3 Paths To Blog Nirvana, Part 2
Will Michael actually be able to make a relevant, lucid observation about blogging after last week’s wandering, metaphysical 1000 word monologue? Let’s find out…
Maybe it is as simple as that. Pick a path and stick to it and enlightenment will follow. Do we all really fall into three categories? Type A, type B and the rest of us? I guess so. Think about it. How many people do you know how are truly type A or type B? Some, but I’m guessing the majority of the people you are acquainted with are a mixture of both archetypes. The rest of us.
Abstinence, excess and moderation. The three paths to enlightenment. So how do we apply these approaches to achieve blog nirvana?
- Overcome temptation by removing yourself from it Walk the straight and narrow. Don’t take any shortcuts while building your website. You have no concern for monetization or SEO. Social bookmarking? Ha! If the people come it will be on the strength of the content. Content, content, content.Obviously this path would make a ridiculously strong site for those that succeeded with the approach. All the links would be natural. Any monetization would be relevant, and most likely would have been the result of vendors approaching the site owner. This is the rare type of website that other people link to and get their ideas from.
The flipside is that almost nobody is going to succeed with this approach. Websites built on lofty ideals will almost always languish in the vacuum of the internet, going unread despite how good the content may be. It’s an admirable approach, but not a pragmatic one.
- Overcome worldly desires by immersing yourself in them All the taboos get a green light. If you aren’t cheating, you aren’t trying. Monetization knows no boundaries. In fact, you probably are already hosting a squadron of BANS sites and have a battalion of domains registered just for adsense revenue and link building. Manipulation of search engine status via questionable link building practices and artificially inflating your traffic by manipulating social bookmarking sites is a given. There is nothing you wouldn’t do to help this site get traffic and make money.The problem with this avenue is that you have to be clever enough, sneaky enough and driven enough to embark on it, and most people just aren’t. On top of that, you need to have a filament of content that is worthwhile underneath all this subterfuge, or people will sniff you out in a hot second. Lastly, you walk a very fine line where Google may find out what a charlatan you are and reward you with a suitable TrustRank. No matter how big a rebel you are and how little you care what Google thinks, you aren’t going anywhere without their search engine results. Very few sites succeed following this path, and the site owner is usually off to the next scam before too long anyway because they’re more in love with the game than the content and reward.
- Live like other people This is a lot easier path to walk for living your life for most of us, so it’s no surprise that it’s also the best approach to building a successful blog. Design, monetization, traffic and content are all parts of this pyramid, and we work hard on all aspects so that the site succeeds. While we may bend the rules a little to help jump start a new site, we are always mindful of not doing anything that will harm the site. We will be picky about monetization, knowing that when the site does start to achieve success that we can call our own shots with advertising. This is about achieving a balance and being dedicated to the underlying content, content that we felt strongly enough about that we were compelled to make a web site in the first place. All the rules of the real world apply here: work hard, produce quality, be detail oriented, and always working on aspects that will strengthen the foundation you’ve laid. Is this going to benefit the site without harming it? I’m on it. Is this going to be good short term and potentially a bad call in the long run? No thanks.
Let’s get one thing straight. Building a successful blog does not mean that you will be quitting your day job. In fact, that sort of success shares a similar probability with getting struck by lightning, winning the lottery, being eaten by a Great White Shark… you get the idea. If that is your only motivation then you are probably also the type of person who forwards chain emails to all your friends on a weekly basis ( and none of them appreciate it, by the way).
Success doesn’t have to mean that you are hauling wheelbarrows full of money to the bank. Success doesn’t have to mean that you are getting as much traffic as Slashdot. If you felt strongly enough about something to devote a web site to it, made something with good content and design, that people other than yourself actually read, that found favor with Google as evidenced by great SERPS, you have made a successful blog my friend.
So don’t get discouraged because you aren’t getting the front page of Digg or being deluged with emails from advertisers that want their product on your site. The web is full of crap. If you are making something that is quality, it’s a huge contribution to the denizens of the Connected Internet, an oasis in the desert. If what you made is good the challenge is to keep it up. Success will come. It’s easy to start hard and then slack off in any venture. If you built a quality site and you keep it up, always doing the things you need to do to achieve success, then eventually you will have success. Maybe not the Publisher’s Clearing House winner type of success, but people will be reading what you made, and it will make some money. If you started out with an idea about something that was important to you and you created something from it, and people found your labor a valuable resource, you did it. Maybe you will have wheelbarrows full of money from it, maybe you won’t, but you should take just as much pride in what you made either way.
Thanks to Spalding Gray for helping me figure out how to live, even if it did take me 30+ years to figure it out. And thanks to you for reading. Go make something good.
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Comment by MarK on 30 May 2008:
Really good stuff Michael and an ispirational Post. I often feel the same way when I see people who try to take Blogging or Cyber world as a Full Time Job and the reason for doing so is that they hate there J-O-B, cause with that they were not able to make much money, it was hard work and not able to spend time with there family.
But when they enter into this they realise that its not peice of cake or walk in the park. The time which they have to put into blogging and learning new things is way more then what they were giving there J-O-B …
The have to work on so many areas like create a content rich website, Submit Free Articles , have to join creative groups in there Niche, Work on Social Netoworking, join forums all in all its not easy.
Hope that makes some sense :-]
Mark
Comment by Nicole Price on 2 June 2008:
On the other hand, there are indeed bloggers who have quit the real world and have set up a fairly decent living out of blogging. The probability of doing this now, however is the same probability of getting Nirvana!