How I Built My Blog From Nothing To Success In 6 Months
I am new to blogging and like most new bloggers I tried a few things I learn in the beginning. I quickly realized what worked for established blogs doesn’t work for a new blogs like mine, JohnPaulAguiar.com
The sooner you realize we all can’t be JohnChow with a million ads, the better your blogging will be. There is nothing wrong with wanting to monetize your blogs traffic, there is just a fine line to offering information and shoving ads and in your readers face.
I slowly leartned that to much to soon is bad. I hade to many 125×125 ads, I had Google Adsense, I had banners in header and sidebar, I even had banners in each post, it was just way to much.
I’m just happy that I learned this quickly, since my blog is only 10 months old and 2 of those months I left the blog quiet to work on other things, as you can see Sept no posts, Oct 1 post.
I Decided To Get Focused
Once I came back in Nov, I started to really focus on what I wanted my blog to be about, and what was important. For me building a list is important, offering strong helpful content is important, building a community on my blog for other bloggers is important.
So knowing all that I started to stop the leak on my blog and offer what is important to my targeted readers.
At that time my blog had a Alexa score of about 2.2 million, and my 3 month Alexa score was 1.1 million
As of today I have a Alexa score of 168,603
What I Did Evey Day
First I dropped a lot my ads, now I still have ads up and I think a few ads that fit what your blog is about is ok, but don’t over do it. I try to stay away from ads that are to big and flashy and distracting.
My big secret to my new success is……Hard Work, Hard Work Each Day!
I know, no big underground secret, but it is what works, below are a few things I have done…
– Using my 40,000 strong twitter community to drive traffic.
- I comment on blogs related to my blog, I comment a lot, I have about 50 blogs saved on my RSS Feed so I can follow each day.
- I comment on KeyWord Luv blogs to get nice Keyword anchor link backs.
- I comment on Comment Luv blogs
- I bookmark each post to about 40 sites with onlywire.com
This has got me to 5,435 uniques below.
My focus now is to post atleast 3 times a week and that alone will boost my traffic by atleast 50% monthly.
I also have 5 top blogs where I plan to guest post, which will really get things growing on my blog.
Final Thought
You first need to know what you want your blog to be about, then post content and ads, and information that fits that topic perfectly. Design wise I would keep things different to stand out, but don’t get to crafty since you still want your blog easy to navigate.
Related Posts:
- How One Blog Comment Got 239 Visitors to my Blog
- How I got My First 5000 Blog Comments
- How I get Thousands of Visitors to My New Blog Every Week
- How I Accidentally Created a Top-Ranking Blog in under 4 Months
- Coolerchoice a success story
This is the type of inspirational stories most blogs lack.
“From zero to hero”… great concept, although not totally understood. As it takes time, money and perseverance to make it through.
How many of you are ready to kick-start your blogging career in 2010 and beyond?
Great post, That is a great game plan to drive traffic to your website. I have been noticing a major increase in my traffic from linking my blog posts to my articles submitted to ezine articles.com. You always give your reader value every time you post and I thank you for it. Keep up the good work.
Damon Jennings
http://www.traveljobopportunities.org
Thanks Damon, glad you liked the post.
How do you define success? Is it your Alexa rating? Your number of Twitter followers? Your number of unique visitors?
Since your blog is about making money, didn’t you think the only measure of success is how much your blog is making? Why didn’t you post how much your blog was making before you removed some of the ads and how much it increased after you removed them. If you follow it up in the comments we will know how successful your blog really is.
How come you don’t show how many RSS subscribers you have? I spent a good amount of time looking for it but couldn’t find it. Don’t you follow John Chow’s advice? If you have close to 43K Twitter followers those should translate to a good sized RSS subscribers, right?
Dennis, succees means different things to different people. RSS subscribers mean nothing.
I know many bloggers that make a huge amount money with their blog, yet have less then 500 RSS subs.
As far as ads, the blog is growing and changing, ads come and go, design has changed too, the post was my success at getting a blog to under 150,000 alexa in less then 5 mnths.
The blog makes money, can I retire on it? Of course not, it is a growing blog.
Great story
Congrats to get focused and wanting to give good content, great service and so on. This is always a good and sure way.
You always have unique content, because it is you writing.
When you put effort in, you will get noticed and when you write about things that people are interested in, they come and check you. They will stay, when your content is good.
Now, I visited the site, at least I think it is the site with the JohnPaulAguiar.com link. I found the site very noisy. Noisy in the way that my eyes kept jumping. It is in great contrast to this site here and I can not imagine that the site had even more ads that now.
After scrolling down the page it is getting much better and my eyes could see content. The content is good and interesting and I think the blogger has a good potential.
He can make it in blogging, because he is not shy in letting others know about his blog. He is making sure that each activity gets much attention. He is not waiting for others to find him but rather goes out to tell others, he is putting up signs on the traffic road.
I encourage him to go on, learn and improve. Dear comment reader, visit the site, get your own first hand view and you will go away with some new ideas, and most….
…. take action, lots of action. build on what works for you. take it to the max.
Ken thanks for the comment and the visit.
Dennis is right, the only measure of success would be the dollar increase you achieved by reducing the amount of ads you run–especially after 6 years of blogging.
So John, show us the money.
Again, 6 yrs in MLM and Interent marketing,
This is my first blog. now the post was not about my success im making millions.
It is about success in promoting and driving traffic and taking a blog from 2.2 mil alexa to under 150,000 in a few months,, that is a success.
Great post. Now I just need to figure out how to get my Google PageRank up there. Thanks for the tips!
Hi Michele, TY for the comment.
PR IS ALL ABOUT LINKS, THE BETTER THE QUALITY OF THOSE LINKS THE BETTER YOUR pr WILL BE.
Boy, tough crowd. I found some good, juicy tips in this blog post. I’m also boosting my rankings by commenting regularly on targeted blogs, doing guest blogging (I should do more), and posting strong content. I also think I have too many ads on the sidebar and may copy Max Blog Press by just having one banner at the top and one in the copy like the above post and see how that works.
I’m with you, kinda harsh….I liked the post, but that’s life!
Thanks for the comment. Glad you got a few tips.
How did cutting back on your ads effect your income?
I checked out your site and like the look. I know you dropped Adsense (which makes sense to me), particularly on a blog that is directed at people making money online. I personally don’t find it to be any help anyway.
I subscribed to your site and look forward to your 30 day course. Thanks!
Hey Ken.
I have dropped ads and plan to drop more now that I have my twitter book to promote.
My income has gone up since I have placed my own product ad up. since I keep 100% of the income instead of a percentage of a aff product.
Thanks for the info. I was thinking about trying to do some affiliate marketing. Do you do any on other websites or do you not find it profitable?
I agree becoming more focused on subject matter when blogging does make a big difference in traffic. I use to do soup to nuts on my business blog with good response but when I broke out into multiple blogs with a narrower routine topic the number of subscribers increased ten-fold!
Hi Laura, TY for the comment.
Yes picking a topic/niche for your blog and sticky to that topic is best.
Great info.
Sticking to the topic is a point lost on most people. An occasional off topic post is ok but needs to be rare. Usually something newsworthy and a little bit relavent works well
Hi Gee,, thanks for the comment. I agree that a post a lil off topic here and there is ok.
I think people try to make their blog a be all end all.. and that’s a mistake.
Also sticking to a topic makes writing a lil easier too..
Nice article to me for will be a blogger. Keep it up..
Ty for the comment. I’m glad you liked the post.
I have some questions about what you posted here and hope you’re willing to share:
You said
– Using my 40,000 strong twitter community to drive traffic
Question: how did you manage to build a 40K twitter community, and how long did it take? That alone is worthy of a post.
You said
- I comment on blogs related to my blog, I comment a lot, I have about 50 blogs saved on my RSS Feed so I can follow each day.
Question: How individual comments would you say you leave each week or each month?
You said:
- I comment on KeyWord Luv blogs to get nice Keyword anchor link backs.
Question: How successful has this been?
- I comment on Comment Luv blogs
Question: How successful has this been? Do they provide an advantage that other dofollow blogs do not?
- I bookmark each post to about 40 sites with onlywire.com
Question: what is the difference with this and socialmarker.com? Also, do you focus on only a few or on several and how long does it take you? Seems like this could still take quite a bit of time and I am not certain if it is time well spent. Do you really get quality traffic from this?
Thanks for your time.
Michael, thanks for your comment.
Now understand that alot of things you do to promote a blog will not have a “right” now measurement of its success. If you are building back links it may not bring traffic today but it will in time, since your blog will have a better PR in the future which will bring you more traffic.
Now as far as twitter, twitter has been very good to me..I have over 80,000 followers over 4 accts, but my main one is the @JohnAguiar with 43,000.
To much to list here how I did it, but I wrte a book Twitter Dummy Guide on how I did it. http://www.twitterdummy.net
I comment alot, mainly on blogs in my niche PR 3 and above, I would say I comment about 20-30 a day.
Keywordluv blogs are awesome, I comment on PR3 and above, having a achored keyword from a PR3 and above blog is huge.
Comment Luv blogs are also great since it leaves a link back to your last post. I try to fit my last post to fit the comment I leave example, if it is a comment for a twitter post, I chose a twitter post of mine to show,, so it is relevant.
I think Onlywire is much better then Socialmarker.. it is more automated
and it takes about 5 min for that..I also use Shareholic FF add on to BM another 10.. this takes about 15min.
Overall def worth the time.
Hope that helps.
Hi JP,
Thanks for all the great tips and tricks! I enjoy reading your posts!
Anyone can use help hints and these tips! i am going to check out your book too! thanks again!
Tess@WeddingThemes
oh and PS; I am amazed at the negative comments left here, wow!
I am a person raised this way: “if you have nothing nice to say, then keep it to yourself!”
Hi Tess,, and TY for the comment.
I’m glad you like the posts, and hopefully they are helpful.
lol yea negativity doesn’t affect me, believe in what you do and do it, regardless of the distractors
Very inspiring post John. It helps to hear this type of success story since its so real, instead of just boasting about how much money is being made.
Keep up the good work.
P.S. If you have the time, please take a look at my blog and tell me what you think, its 4 days old now.
Hey Sam, TY for the comment and positivity.
Your blog looks good, clean, like the color scheme.
Everything looks good above the fold, an ad, twitter and rss buttons and a video.
Great Work.
Thanks for your feedback John, greatly appreciated.
Great post JohnPaul…some people can just be so critical…who needs em.
Some excellent tips. I’d like to ask you a question that you may or may not like to do a post on.
Do you optimize for a particular keyword/phrase?
And if so would you do so for your overall blog title…which I guess would mean the same keyword phrase for each post…or for a different k/w phrase each post…but still relevant to your niche?
Great success story…thanks
Hey Phil. thanks for the comment.
I write keyword rich posts and titles, but I also write post for my readers.
I think a nice mix is best to keep readers happy and keep up on your SEO.
I wrote a post on this at http://www.johnpaulaguiar.com/how-to-get-an-a-on-your-seo-blog-page-report-card/
Thank you for your very educational post, John Paul. I’m blogging since 2008 and some of my articles/posts even appear on first place in Google’s search-results and my G-ranking is 5. But my traffic is low and Alexa puts me in the basement. Reading your post I just start to develop understanding what I’m doing wrong resp. what I’m not doing at all to get more traffic. I’m going to jump up now!
btw – thx to you, too, Codrut, for your fabulous blog
Ty for the comment. Yea goes to show having a high PR doesn’t always guarantee to big traffic.
Hope the post helped you.
Well john it seems you reply all of your comments in this post. Nice to see person like this…^_^
your tricks is useful for the blog information (niche blog) like yours, but what if you have a website like mine http://black-wallpaper.com …is there any idea to bring traffics on it ? hopefully you can help me…thanks
regards
zack
Hi Zack, Ye I try to reply, you took time to comment, I should take the time to reply..right?
The tips I shared work for any blog or site in any niche.
For you, since your about wallpapers, you can follow blogs that sell wallpapers, desktop images, etc.. works the same way.
Follow my tips and take it to your niche, which is wallpapers.
Good Luck.
Hi again john…nice to read your reply ^_^ I have been collecting some blog to my feed…but I can’t found the blog using commentluv or keywordluv plugins…do you have some code that I can use when searching the blog that use commentluv or keywordluv plugin in google search?
I was use some like this :
inurl:blog “this site uses keywordluv” “post a comment” _”comment clossed” _”you must be logged in” “your keyword”
and this :
inurl:blog “commentluv enabled” “post a comment” _”comment clossed” _”you must be logged in” “your keyword”
but the result is NO RESULT T_T
I don’t know may be I was wrong when typing the code…I hope you can help me…thanks
PS : sory if my english is sooo ugly… =D
Hy Zack, Your english isnt bad
I understand you just fine.
Yea this is the search code to use
“title=”CommentLuv Enabled”” KEYPHRASE
“title=”KeywordLuv Enabled”” KEYPHRASE
Change keyphrase to whatever keyword you want to search.
Um I been in MLM and Internet Marketing for 6 yrs, not blogging. Make sure you read before you run your mouth