It all started back in 2004 when I watched a friend of mine building a website on Lycos Tripod (a site builder). I thought it looked cool so I decided to build a site myself. I slowly transitioned to buying my own domain, learning HTML by tweaking MySpace pages and finding out how to drive traffic to websites.
I knew that I could do some great things online when, at 16 (this was 2005), one of my websites had grown to over 10,000 active users and was featured in the book DJ’ing for Dummies. Since then I’ve built the 10th biggest personal development blog on the internet, a large internet marketing blog and a number of affiliate sites that allow me to earn a 5-figure income each month online.
A lot of people want to make money blogging, but it seems as if only a small minority actually do or are even cut out for the world of internet marketing so to speak. What do you think are two or three characteristics you’ve seen that those who are successful online share?
I would say that the first thing you must do is write about what you love. If you want to make a great living online in less than a year, blogging is rarely the route I would suggest. It’s going to take months or years to see a great return on your investment, so blogging on a topic you’re not passionate about for that long is going to be difficult. Life isn’t supposed to be difficult.
The second key to succeeding with blogging is consistency. If you look at the Technorati Top 100 blogs on the internet, you won’t find one which isn’t at least 2-3 years old. Getting over the “hump” in blogging – which I view as getting around 1,000 genuine subscribers – is definitely the hardest part, but once you reach a level like this, it’s far easier to grow your site.
Write about what you love and keep doing it. There’s a lot more to blogging, but without these two things, you aren’t going to get very far.
I moved away from my friends in 2006 at 17 to go to a college which offered computer programming so spent 5 days per week doing that, and at the time had a weekend job in a clothes store. I really hated my life at that time because my weekends were consumed by my job and my weekdays were consumed by college courses that didn’t excite me.
Through my internet marketing blog and building my presence in the SEO space, I was offered a job in South Africa working with some of the biggest brands in the world as their social media manager. I worked there for 18 months in the typical 9-5 role, and quit just over a year ago.
It took me about 9 months of seriously hard work to build up sites from scratch that were making a respectable amount of money. I don’t recommend the “work your ass off strategy” to anyone as that’s not how I live my life anymore, but I certainly did back then. I spent every spare hour I had working on my own projects, and thankfully that hard work paid off.
Honestly? I really don’t know. If I had to take a guess, then I don’t think so, as I don’t know many people who have gone from internet success to running a brick-and-mortar business in the offline world. I personally don’t have much interest to start solely interacting with people in person.
If we look at the opposite (going from offline to online) then I’m sure there are a few things that help. The method of advertising for offline businesses (interrupting people as much as possible) is not going to get you very far online, however.
Writing guest posts. You can write the most mind-blowing content in the world but if nobody is there to read it, you aren’t going to earn a penny or build a readership. Yet, you can have mediocre content (I don’t recommend this) and a lot of traffic (thanks to things like guest posting), and still reach your goals.
Guest posts give links which help you rank for phrases in Google and help to drive relevant traffic to your site. I’ve written a massive guide on guest blogging if people wish to know more.
In building your blogs both Pluginid.com which you recently sold and Viperchill.com what were the most beneficial means of growing an audience that you can share with us? (i.e. commenting on others blog, adwords, social media)
There are a number of things, but I think the most important thing is looking at how you spend your time. I see some people doing nothing but commenting on blogs all day for months, and they’re still sitting on a feed count of a few hundred subscribers. I used blog commenting as a strategy in the early days, but I’ve probably left about 5 in the last 30 days. It’s not a tactic that has a great ROI.
I’ve never paid for traffic, either. I simply focus on the three most important things: write awesome content, write awesome content for other sites, and keep doing it. You only have so many hours to dedicate to your blog each week, and you’re going in the wrong direction if most of it isn’t spent on writing or effective promotion.
You sold Pluginid.com a while back, is this the first time you sold a blog for a substantial amount and if so do you think that selling your personal blog is a good ‘exit’ strategy for other bloggers to adopt? Or does it all depend on where you are in life?
I’m glad you added the second part to the question. That was the exact situation for me. I genuinely never planned to sell my site and as I mentioned earlier, think blogging is an awful medium to rely on if you want to make money online quickly. I sold the site when I found that my passion for writing content there was dying and I didn’t think I could help people like I could in the past.
The site was there to document my journey, and I had fortunately attracted a lot of success in my life to the point where most of my goals (like one I have now, which is buying a nightclub) really don’t resonate with other people, as they aren’t at that stage. I like to see the blog as a journey, which is why Bud taking over the ‘story’ was a perfect fit.
If you want to sell your site, then go ahead. Just make sure you’re doing it for the right reasons. I could have kept running the site and built it to be far more successful, but I wouldn’t love the process. Loving what I do is far more important to me than money or success in the eyes of others.
What is the single best piece of advice you could give to a person with a strong entrepreneurial drive but just doesn’t know where to start?
Nobody knows where to start. Picasso wasn’t born with a paintbrush in his hand and Seth Godin wasn’t sitting with a typewriter at 3 yeras old. Everyone just does something and things inevitably start to happen.
What is it that you read about or look at online when everyone else is asleep or when you have to spare time at work? What is one action you do where you get so in the flow that hours pass by without you noticing?
There’s a good chance there’s a niche in there that you can make money from. Don’t feel like your medium has to be blogging or even something online. Just find your passion first.
-Glen
Want to see the amazing things happening on Glen’s blog? Check out http://www.viperchill.com
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