Writing A Successful Blog

I am sure this question was on every blogger’s mind when they thought about setting up a site.

If you have your own blog, surely you have encountered situations where you just didn’t know what to write about, not to mention writing about interesting things that would be appealing to other people as well.

Unfortunately, when you started to be active in the online environment no one told you what steps to take in order to have a successful blog, or what topics to approach that will guarantee a lot of attention from your audience.

But you expected to discover the “recipe for success” on the way. The truth is, that no one can give you a book and say “Read this, and if you follow the rules here, you will be #1”. Unless you have met the magic gold fish and it grant you a wish.

The best you can hope for, is to get inspired from other people’s road to writing a great blog and try and learn from their experiences in order to apply it to your own case. If you copy a technique or someone, your results won’t be spectacular. Why? Because the concept already exists, and you won’t be seen as a person that actually gives real value to a subject.

This doesn’t mean that you have to go out of your way and find topics to discuss that no one else approached. No. This means that you have to bring your doze of uniqueness to whatever you do.

And with that in mind, I thought that I should open a section on BloggerBacklinks.Com, called “How to write a successful blog?”. Here, you will read stories about how other people, just like me and you, started their “blogging career”, and how things went from them from the beginning until now.

Hopefully, stories like these will get you more motivated and will help you hold on no matter how difficult things may get.

The first Successful Blog Story comes from Jeremy, who was kind to answer some set of question so that we would get a better understanding of how things evolved for him.
Below you can read the mini-interview:

1. Tell me about yourself, please.

My name is Jeremy Cook, I live in South Carolina and work as a Mechanical Engineer full time.  My site is all about the engineering-type projects that I do in my spare time.

2. Can you tell me a bit about your blog? What is the main topic you approach?

I started my website, jcopro.net, late in 2010 as a free WordPress site, eventually I registered the domain name, which is short for Jeremy Cook's Projects then went to self-hosting a few months after that.  The subject matter has always been about the projects that I do in my spare time, including Robotics, CNC machining, pneumatics, and some tutorials on the software I use to create stuff with.

3. Can you give me an overview of your blog’s evolution from the beginning until now?

As mentioned, I started this blog as a free WordPress site.  It took a bit of commitment to actually write a good blog to go to self-hosting since you have to pay for it, but it turned out really well.  My blog now pays for itself with ads, and helps offset the cost of making robots and other stuff that is pretty much for my (and visitors to my site's) entertainment.

4. Was it difficult to get visitors?

It was difficult to get visitors at first.  Probably my fist big "break" was getting one of my projects on hackaday.com.  Really exciting to see your hits rocket from a general number of 50 or so to over 1000 in a day.  That doesn't last of course, but if you can get listed on a larger site be sure to do it!

5. What were the methods you approached in order to increase your blog’s popularity? Which ones would you consider to be most effective nowadays?

Getting listed by larger sites can be great, but the other thing I learned to do was list my stuff on Reddit.  There's definitely an art to doing it politely so people don't think it's spam, but that can drive a lot of traffic if done correctly.  I've also been experimenting with Twitter, but I've yet to see great results with that.  I'm honestly not sure I know that I'm doing.

6. Do you interact directly with your visitors?

Yes, I definitely reply to comments that I get.  People don't generally contact me directly that much, but my blog has opened up some opportunities that I wouldn't have been able to pursue otherwise.

7. What was your traffic at the beginning and where did it get now?

The first few months were generally under 50 hits a day or so.  My traffic varies widely now, but generally 500 hits per day is normal.  A few over 4000 hits in a day is my best so far.

8. Do you monetize your blog? Are you satisfied with the results?

Yes, I monetize it.  As with raw traffic, I'm not sure I'll ever by satisfied, but I'm generally happy with my results so far.  I use Amazon and Google Adsense.  Both work well, but are used a bit differently in my blog.

9. What would be an word of advice for people that just started blogging?

If you're going to do it, write your blog about something that you really like.  If you can make money at it, that's really cool, but I think if that's your only motivation, you probably won't do it for long.  With me it was easy, I simply love making stuff.  Writing about it came quite naturally.

10. Thank you very much for your answers Jeremy and all the very best with your blog.

You can visit Jeremy’s site here: http://www.jcopro.net

Or follow him on Twitter: @JeremySCook

If you too want to share your successful blog story, leave a comment below, or write an e-mail to contact (@) bloggerbacklinks.com, and I will get in touch with you, and we will schedule a mini interview.