Darren from Blog Republic just posted his thoughts about One Year to Blogging Success. Is it true that blogs need to take one year to bloom?
It sounds really logical – because even if you are posting everyday, say 300 – 400 words everyday, it takes almost a year to grow your blog into a sizeable archive of posts… and your archive of posts are important.
Well, I guess if you are starting up from as a total newbie, you probably need at least one year of constant marketing and promoting to get your blog to get enough visitors everyday to make you enough money… for your Adsense or affiliate links, for example.
ProBlogger also once mentioned that the Top 100 blogs have an average of 33.8 months – that’s almost three years!
Of course, if you are already a professional blogger, working in a blog network, and you are just adding another one to your collection, that makes it a new and different story altogether. For example, I just realised Easton’s (from Know More Media) new BlogChalkTalk already had 107 blog pointing to him, when his blog is just like a couple of weeks old – that is the power of a blog network.
That in mind, I’m really considering my offers to write for one, and maybe even start my own when the time is ripe. Should I? 
Staying Focused First
Anyway, my main focus now is still just this blog and my trekking blog – get this two up first. Its really important to focus, do just ONE thing right and do it well, and not fall into the death trap of having too many projects on hand, fumbling over every one. Ririan also shared his tips on how to stay focused.
- STEP 1: Have a Vision.
- STEP 2: Know your Mission.
- STEP 3: You need to plan.
- STEP 4: You need to concentrate.
- STEP 5: Know what’s important.
- STEP 6: Refocus if you get distracted.
So, until the day the traffic for the blog puts some rice on the table for me, this is the blog I shall work on daily – and I think this message should go out to all professional blogger wannabes and Internet marketer wannabes out there too.
Stay focused. Do one thing, do it well, do it right. Test and tweak. Only when you have found the right combination, then you can apply your changes to any new websites you can have. Hold on your belief and keep working, keep the faith, and you’ll get there.
That is about what I came up with. My blog took off after about 13 months. Got good traffic. I think a lot of it is Google sees that your site is older too, and they give you a better ranking possibly?
Hi DigBack,
From my experience, even though Google engineers filed the patents for considering the age of a domain in their search algorithm, it doesn’t really matter if you are not competing for highly competitive keywords.
It’s the amount of SE friendly content that bring about the increase of organic search engine traffic. So the quicker you build up your content in a “natural” pace, the more traffic you’ll see from Google and Yahoo. Writing 2 or 3 posts daily for 6 months would be an acceptable pace.
Typically, it will take 3 to 6 months for a new domain to be “stabilized”. However, if you could get links from relevant authoritative sites, then you’ll be able to see quicker result.
I think everything really depends on how aggressively, so to speak, you promote your site. Your domain can be lying there for years without any promotion, and even if there is content, there will be no traffic. On the other hand, some sites out there have the most terrible content, but their owners are great marketers 🙂
Of course, the best combination would be great content + great marketing… which eats up a lot of time and effort!
Nice Post.
That was well said. Always appreciate your indepth views. Keep up the great work!
John
Thanks John!