Seo, Facebook, Blog design, pages, categories, videos podcasting & the rest.

Truly speaking:

They are all a waste of time for newbie loggers.

Instead focus on traffic, pillar and viral content, links, comments, and building relationships.

Others will follow, but for now, this should be your focus.

But Daps, what about making money?

It’s not necessary at your early stage. In fact, stop thinking about making money until you are able to gain at least 1000 subscribers.

I’ve not said, bloggers can’t make money until they have huge lists, I made money before I even had 500 subscribers.

I’ve only said the focus should be on value and not money.

Money will naturally flow into where value is created. We shall come to that but for now, you should focus on blog traffic.

My Blogging Failure – The Catalyst For Success

When my blog failed to generate traffic, I thought the wisest thing to do was to pack up. And I actually did.

What’s the point?

To hell with blogging. It’s not worth the effort.

Why?

When people asked me what I do for a living? I tell them I’m a blogger. But when I get home, I get so sad with myself, because like the dumb bloggers out there, I was not making a dime, no one cared, it felt like I wrote my blog posts for myself. It’s painful, I must admit.

But the joy is that?

I was not ready to continue in that part of slavery.

Everything inside me wanted blogging success.

So, I needed a more realistic way. I needed a sure working principle that would take me out of the dark and place me in the part of passive income.

I also learned that blogging is strictly business and not journaling. It did a lot of mental shift for me, I shut down the blog, and did other businesses while I sought more knowledge about blogging.

 My Greatest Blogging Success Discovery

In January 2015, I made this discovery that transformed my life. I bought a Success Blogging Course.

It was as though I looked into a mirror

Guess what I saw?

I myself apply some useless traffic tips and tricks.

I discovered the minor and major traffic channels, the type of content that I needed to write and how to do Seo for my blog.

The result?

I got a quick spike in traffic.

The only problem:

The relationship-building part for new bloggers is missing from the blueprint.

Until I read a post by Tom Treanor on copyblogger. How to build relationships with other bloggers:

The result?

I started implementing the strategies and within 6 months, I had some friends in high places.

My next blog post generated 5201 traffic within 24 hours.

How?

I simply ask the influencers I know to help me share the content.

The sweetest part of the whole story

1. I gained new knowledge
2. I gained new backlinks; and
3. I gained new exposure to myself

The bottom line

Professional blogging is about connection. It’s about who you know and who knows you and about the type of content you create. The journey to blogging success is quite lonely but can be fun too.