That’s a lot of subscribers.
Rest assured, it’s everything it’s cracked up to be.
Sure, you lose the small-town atmosphere. You lose the peaceful sound of the crickets at night and the shocking sensation of earning a brand-new subscriber.
Bummer.
If you enjoyed that, you can start a Tumblr sandbox on the side. There’s no mimicking the aching feeling of a ghost town. Gotta love it.
Wait a second.
So … you’re wanting to build a popular blog. If you insist. I told you it won’t be easy, but it’s achievable. If you possess the inner motivation and drive to see it through, you’ll bust a thousand readers in just a few months.
I’m not making stuff up. How old do you think Two Hour Blogger is?
But before we’re ready for the chrome, let me give you the quick and dirty on what you’re looking at.
1. It’ll be expensive.
- Your traffic will increase, which means you’ll need superior hosting.
- Your email database will grow, which means you’ll need a premium email marketing tool. Feedburner isn’t an option.
- You’ll need high quality photographs – which means you’ll either buy an expense camera or premium images.
By the time you have a thousand subscribers, you’ll be paying at least $80/mo.
Are you prepared?
2. It’ll be mentally and emotionally exhausting.
You’ll have to write your face off.
You’ll spend two hours writing an article. After a few days, you’ll do it again. And it gets worse.
Along the road to world domination, you bump into party poopers: certain snoopers who don’t want you to succeed. They may not send you hate mail but they sure fire the friction. You’ll awake to anonymous emails criticizing your audacious positions.
Not only that, but you’ll face the constant sting of people leaving. The typical rate is 1-2%. With a thousand subscribers, ten people leave your tribe every time you post.
Ouch.
Do you still want to build a popular blog? By now you’re dying to ask:
How do you build those thousand subscribers?
Guest blog.
It’s that simple. They laughed when I said I average 100+ new subscribers every time I appear on a popular blog.
They’re not laughing any more.
I’ve already talked about guest blogging in the free eBook. I talked about it at the very beginning of the journey here. I reminded you about it here. And now I’m telling you again: write great content and send it to the biggest blog you can find in your niche. Don’t write one or two articles. Write tons.
Flood your niche. Take it over by storm. Write write write.
Do this and I guarantee you’ll break a thousand readers. Truth be told, the sky is the limit.
Will you join me?
Did you really get hate email? People can be intimidated by success or even just by passionate people. It like freaks them out.
And, sure; I’ll attempt to join you
I won’t call it hate mail, but it sure wasn’t nice either.
If it wasn’t anonymous, it wouldn’t sting so bad. Oh well. Just a harsh reality.
I think you set some bloggers up for failure with a few of your rules. For example: high quality photos can be obtained through a lot of other sources than by paying for them.
In fact, sometimes photos from Flickr can be more creative and original and all it costs you is an attribution link (nofollow if you want).
Also the requirement to spend a full 2 hours on each blog post is a little excessive. I know that’s the whole premise of your blog, but there are plenty of bloggers who have built huge followings without putting in so much time on their posts.
For me, blog posts are about quality, not quantity. In fact, sometimes I prefer shorter ones. I don’t always have time to read a 2-hour post.
With all of that said, I do agree with your statement about guest-blogging. It’s by far the quickest way to build your blog (and capture quality readers).
Next after that, I would include leaving quality comments (ahem) and participating in forums.
Thanks for the post.
At the expense of looking like a jerk, I’ll disagree with you on both accounts, Preston.
Lots of successful people are using Flickr (Chris Brogan comes to mind?). But I’ve found that the ritzier my photos, the more traffic I get from Facebook. An exceptionally great photo attracts attention in a dull news feed. Some bloggers have a knack for finding such photos on Flickr, but I’m afraid they’re the exception. Just because Mark Zuckerberg wore flip flops to prestigious conferences for years doesn’t make it an ingredient to success. Lol.
Two hours gives you enough time to shorten your content. I like what Brian Clark said: “I tell people that if I had more time, my articles would be shorter.” It takes a long time to make sure each sentence provides value (and much as I hate to admit, I’m not a perfectionist at this myself).
Anyway, thanks for weighing in. If you figure out how to build an audience differently, go for it.
Hey Martyn,
You don’t come off as a jerk at all. Hopefully I don’t come across as one. It’s nice to have a genuine conversation about something like this.
I guess I don’t understand about the photos, because the photo you’ve used on this blog or on your home page to promote your ebook are pretty boring. I mean, no offense, but I just don’t find them to be that engaging. I certainly hope you didn’t pay for them. Where do you get your photos?
As for the two hour concept, I can totally get on board with that. Thanks for clarifying. If you use the two hours to really hone in on the cream of the crop in your post, I think that’s a great way to go about it.
But shouldn’t it be more like carving a Michaelangelic masterpiece? Instead of setting a time restraint (2 hours), why not say “I’ll write until I can’t any more, and then I’ll take away everything that’s not vital to the post until I can’t anymore.”?
Just a thought. I just think the 2 hour rule is a little too “letter of the law” instead of “spirit of the law”.
Lastly, I never disagreed with your tip on how to build traffic – which was guest-posting, right? I totally agree with you on that!
Naw, you ain’t a jerk man.
Interesting about the photos. I buy *all* of my photos from iStockPhoto, so I’m interested to see what you’d replace mine with? (And if I like your suggestions … I’ll replace ‘em.)
Good point about the 2HB rule. I don’t want people to legalize my fluid concept, and I can see where this could happen. Hmm.
Martyn, I do have a few alternatives for you.
First is PhotoDune (run by Envato), you can get a quality, professional blog photo there for $1.
The second is the creative commons on Flickr, which don’t need to have an attribution link, and you’d be surprised at their quality that they offer.
Ha, I can’t begin to tell you how many people think it’ll be easy and FREE. Agents who use our WordPress product love it because they get thousands of pages indexed and they start seeing growth in traffic.
But then guess what? Yep, you have to step up your hosting. Which means more money for premium hosting. “But why?!” they exclaim. I shouldn’t have to pay more.
It takes hard work. Time. And yes, even money.
You mean blogging actually costs MONEY? I thought this whole Internet thing was free.
You’re right man. Takes money to make money.
Haha, exactly! It DOES cost money! I still don’t get why some people over-glorify the “free” part about blogging. It’s only free if you don’t care what your blog looks like and you don’t care if anyone reads it…. oh and if you don’t blog that much. Then, sure. It’s free, alright.
I’m loving how you phrased that. Very nice.
Don’t forget guys that free is how we grow our blogs and free is why people love to accept guest posts.
Free advice, free ebooks, free content = your ticket to success.
People do overemphasize free, but it definitely is the reason we can turn a profit online.
Free is the greatest relationship builder, second only to delivering an awesome product that exceeds expectations.
@Martin I finally sold my gaming blog and am getting back into this niche. Congratulations on all of your success.
Congratulations, Chris! I saw that you sold it for 50K. That’s really awesome, and I’m glad you can focus more intently on your own projects now.
I use dreamhost and the bandwidth is unlimited from the day you sign up.
That way, you (or your client) know what your bill is from the first day. No surprises, no need to upgrade when you get some real traffic.
I will join you in this quest for world domination…or at least obtaining 1000 reader. Great post!
It’s a fun journey, Don. You’ll have ups and downs, but if you stick with it, you’ll make it. It’s awesome.
Hear, hear!
Just discovered you/two hour blogger (thanks copyblogger); just finished your free ebook and this post (obviously).
I think Preston D (above) is missing the point. A two-hour post doesn’t have to be long . . . it just has to be DAMN good! Spending 4 hours to write a headline doesn’t mean it was a looong headline; just DAMN captivating and effective. (Okay, I promise no more all caps “damns”.
)
Frankly I would love to only spend 2 hours on my posts; I easily average twice that . . . uh . . . I only wish the quality reflected that. lol!! (Some of us just need more time digitize the ideas rolling around in between our ears; I’m hoping to get better over time.)
As far as “setting bloggers up for failure,” if Martyn did that with this post; they’re going to fail anyway. If you have a 1,000 followers and you can’t monetize it enough to cover $100 a month in expenses . . . well . . . you need to focus on being the best that you can be at your Walmart job, eh?
The free ebook was excellent. Simple ideas that work. Cutting out all the clutter and presenting exactly what needs to be done to get it done. Unfortunately, people actually like clutter and to complicate things (this helps them to avoid that whole pesky success thing that resides well out of their comfort-zones), so I’m sure more than a few read it and said, “Hey . . . wait it minute . . . it can’t be that simple! I’m going to go find an expensive “Blogger-Magic-Silver-Bullet-Blueprint” course that costs a lot so I know it has good information.” Uh . . . yeah, right.
Of course, as you say in the lead magnet, people are much too lazy to actually do that extra work to create killer content. Plus, think how scary that is to most people to send out their “heart-and-soul” poured out into blog post only to have a bunch of “A-Bloggers” pass judgment on it and say it isn’t worthy of their site. Ahh rejection . . . its not just for breakfast anymore!
Anyway,
Thanks Martyn for the fantastic info; I’ll be a regular reader for sure.
Be present. Expect Success. Live with Passion!
Tranque
Tranque,
I’m humble enough to admit that I was wrong and I did misunderstand the point of the 2 hour rule. If you use the two hours to make your post the best it can be, then I am all for it.
As for the “setting bloggers up for failure” comment, I just think that each blog is different and if you have hard fast rules, it makes it difficult for some bloggers to feel successful.
Hey, don’t worry Tranque. The Two Hour Rule is that you spend a *minimum* of 2 hours. If you go over, that’s a bonus (I do it all the time, too).
Rejection is definitely hard to cope with, for sure. You have to be willing to fail a lot.
Thanks for connecting! Look forward to seeing you around the site.
Yeah, I didn’t get the idea that you set your timer for 2 hours and when the bell range, “That’s it; times up–Everybody out of the pool!” (Though honestly that might not be a bad idea to try as it would really force us to develop focus and build our “insta-creativity muscle.” Sounds sorta kinky, eh? )
Rejection isn’t exactly pleasant. But I’ve found it much more useful to “re-frame” it not as rejection but as feed-back. You made a key point when you said that after your article was rejected from Problogger and Dicks with Pens that you tweaked it before you sent it off again. I think I would have been guilty of just sending the same post off to someone different in hopes of getting it accepted. (The definition of insanity: Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results!)
The crazy thing about “rejection;” if you’re learning from it and making adjustments, the more rejection (aka feed-back) you get the better because it is a key component to success!
Rejection is the key to success! You’ve nailed it.
Dicks with pens? Lol. Wait till James Chartrand sees that.
Uh . . . sorry James… Yikes … guess which blog I’ll never get a guest post on. doh!
You know what? You’re right it is hard and you better love what you’re doing because in my humble opinion, you’ll give up otherwise.
But that all said.. It CAN be done.
I needed to hear that one more time today.. thx, dee
Great point, Dee. You better love what you’re doing! Takes dedication, for sure.
Great post Martyn. I’ve already followed you a long time ago. I find it great how you helped me with my some pointers about my site, and I love reading your posts.
Yeah guest blog. I’m writing several, but haven’t sent one out yet. I don’t know what I’m waiting for.
In my case, I procrastinate sending guest posts because I’m afraid of rejection.
And you know what? I GET rejected. My post on Copyblogger was rejected by Problogger AND Men with Pens. Each time, I worked on it a bit more, kept sending it in, and someone finally published it.
120+ subscribers later, here I am.
Hey Martyn,
Great post. I have known about guest posting for some time but just haven’t put forth the effort. Trying to find time to even get 1 post up a week is hard enough for me. Obviously I need to make the time and write, write, write, and then hopefully success will follow. Thanks man.
I hear you, Justin. It’s hard to find the time – especially since there’s no “immediate” financial reward.
Here’s my suggestion: try to blog three times per month at your site, and send a guest post once per month. Jon Morrow recommends something similar, and I think it’s a great strategy. It’s important to “get out there” and not just blog into the wind on your own domain.
At last, a good dose of reality. Thanks. I am about to launch a new blog and am pooing my pants to be honest. I’m Thesis ready, designed up, everything in place. Draft content ready to rock and roll. Holding breath now and prepared for the long haul. Let the journey begin and thanks for the help.
My view is that if you don’t spend two hours per post you’re not trying hard enough.
Sounds like you’re all set, Peter! I can’t stress how imporant it is to get influential people to link to you. You can have the BEST design and content in the world, but if it’s not getting in front of people, it’ll go nowhere.
In hindsight, I’d encourage a brand new blog(ger) to line up as many guests posts as possible, with the seductive hype of “he’s just launched his brand new blog – check it out.”
Do I want a popular blog? Now I’m not so sure.
I am actually afraid of the “party-poopers.” Probably because I fear they’ll harm my business, out me as a fraud. I’m not a fraud, but I fear broadcasting a mistake that makes me seem like one, having someone rudely point it out.
I know there are positive counterpoints to my fears, but still. Do I want this…could I get it if I did?…Hmm. Lol. :3
Great post, Martyn.
Building a popular blog isn’t for everyone, Lauren. Actually there are less-stressful ways to make a living. Depends on what sort of critter you are, I suppose.
Decisions, decisions. Hey, I’m still deciding too.
Well I’m considering launching a blog to help promote my editing service, but there are *so* many blogs out there. And since I’m so wishy-washy on it, there’s no way I’m doing it unless I can come up with a really creative concept for it. If I do launch it, though, I’m sure sticking around here will help me too. Lol.
I, for one, signed up for your list after reading your post on CopyBlogger, so there is certainly truth in what you say. I’ve signed up for other lists in the same way. This is definitely a great way to build a list of quality, targeted followers. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.
Despite what some folks say, guest blogging works. And you’re right – it gives you the most targeted traffic possible.
Thanks for signing up.
Thanks Martyn – you can’t beat a bit of seductive hype!
Here’s a quote I came across awhile back:
“Negative feedback is better than none. I would rather have a man hate me than overlook me. As long as he hates me I make a difference.” – Hugh Prather
So long as you believe in what you’re publishing and your target niche finds value in it, then you’re making a difference. And that’s all that matters.
The world is full of critics because the world is a complicated place. If everyone agreed, then there would be no such thing as a “unique perspective” like your own.
And that’s not a world I personally want to live in. So bring on the critics!
Wow Jonathan – you’re getting off the deep end here! That’s an interesting way to think about it.
Haha, didn’t mean to get all philosophical on you! I guess this part of your post just resonated with me and inspired me to share the quote:
“Along the road to world domination, you bump into party poopers: certain snoopers who don’t want you to succeed. They may not send you hate mail but they sure fire the friction. You’ll awake to anonymous emails criticizing your audacious positions.”
I must say your site gets spiffier every time I come to visit.
While the thought of a 1000 subscribers is quite inviting, it’s kinda not (to me). Let’s say you do get to that level, the pressure is definitely on to maintain the quality, and quantity, of content and hard work it takes to get there. I suppose if you’re doing it full time, and/or that’s your dream, I say go for it.
As for spending only two hours on a post, well …. I hope to get there someday
How’s it going? I’m glad you like the adjustments around here.
Remember when we had our conversation about you wanting to appear on a site like Problogger? Still dreaming of doing that, or have I scared you off? You’re definitely right – building a “popular blog” creates a lot of pressure for the owner. Sometimes I sit back and wonder why I’ve created this monster. Lol.
I said this from the start …
Your candor is refreshing, Martyn.
As a member of your loyal readership, nothing bodes better to keep me hanging around than a no holds barred, tell-it-like-it-is post with a message that serves ME.
Just wondering …
Where do I send my guest post for review?
Well thank you, Melanie! Appreciate the tweet too. Next week should be even more open, since I’m planning on doing a video.
Afraid I’m not accepting guest posts right now. The audience isn’t quite big enough for it to be worthwhile … frankly, I don’t recommend guest blogging for a site with fewer than 10-20K readers.
A video, Martyn?! That’s really cool. I’ll be anxious for next week to roll around.
I haven’t crossed over the video line yet but maybe after you cross over it, I’ll be less apprehensive and you’ll become my video hero and mentor.
Oh man, now you’ve got ME apprehensive. We’ll see how it goes. It’ll definitely be off the beaten track (at least for around here). And if you start doing videos … I wanna see it.
Hi Martyn,
Thanks for the post, good tips.
Parts of it reminded me of an Indian friend of me. He’s pushing very hard to become the most mediocre SEO non-guru ever
. Recently he decided to start accepting guest posts, while he has less than 100 subscribers and PR 1. So now he has guest posts from people that have sites that are totally not related to SEO, haha. He brings new meaning to the word misguided 
.
About the hosting, I’d like to add that if you make sure all pages are served as static files, and especially if you run the nginx webserver to do that, you can take huge amounts of traffic with much less resources compared with dynamically generated pages. And that in turn can reduce your hosting costs.
And this SEO guy is your “friend”? Lol.
I’m interested in your hosting idea. WordPress is pretty fluid … Is it possible to make Wordpres pages static without ruining the PHP/MySQL database?
Not much of a friend, indeed. The pushy way he’s begging for likes and comments has already made me unsubscribe from his updates on FB.
As for the static pages, it’s not that hard. There are a few WP plugins (I’m using WP Super Cache) available that will generate static pages whenever a page is requested for the first time. The rest of the magic comes from .htaccess rewrites (for Apache), that will serve the static pages instead of sending them to WordPress. I’ve ported them to nginx for even better performance.
My employer iBOOD.com has been using this exact setup in high traffic and it worked very well. The only problem are high volumes of new comments, because they invalidate the cache.
Good post martyn, All the key ingredients are covered. However, I have to disagree with you on some level. This does not work for all blogs. These have to be tested and experimented before they actually can make an impact on subscribers.
Tell me more! You’re saying that guest blogging doesn’t work in certain fields? I’d love to hear your stories …
Welll… I’ve been writing for Technorati for months and it hardly brought me any traffic or subscribers, even when people seemed to like what I wrote. So I would agree that guest blogging might not “always” work. For my case, I guess it’s some kind of audience mismatch.
Guest blogging works … you just have to do it right.
I wouldn’t write for Technorati *even* if the audience matched. Just because a site is getting a zillion hits from Google doesn’t mean it’s got a vibrant community of readers eager to follow new blogs.
Its best to write for blogs where the level of reader engagement is high. You are bound to get more susbcribers – at least in my experience, that has been the case. I have gotten more subscribers from blogs that have less than 5k subscribers than writing for some big ones that get lot of tweets and shares but fewer comments. I think readers on big ‘resource’ kinda blogs don’t bother to checkout the guest blogger? What do you think Martyn?
I bet it depends on your hook in your guest post and how convincing you are. With that said, I still feel, if you are in the tech niche market, its going to be hard for you to meet grounds in terms of traffic and new subscribers. However, guest blogging is surely there to create visibility especially when you are a new blogger and no one knows about you.
@Marya I don’t even write for that kind of blog. If you don’t see readers engaging on a blog, don’t write for it – no matter how many bazillions of pageviews compete.com says it gets per month. Just isn’t worth it.
@Eddie You’re right, dude. The tech niche is super saturated. I’d probably focus on SEO and trending topics instead of guest blogging.
I literally love your writing style, it’s so interesting and attention-catching!!
Don’t know how many times guest blogging needs to be mentioned until people actually start doing it? I think most bloggers out there are too shy to make their first move, that’s all. I just hate waiting for it to get published.
I wrote that Copyblogger article probably 3 months ago. Would have been a lot easier just to publish on my own blog (was tempted to, too!) but I’m glad I didn’t. Yep, there’s definitely patience involved in this!
This is great advice! I was just thinking this morning about how I focus on the wrong stats. Instead of worrying about visits, views, comments, and even subscribers, I should focus on the number of posts I’ve written because that is the one I have the most control over. In fact, the more (and better) content I write, the more the other stats will increase.
That’s a great idea, Jon. I should do more of that myself!
If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing it right!
Well done, Martyn.
Thanks Martyn, you’re awesome. Keep up the great posts. A few months ago i found your blog, and didn’t know much. The funny thing is, that i’ve studied my bum off since then, and i still love the fact that i’m still learning from you.
Great stuff.
Hi Martyn,
This is a great post and I agree with iwth you on all accounts. I wish I averaged 100+ subscribers per guest post (although it might be different if I had done one on copyblogger – that’s my next target), I don’t. That is just the sad fact of life for me.
That being said, I am a full time Mum to two boys under 7, part time out-of-home worker and 20-minute blogger – if I am lucky.
Sometimes, it takes me days to finalize a guest post, like the one that appeared on Write to Done recently as I had to look through many writing books for that. Once it took me 10 years .. meaning the inspiration of that particular post came from the Business Communication course that I did through my MBA, in 2001. That post was published on Problogger, got over 400 tweets and I got a handful of bloggers off that post .. well, about 50 I reckon. Where do you think I went wrong?
Yours is one of the very few blogs that I read word to word of. Great work! I love the no-nonsense aspect of it the most. Cheers
Marya
I wouldn’t say you went “wrong,” Marya – 50 isn’t a bad number. I’ve known bloggers who only got a few dozen readers from a Problogger article. That’s just the way it goes sometimes.
Best wishes getting on Copyblogger.
#2 is essential. The hard work I can do. The money I can spend. It’s the emotionally-draining criticisms of ignorant people that can daily destroy my motivation to start again tomorrow.
It’s a wicked roller coaster of emotions when you decide to make a difference with your writing and do it under daily, public scrutiny. That has, without a doubt, been the hardest part about building and maintaining a platform as a writer.
Keep up the great work, Martyn. Glad to know I’m not the only weird one who sometimes gets discouraged from negative comments.
People can be rude, Jeff, and I’m afraid I’m guilty myself. You’ve nailed it calling them “ignorant” people. I’m convinced that most criticism stems from lack of information.
Thanks for weighing in!
thanks martin buddy, you’re one of the best bloggers i’m tuned in to…
oops sorry, i misspelled your name.. martyn, i have to read this over and over so it would stick to my brain cells… breathe in, out……..
Haha that’s okay. Lots of people misspell my name. I’m used to it.
It’s true that guest blogging is the best.
By the way, remember me?
I hope you’re well, Martyn. I’m finally making money and unfortunately it isn’t from blogging – it’s from working my socks off at a “real job” (I’m in bare feet right now). I have a plan for the future that entails doing something I love, but sometimes you just need short term income to survive.
I’m doing good, Stephen. Don’t worry, my income isn’t coming directly from my blog, either. Still working at the airport? So, what’s your plan?
I’m actually planning on going to school. More on that later.
“They laughed when I said I average 100+ new subscribers every time I appear on a popular blog.
They’re not laughing any more.”
Sounds like somebody’s been studying a little bit of John Caples copywriting, eh?
Guilty.