Passion Plus Patience Equals Successful Blogging

I started writing online about 5 years ago. I was so ignorant then of how to blog or find writing jobs that, in hindsight, I lost out on a lot of stuff I could have been doing like growing a brand and building up personal sites as well as adding to my portfolio. I wouldn't call it wasted time, though, as most of those precious days that are now gone were spent learning what I know today. I'm still no "guru" but I know enough now to launch new blogs and sites with moderate success. Also, like they say, "hindsight is 20/20"-so I'm not crying over it, either.

Patience is the Key to Blogging and Developing Your Brand

When people first start out blogging they'll probably read "patience" about once a day, maybe more; the key to any successful blog (amongst other things, and we could go all day on that subject) is PATIENCE. I see so many people start a new blog and throw tons of advertising on it when they may only have 2 to 5 pieces of content. Also, in many cases, those single digit pieces of content aren't really well thought out or aimed at the audience of the blog. Heck, there is no audience yet. Then bloggers get discouraged. They wonder why they're not making money with their blogs. Maybe they give up. Maybe they do something stupid like buying traffic and ad clicks. Either way, they eventually stop blogging all together.

Three Reasons Why a Patient Blogger Turns into a Successful Blogger

1. The building and adding of content on a consistent basis is necessary to get traffic and dedicated readers. Without a lot of content, you'll never rank in search engines for main keywords or long-tail keywords. The better the content the better your chances of getting good traffic. Write content consistently or outsource to a blog writing service that can show passion in prose. 2. Domain age is HUGE! The older the domain, the more weight it holds with search engines-especially Google. The older a domain is, the more it has been worked, and over time contributes to two main elements. First, it shows the search engines that it isn’t a spam sight and it has someone "behind the curtain" that truly cares about the blog and working it. Second, the longer the blog is around the more and more back links will come out on the other end as people start noticing and linking, tweeting, sharing and coming back for more of your content. That's a huge plus in rankings and traffic. 3. Bloggers who stick around for the long run are the ones who are treating their blog as a business. Some businesses take years to actually start turning a profit. Until that happens it takes hard work and living off of any scraps left over. A blog is no different and bloggers should not look at blogging as anything but a small, online business. People who blog don't just write. They promote. They study the field and niche. They market. They network. That's not the "end all, be all" of successful blogging but I think that it's more than half the battle. People like to succeed naturally. The truly determined try anything they can to get their ideas to become successful, while "hobbyists" are more likely to give up and move onto something else. Which one are you?