Beating the Baby Blog Blues

While the mechanics of blogging are amazingly easy to master, creating a successful blog is actually much HARDER than it looks.

Yesterday, my email box was filled with people who are suffering from what I call the “Baby Blog Blues”.

These bloggers are not web development professionals, but they’re average every day business owners who want to use their blog to promote themselves and their businesses.   They’ve been blogging (some regularly, some not so regularly) and they’re frustrated.  In some cases, they’re getting traffic but no comments.  In other cases, they’re not getting traffic OR comments.

In one case, the blogger who wrote to me desperately wants to build a strong community, just as Cath Lawson, Liz Strauss, Barbara Swafford, and Hunter Nutall have done.    She wants loyal readers who contribute regularly to the discussion.  She wants to give a topic and allow others to discuss – which is exactly what happens in the strong communities above.

At the moment, her blog just isn’t “established” enough to achieve this and I’m calling this syndrome the Baby Blog Blues.

I’ve come up with this “word picture” because I can’t TELL you how often I’ve had potential clients who announce, “This blog  HAS to be generating a four figure income in less than 6 months or I don’t want to do it.”    After 10 years, I’ve FINALLY learned to say “Thanks for contacting me – good luck with that.”

When you first launch your blog, it is like a baby.  Few parents expect their newborn infant to generate income to cover their expenses.  (I had to re-write that sentence to say “few” instead of “no” because – well, the tabloids are FILLED with stories of parents who had children with the sole intent of turning the baby into a cash machine – the last names Lohan and Spears come quickly to mind!)

In the beginning, your blog is a baby! It needs time and effort invested on your part to make it grow. In the case of a human baby, time will work its magic and your child will grow even without top quality nurturing.  The passage of time guarantees that your newborn will grow into a toddler.  Allow more time to pass and the toddler will grow into a child.  Eventually, in the cruelest twist of all, the child will grow into a teenager.  While time is the biggest factor in a child’s development, time is not the sole predictor of blogging success.

In the case of my aspiring blog client, she’s got an infant “blog” sitting on her lap and she’s watching Cath, Liz, Barbara and Hunter with envy as they prepare for their blogs for the senior prom.

What this client doesn’t recognize is that these successful bloggers spent a lot of time creating blog success.  They have spent their time blogging in the dark.  They have spent weeks, months perhaps YEARS posting article after article with few if any comments.  Most bloggers learn to blog through trial and error.  The faster you learn the essential “tricks” of the trade, the quicker you can get moving in the direction of blog success.

Trust me when I tell you that all of the bloggers I listed above did a LOT more than just post to their blog once a week and wait for the traffic to come to them. Like the mother of a newborn human infant, these successful bloggers have gone through the 4 hour feeding schedules and diapers phase with their blogs.

While the passage of time will eventually transform a human infant into a teenager, the same doesn’t hold true for your blog.  If you don’t nurture your blog, it won’t grow – it’s as simple as that.  The GOOD news is that you can ignore your blog for months and then when you begin nurturing it again it will spring back to life.  In other words, no matter how sick your blog is now, you can always resurrect it.

By the way, the client with “blog envy” purchased the 8 Week Power Blog Launch program 2 weeks ago.  Over those two weeks, her Alexa ranking has already decreased almost 800,000.  (Alexa is a highly flawed system which ranks web sites from 1- 24 Million where  #1 is the best, 24 Million is the worst so a rapidly FALLING Alexa rank is a GOOD thing!)  In the course of 2 weeks, her blog went from the 2.4 Million range to the 1.6Million range and has passed more than 3/4 of a MILLION other websites in the race to number one.

She’s definitely on her way to achieving blog success – I just have to keep her focused on the fact that it takes TIME to create a successful blog.

Blog success is not an overnight proposition.  It takes TIME and it takes EFFORT – just like parenting, except when your blog achieves “teenager” status you CAN put it to work generating income – unlike human teenagers!

Fast Track to Blog Success – 100% Discount Ends Friday

Want to get bloggers “buzzing”?  Sell your blog for big bucks. That’s what happened when John Wu sold his Bankaholic blog to Bankrate for a cool $15 Million.

Cath Lawson did the math and the 26 month old blog netted that blogger a cool $3348 per hour.

If you’ve been blogging for more than a few months, you may be wondering what makes the Bankaholic blog worth so much money.  After all, the blog doesn’t get NEARLY the number of comments that Cath’s blog gets.  There’s very little “community” on the blog – unlike on Cath’s blog, yet it’s raking in a record setting payday for the blog’s developer.

The key to the Bankaholic’s success is simple:  KEYWORDS. The Bankaholic’s blog expertly targets the right keywords – the keywords a mega-site like Bankrate wants.  If you’ve run a PPC campaign lately, you’ll see where the $15 Million dollar price tag for a blog that ranks well on highly sought after keywords might actually be considered a BARGAIN!

I love it when people “do the math”.   SEO Diva did the math and showed how a $20,000 domain name can be a BARGAIN in the end.

The Bankaholic blog sale happened just as I was in the middle of doing a review for one of my 8 Week Power Blog Launch customers.    Turns out, people want to fix their blogs in 30 minutes or less, not 8 weeks.  (Mock Horror and Surprise!).  So, as I was in the middle of creating this “Fast Blog Fix” report, the Bankaholic sale was announced.  I put my 30 Minute system to the test and applied the principles to the Bankaholic blog.  The results are revealed in “Fast Track to Blog Success”.

I’ll be offering this product for sale next week, and  I’ll definitely be adding it as an “added bonus” for people who buy the 8 Week Power Blog Launch.

However, this week – until October 10th (Friday), you can get this report for free.  Just use the code CathRocks and click the button below.  This discount code will give you a 100% discount on this report.

Add to Cart

I was going to email it to people who commented, but the file has lots of screen shots which makes it too big to send via email. So, I’ll be using e-junkie to give this away!

Click the button, enter the discount code and it will be yours for the taking.  I’m sure you’ll find the analysis of the keywords used on the Bankaholic blog fascinating AND educational.

Of course,  when it does go for sale – there will be an Affiliate Program so if you recommend the book to family, friends and blog readers you grab your piece of the action.

Help! My blog’s not working

trafficLast week I had an appointment out of my home office… and I got stuck in rush hour traffic on my way home. I had forgotten how DRAINING being stuck in traffic can be.

On that day, I got two contrasting emails. The first came in from a client who has been blogging for 10 months now. His is a “traditional” business based in the “real world” where his clients have to battle traffic to get to him and receive his services. (There’s an interesting and probably overlooked entry for your SWOT analysis…. THREAT: TRAFFIC.) It’s the second email this year from him on this subject. The last one came in January when he got his first “referral” from his blog. He was thrilled. It gave him the “boost” to keep blogging.

One of the gifts this client possesses is the gift of “gab”. He’s a GREAT speaker, comes across well on camera and can construct a compelling word picture to illustrate complex concepts on the fly. He’s smart, he’s funny and he’s personable too boot! To capitalize upon this “gift”… he’s creating video versions of his radio commercials and posting them to YouTube (paying attention to proper tagging). He can then feature the clips on his blog AS WELL as making them available to a world wide audience.

Well, yesterday, a member of that world wide audience called him… from Brazil. (He’s in the US) He was shocked and amazed.

It’s working!!! It’s working!!! After almost a year, it’s working!

blogging solutionsThis is in stark contrast to another email I got yesterday. This business owner launched a blog 6 weeks ago. The posts to the blog are along the lines of “and this is what I had for breakfast this morning.” (The posts aren’t that bad… but they did remind me of another blog where that was the ACTUAL content of the posts. It’s almost possible to compute that person’s daily fiber intake from the blog entries!) The email from this client read, “My blog isn’t working and I think I’m going to take it down if something doesn’t happen FAST.”

Wow… what can I say. Six weeks and eight blog posts later it seems that the blog isn’t “working”.

First, read my post io9.com created 700 posts before launch.

My next question for the business owner will be: “What was it the blog was supposed to do?”

Is it supposed to magically funnel potential clients into your practice?

I use the term “magically” because filling the sales funnel for an independent service professional is a lot like pushing a 500 lb giant lead ball up a steep hill. If you think that 500 lb lead ball is going to roll up the hill on it’s own power… well, I hope you’re a graduate of Hogwarts if you think that is going to happen.

Instead, think of your blog as a bulldozer to help you move that heavy lead ball to the top of the hill.

Remember that your blog is a GREAT communication tool. It’s a GREAT way to communicate with potential clients… to convince them you are the answer to their most pressing problem. Your blog can get potential clients to that magical “90% sure” state…. just by reading your posts and watching your videos. That 90% sure state… where they’re 90% sure you’re the one who can help them…. is necessary for them to pick up the phone or shoot off an email.

I get those phone calls occasionally as a result of my blog. Someone has stumbled upon this blog, reads a few posts and then picks up the phone and calls. “I think you can help me” is how those conversations begin.

The service based professional NEEDS to provide that kind of assurance to potential clients and customers. The WIIFM (What’s In It For Me) question playing in their head is, “Can this person really help? Does he/she “get” my problem? Can he/she really provide a solution?”

Dosh Dosh asks “Why are you giving away content for free?

If you’re a service based professional, the answer should be “To gain the level of trust needed to begin a conversation with potential clients.”