Note: This is the one year anniversary post I wrote in the year 2009. I did a minor proofing for this post in 2020.
Some context: Before blogkori, I started with another blog in the blogpost platform called blog-success.blogspot.com and got my start in blogging. Back in the day, I used to post a few articles every day. I started blogkori.com halfway in 2008. Enjoy the trip down memory lane!
Finally, it’s a whole year since I launched blog-success.blogspot.com. In this entire period, I learned lots of things, made lots of mistakes, 90% of plans were failed and the other 10% was a big hit! My greatest memories of 2008 were fantastic. Here is the quick list what I learned in my first year of blogging,
- Be serious about blogging -no matter you want to make it as a profession or a hobby.
- Put your eggs in many baskets.
- Daily writing is good!.
- Don’t try to appear on every social platform you can.
- Don’t add people randomly: The mistake I did on Facebook, adding friends without even knowing. Now there are at least 200 people in my friend list I don’t even know them.
- Build profile one by one: Chose a site, use it and build a great profile. Once you did it, go and use another network. In the end, you will have power user status on many networks.
- Reveal yourself as the author: Because people will like to know who is behind the blog.
- My first Page Rank: Yes, it’s history. Got PR 3 for blog-success.blogspot.com in March; the credit goes to regular articles.
- Networking with your readers and friends really works.
- I made money online (If I can make money online, anyone can).
- I can blog on blogging (Started BlogKori.com).
- Blog on your own domain: Currently all of my blogs are on their own domain.
- Help as many people as you can -it costs nothing!
- Adsense is not the only way to earn money: Now I have 8+ streams of income source and still trying new sources.
- You have to give value before you can bring out something: Learned from Darren Rowse -ProBlogger.net
- Readers are better than visitors.
- I learned how to make a sticky blog.
- Made lots of talented friends and found great blogs.
- Don’t just bookmark your own pages (I learned from Stumble Upon).
- Building a helpful personal image (Almost).
- I started to blog on WordPress (The new BlogKori).
Wrote 500+ text posts, read 1000’s of emails, commented at least 500 times; received 1000’s of comments, personal emails, requests, messages, chat, and tweets.
And finally, Thank you for being with me all the time. If it wasn’t for you, then Tamal Anwar wouldn’t even existed on the internet.
Happy new year!
Thank you for your support also Tamal. All point in the list your mentioned should be copy by anyone who want to be successful blogger. I’ll write the same post as your this year when I reach one year of rebooting my blog (June, 2009).
@Hamdani Amin: thanks for inspiring me. I’m just getting started to know more about blogging and doesn’t means that I learned everything. I have to go a long way in blogging.
It’s one year of my blogging life and reviewing what I learned and what I did wrong. I’ll be waiting to read your first year of blogging, thanks!
Thanks for the blog post to me i am inspired with your effort. I will try to do the same.
@Ritesh: thanks man and by the way I didn’t knew that you have a website about cars, “Car Dekho” cool! I’d love to read that post from you too 😀
Congrats on your 1 year Anniversary. Those are some helpful tips for all bloggers.
May 2009 be a successful one for you too.
@Geoserv: thanks Darrell, you are a senior blogger and webmaster. I’m an infant infront of you on the online world but still you said that these tips will help all bloggers -thanks again for that!
@Tamal, thanks for the kind words, though I do not consider myself a senior blogger.
That’s an interesting list.
One observation I have is on your #16. In my experience, search engine visitors mean money, readers, not so much. Readers are a lot more fun to hang out with because they leave comments and so forth but they won’t pay the bills for most blogs.
@Frank C: hey Frank, you picked up one interesting point. The thing we always look for is traffic and visitors. But if the visitor in not coming back again, that means we’re losing a big opportunity.
In blogging, step #1 is visitors and then step #2 is readers. We should put more focus on making a visitor into a regular and participating reader -he’ll read and promote and he could be a business associate in the long run.
So the result could be like this:
#1. A visitor who comes to your site by odd and leaves within 10 seconds(doesn’t promotes in social media, never comments or never even clicks on the ad)
#2. A reader who loves to read from the author(Likes to spend hours reading posts and comments, likes to participate in discussions, votes in social media, connects with you in social sites and trusts you so that he will buy ads from you)
I think this explained my point and helped you, thanks again for participating 🙂
It is true that most visitors to “make money online” blogs arrive from search engines on odd keywords because most of them have poor SEO and advertising optimization for search traffic. Since the blog doesn’t have what they’re looking for they bounce away quickly.
But, if the site or post is targeted toward what they’re looking for and it’s a buying keyword term, like “discount laundry service”, they’ll click an ad about 20% of the time and you’ll make money and the more search traffic, the more money you’ll make.
You can cater to both types of visitor, the search visitor and the reader, but it’s trickier to do. I do this on my other blog, optempo.com, where have a core of about 200 readers but I get over 1000 search visitors a day.
@Frank C: You made it clear, thanks
Hey, Tamal that’s really great self-learning. I would suggest to other readers also that don’t run behind those free ebooks and try to learn from your own mistakes that will increase your confidence as well. great going buddy
@Sky Xavier: that’s an interesting this I forgot to mention, the free ebooks. Lots of ebooks can be found and lots of blogs to read, but every blogger and the experience is different, so have to learn by your self.