Blog Blazers – Chapters 1 to 5

This post covers the first five chapters of the book Blog Blazers by Stephane Grenier that I promised to review in return for a free copy.

Chapter 1 – Aaron Wall of SEOBook

SEOBook has a page rank of 6 which is the equivalent of ITV, so it certainly looks as though Aaron is doing something right. He has also spent over $100,000 and more than three years marketing the blog, which implies a lot of hard work has gone into the success. But success it is, and Aaron now reaps the rewards – as he says, selling his own product brings in far more money for him than any adverts could given the market he is in.

Tips for success seem to suggest consistency is the key – single successful posts will not bring long-term success while a collection of posts which help a few people at a time will slowly grow an audience and cement your place in your chosen field.

Keeping your blog focused is another tip from Aaron. He goes so far as to suggest creating other blogs for family, political and off-topic posts. Also, keep up to date with other blogs in your area. Finally, make sure your headlines are snappy – the readers on social media sites may well vote based on that headline alone.

As a final look at Aaron’s blog, consider the Wordle generated image of words used in SEOBook.

We can clearly see the focus here – “SEO” is the largest, closely followed by “Search”, “Google”, and “Web”. The inclusion of “Christmas” is interesting and suggests Aaron is beginning to focus on the holiday season to attract seasonal searches. The other two prominent words are “people” and “media” both of which are important aspects in his chosen field.

Chapter 2 – Abdylas Tynyshov of AdesBlog.com

Abdylas’s blog is rather different to that of Aaron from SEOBook. There is no product or book being marketed, instead the blog exists for the purpose of blogging itself. As such, there are a relatively large number of adverts for other products on the blog.

Similarly, the blog doesn’t appear to me to have a particular “feel” to it. Perhaps this is due to the plethora of adverts, or maybe it is because it is a blog that seems to be concerned with blogging, which always runs that dangerous gauntlet of futility.

Indeed, when we look at the words used in the following image, there are some clear trends.

First of all, “WordPress”, “page”, “posts” and “Color” are the most common. This definitely suggests a blog concerned with blogging. There is a lack of what I would call “concept words” namely thing like “business”, “people”, “information” etc. Instead note the occurrence of “web-hosting”, “comments” and “free”. Particularly interesting is the comparison with the equivalent image generated from SEOBook above. SEOBook has more focus – shown by the larger distinction between the most common words and the rest. There are also more “concept words” like “information”, “important”, “Approach”, “create”, “strategy”. The contrast is quite striking in this case.

However, this review is not meant to be about the blogs themselves, but what advice the bloggers themselves can give. Ades does give some useful advice, mentioning that StumbleUpon can cause large increases in traffic. Ades also recommends giving the blog a personal voice by providing your own opinion and analysis of what you are writing about. He also reiterated the importance of the titles of posts, as a way to draw new readers in when they quickly scan what is available.

Regardless of what I might think about the blog, the combination of Ades’ enthusiasm for it together with a willing readership clearly leads to a successful pairing.

Chapter 3 – Al Carlton of Coolest-Gadgets.com

The inclusion of Coolest-Gadgets.com marks a return to the blog focused on a particular area, in this case, reviewing the latest gadgets. Al mentions in the book that AdSense for the site is getting towards $20k a month which again suggests something is right.

Looking at the word distribution in the image, we can again see the focus on both “Coolest” and “Gadgets” with other major words looking to come reviews of the actual gadgets themselves.

This blog is different from the other two in that it takes its inspiration from external sources – namely the gadgets. While SEOBook is mainly concerned with the single concept of search engine optimisation, and AdesBlog is concerned with blogging about blogging, Coolest-Gadgets is more of a service blog. People go there for reviews and to see the latest crazes. As such it is in effect a news site that can get a constant stream of re-visitors to maintain momentum. On the other hand, the re-visit potential for SEOBook is lower since the field is much more niche – although as a result the potential per-visitor earnings are higher. AdesBlog probably has a higher re-visit potential than SEOBook, but the potential per-visitor earnings are much smaller as they are purely based on advertising revenue.

In some sense, Coolest-Gadgets treads that tricky ground between having something for everyone and being focused on a particular area. And it definitely treads that ground well. After all – everyone loves gadgets!

Unfortunately, I didn’t find a great deal in the interview itself other than a couple of interesting anecdotes. I think this is a case where the generic questions asked are the interview’s downfall. I would have been particularly interested to hear how Al gets to hear about and keeps up to date with all the latest gadgets, especially around Christmas when there is a huge supply of them to maintain awareness of.

Chapter 4 – Alex Papadimoulis of The Daily WTF

Alex’s The Daily WTF is one blog I actually read already, so am quite familiar with it. It simply showcases bad code examples typically together with a nice story tying it all together.

It is very much targeted at a niche audience – most of the world doesn’t care too much about ridiculously nested if statements and SQL injection. However, among that niche, there is considerable communication with each posting usually getting over a hundred comments.

The Daily WTF is also interesting in that its success is more a lucky accident than anything else. From its humble beginnings in Alex’s basement it has evolved over time, tapping into all programmers’ joy at being able to stare incredulously at someone else’s code and thank their lucky stars that it is not their own.

In his interview, Alex makes an interesting point about article titles. While all the previous interviewees very determined that titles were very important, Alex instead qualifies this by saying that the content is actually king, but in order to draw in readers, the titles can be important. While it is the title that grabs the reader, it is the content that keeps them there.

Again, the lack of follow-up questions in this interview is telling. In this case I am particularly interested when Alex says that developing policies is important for blogging. I admit I am not sure quite what he means by that. Perhaps he means policies on what to write about, or policies on what type of comments to censor, or policies on what sort of advertising to accept. Sadly, we will not find out (through this book at least). This answer in particular almost begs for a follow-up.

Looking at the image of word distribution, there isn’t actually a great deal to say in this case.

The words reflect the stories in the blog, which by their nature cover a great variety of tales, but which have few common themes. The third-person narrative is telling with the prominence given to both “Brandon” and “Sebastian”.

Chapter 5 – Andy Brice of Successful Software

Andy Brice’s Successful Software is another blog which I am familiar with having followed his progress with PerfectTablePlan over the years. Andy has always struck me as a pretty sharp chap, so it is quite suprising to see that in terms of monetary success, his blog is the least successful so far.

Andy himself says that he intends the blog to drive traffic towards his consultancy business but that he hasn’t the time spare to actually do any yet. As such the blog exists in a kind of limbo, where there are no adverts, and it doesn’t particularly encourage sales of his product (2 additional sales so far!). What it does provide is Andy with an online presence that allows his name to be more well-known which can be regarded as an investment in the future.

Perhaps associated with the lack of drivers for the blog, it does come across as a place where readers can gather around the feet of the sage developer and listen to his wise words. There are often investigative pieces, including his most popular post exposing the scam of software awards. These are always interesting and worth reading in my experience.

One thing that struck me about the interview with Andy is that he appears very keen that new bloggers find their own path. He mentions that blogging is too incestuous and also not to listen to people that got lucky once. Which sounds like good advice, and so, by his own definition, somewhat contradictory!

The distribution of words in the image map actually surprised me.

I think the fact that the words don’t really reflect the focus of the blog is that Worldle is only seeing the most recent posts. As a result, since the most recent post is about obtaining website feedback with Kampyle, the dominant words are “Kampyle” and “feedback”.

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