Over at Salemites the other day the one and only Salem Man made a great point on what it takes to build a popular blog and that is persistence. Persistence is the underlying key to so many things that go into turning a blog that only your mother reads into something that is read and referenced by thousands of people daily.
You need to be persistent with the articles you publish. You need to be persistent in learning everything that is happening in your niche. You need to be persistent in keeping up with design and usability trends. And you need to be persistent to always be learning new things.
Creating a popular blog from scratch is not an easy thing to do; in fact, it rarely happens. The truth is that main cause for blog failure can be tracked down to a lack of persistence. Sure, bad things happen to good bloggers, but good bloggers also learn from their mistakes and move on. They have a dedication and drive that surpasses what is found in many other people.
It requires persistence along with patience to build a popular blog. Like what Salem Man mentioned, it doesn’t happen quickly or within a few months; it takes a couple years. Patience and persistence is what gets these bloggers to their finish line.
A lack of persistence in blogging manifests itself in various ways. New posts start arriving infrequently. The comment moderation queue starts to pile up from a lack of attention. Broken links never get repaired. Eventually the lack of attention becomes more and more visible, and visitors stop coming by as often. What once started out with hope and promise has become another dead blog.
How is your level of dedication towards your blog? Have you calculated the costs in time, effort and money that it would take to bring your blogging dreams to fruition? If you are feeling worn down from a lack of results from your blogging, just remember that it took years for the most popular blogs on the web to get to where they are now. And they got that way through persistence.
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Thanks for your words of wisdom re: persistence. I’ve been creating my food blog for 1 1/2 years now and it has only been in the last few months that I have started to have an increase in traffic. I put a hit counter on my blog a month ago, and I am pleasantly surprised at the number of visitors I am getting on a weekly basis.
That’s good to hear Susan and it makes for a good testimonial for others who may be feeling discouraged by their own efforts.