10 Lessons in Blogging Learned the Hard Way

Tomorrow marks the 1 year anniversary of the Wordful.com blog, and I’d like to share some meaningful lessons on what it means to blog.

Since there was no way I could have known any of this when I started, consider it hard-earned wisdom. This is valuable stuff!

Without further ado:

1. Blogging is not directly about making money. It’s about intellectual real estate and personal branding. If you want to make money online, you need to first build a business, then build a blog to help execute your business strategy.
2. Following the rules sucks. When I first started Wordful.com, I wanted to be a problogger (aka paid internet superstar). All the gurus told me I needed to follow their rules in order to “make it.” The problem is, the rules don’t leave much room for creative innovation. It’s good to know the rules (necessary, actually), but you’ll have to break away from them if you ever want to stand out.
3. I’m glad I stuck with it. There were a few times I was ready to give up on blogging. Maybe it was the loneliness or hopelessness or knowing that nobody cares. I saw many bloggers fall to the wayside over this past year — all their hard work simply abandoned at some months-old post. I’m still going!
4. You need a market. This was the toughest one for me to understand. If you want a group of people to listen to you, be loyal to you and give you their money, then you need to talk about things they want to hear. Things they find useful or entertaining or both. Learn to silence the “commercial vs. artistic” propaganda going on inside your head.
5. There is no magic formula. In the same vein as #2, there is no handbook or easy 12-step program to becoming a successful blogger. I don’t care what they tell you. The reason why is because blogging serves many purposes, and you can’t possibly expect to know what you’re doing with it until you’ve tested the waters.
6. Marketing is almost as important. Your content comes first, but the internet is not The Field of Dreams. It’s not as easy as “If you build it, they will come.” It should read: “If you build it and market it and be generous and stick with and it until you’re about ready to give up in defeat, they might come.”
7. Read the right stuff. Reading the blogs and books of experts in and out of your field gives relevance and context to your own ideas. It also builds a platform of knowledge from which you can pioneer new ideas. The only word of caution about reading is not to turn it into a full-time indulgence.
8. Love it or leave it. If blogging is not enjoyable, or at the very least rewarding, then go find something else to do. This is not to say blogging is not hard work, because it is. This post (my first one) took me over 5 hours to write.
9. Be well connected. This goes with the need to market yourself, but much deeper. Having an online presence–a personal brand–means building real relationships with real people. Yes—it’s all about human connectivity and the powerful social media tools we have at our disposal.
10. Write killer headlines until you’re famous. Assuming nobody cares about you–which they don’t–you have to rope people in to your blog somehow. A great headline makes a tantalizing promise which your content needs to deliver. It’s only when you’re famous can you write nebulous headlines and still have a growing fan base. By the way, Copyblogger is the Ivy League of headline writing.

Do any of you have something to add to this? We’d all love to hear it in the comments below.