Nic’s blog
I write about building businesses, failing and building a life, not a legacy.
Find Your Passion Project
Trust me on this one, if you find a project that you are passionate about it will put many things in to perspective. I luckily found this in SA Rocks and haven't looked back. It has focused me, concentrated my efforts and made me much more productive with all my projects.Make sure that you are passionate about at least one of your projects. There might be money involved, there might not be, this is immaterial. What matters is that you love every second of this project, it will make your online time much more worth while.
Identify With Your Blog
I am no expert here. I am simply a blogger who is experiencing some issues and thus feel I should seek some constructive insight. I think that I am going to continue with the thread of blogging retrospect since, ironically enough, my last post has gained me some exposure!I think that a problem that I have noticed of late is bloggers (myself included) who are not identifying with their blog. This blog started off as a photography blog, then mutated in to a news blog, then in to a random banter blog about work and is now what it is, whatever that might be.I blog a lot but sometimes I find that I am blogging because I have set a daily post precedent that I can't break. I then blog about things that are not relevant to my blog and the themes that I have chosen. This means that I am not identifying with my blog anymore. This ties in quite nicely with what I was talking about yesterday and the reasons that you blog.If you are searching for things to blog about and the search is long, tiresome and often fruitless then don't blog today. I know that all the "experts" will tell you that you should blog consistently. Screw that. If it's killing your blog stop blogging.Have you ever thought that your blogging, you actually blogging, might be destroying your blog? I have, I often think that I am my biggest problem! I am probably right and should stop blogging, but I don't. I can't. I am a prison of my blog; I have stopped identifying with my blog.I am happy with what I am blogging about for sure but I often don't have the discipline to stick to my themes and blog, or not blog.It is important, in my opinion and experience to know what you are trying to get across and to maintain a consistent approach to your theme and topics. Rants, insults and bullshit blogs will rise quickly but fall just as fast. Stick to what you know and love and I reckon you will be able to identify not only with your own blog, but with your readers and what they are looking for.Like Dave said in a comment on my last post about this topic, looking at the numbers is not always bad because their are readers behind the numbers and they are the ones that matter. Good point and good advice, but don't replace identifying with your blog and readers with identifying with numbers. There is a difference.
Good content, niche markets and interesting angles
I have read many posts from many bloggers who claim to know how to create a successful blog. Much of the time I think that these guys are losers who have nothing better to do than to tell other people how to run their blogs. Not so.For the first time today I realised that the success of a blog depends on the content and concept behind the content. After only starting SA Rocks 10 days ago I officially reached the same Technorati rank as nicharalambous.com. I have been maintaining this blog for over 13 months and within 10 days SA Rocks has equaled the achievements of my personal blog.In my little tiny blogging brain this has proven to me that you can be the best damn writer in the world (which I am not) and still have no one read your blog. It's about niche markets, good content, interesting angles and meeting the needs of a market. SA Rocks does just this while nicharalambous.com is me blabbing on about my daily life and rubbish, which many millions of bloggers are doing.Learn your lessons now; if you want readers, think about your angle and plot things accordingly.