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Thursday, November 17, 2005

8 secrets of the 80/20 blogger

I was inspired to do my own variation of this. Enjoy. :-)

1. 80% of your posts are meaningless.
80% of what you post is going to be absolutely meaningless. Complete rubbish. But they're still important, 'cause without them, your regular fans go somewhere else. If they're regular, of course. Who'd be regular though if you don't have any posts? Those regular fans you have, they're there for the 20% of your posts that are meaningful to them. And of your fans, 80% of them will link to 20% of those meaningful posts.

2. Life Through My Eyes is a new Web 2.0 resource.
If you can work out why 20% of your posts are linked back by 80% of your fans, you can begin to increase the ratio. Start writing more of what they find interesting and meaningful. And if you can't do this, then you're just not bound for success, so you might want to go start knitting instead. Maybe blog about that? Try to aim for 80% of your posts talked about by 20% of all your visitors, rather than just 20% of your posts by 80% of your fans.

3. Be Unique. Don’t be like everyone else. That is so Web 1.0.
You should be tired of looking at your stats and seeing that 20% of your traffic is return visitors. You want 80% returns! If you want more people coming back, you have to be uniqie. You have to find topics that no one else is talking about, and you have to talk about them yourself. People need to hear things in a new way, and you're going to have to be new if you want them coming back.

4. Become a Google Wunderkind. Delete your archives.
Review all your posts. Clear out the ones that either aren't popular, or are not a good reflection of how you want your blog to be. If you have less content but more of it's linked, guess what? You become an overnight Google wunderkind. Google doesn't want you knowing this, but it works.

5. Drop all the contextual advertising bullcrap. Simplicity is betta.
If you have advertising that's not making you money, get rid of it. Now. If you remove 80% of the advertising that's not making you money and optimise the 20% that is, your readers are going to visit your site more, and make your more money in the process. What better reason to do it, right?

7. Quit feeding at the trough.
Spend more time on your blog and less time reading websites or RSS feeds, and any other feeds you might be accessing. It's wasting your time! Quit feeding at the trough and do some creative writing of your own, instead of using other people's content like what inspired this! That's what people feast on, and that's where the success is.

8. Don't TRY to be one, just BE one!
To be one of the 20% of blogs that 80% of people are going to come back to, you have to be one of those 20% of bloggers that 80% of bloggers wish they were. Do more writing. Care less about the crap, and care more about the quality. I have a saying sticky-taped to the top of my screen: "combine quality with consistency." Don't try to be what you think you should be, just do it and be it.

Posted on 11/17/2005 03:21:00 PM


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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is a cool rewrite. I dig it.

11/18/2005 01:22:00 PM  
Blogger Alan Howard said...

Thanks liberalcowboy, I appreciate your compliment. Especially since it's originally yours! :-D

11/18/2005 01:35:00 PM  

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