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When do you put your foot to the floor, in regards to a blog?

by fin
12 replies
Hey guys (and gals),

I've just got a question about the best time to start promoting your blog.

I know most people usually go for 10 articles on mini-niche sites. Mine's will be huge, eventually, and more of a personal blog rather than a mini-niche site. Don't know if that's different.

Anyway, 10 articles doesn't seem that much, before I start really trying to get the visitors. I want my blog to be the kind that someone looks at, then returns every week for the rest of their life.

I want to build it properly and I keep thinking people won't return if they just see the 10 articles - is this wrong?

Even if I do have 10 articles and start going for visitors, should I have all my sales funnels in place or will I add them slowly, as in reviews.

Is it a good idea to start with the standard opt-in form, and just add a new review, every time you add a certain amount of informational articles.

What about sites that could syndicate your articles...

Would they be put off by the fact your site is so new, therefore wasting the chance of getting your first 10-20 articles syndicated.

I'm guessing I should start with:

An opt-in gift (with Y amount of auto-responder messages)
Landing page
About Page
Legal Stuff
X amount of articles

Then start to drive visitors to the site, but what do you think X should be?

Also, I'm just going to add 2 quality articles per week, and spend most of my time promoting. Is this OK?

I have plans to start doing it full-time at the end of October and I'm not worrying about profits just now, but 10 months will give me the chance to build at least 80 high quality articles, probably hitting 100 with reviews and extra.

I'll go full steam ahead from then, but does this look like good preparation, or to little.

Cheers
fin
#blog #floor #foot #put
  • Profile picture of the author wfhblueprints
    Hi fin,

    Start the moment the blog is up.....

    Traffic is an accumulative thing and every little bit you do adds to it...

    Personally I post on my blog 6 days a week....which means I have fresh content everyday for my readers to come back to...

    I would get started as soon as it is up and has some content.

    Just remember to remind your newsletter subscribers whenever you post new content.

    Regards

    Chris
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    [$5 WSO] Attract a HUGE Amount of Traffic For Less Than $0.05/click
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    • Profile picture of the author GMD
      Banned
      I'm not so sure that the amount of blog entries is as important is the topic and what the blog is actually about.

      At the end of the day, quality articles don't matter if people, in general, just aren't interested in reading what you're writing about.

      So much -- if not everything -- has already been written about and is being written about.

      There's blogs on tech topics, losing weight, cooking everything to be found in xyz cookbook, adventures digging up graves, and on-and-on it goes!

      The big question you have to ask yourself is: what am I writing about, how am I going to present it differently than anybody/everybody else in the entire world, and are people going to stop (and come back) to read it?

      If you can get that going, ONE article would be enough. People would come back for more anticipating new entries. If you don't have that going on, you could put 100 articles in there and strike out totally.

      What people don't understand today is that people spend only so much time online. The war we are in is getting people to spend some of their limited amount of time on our little pieces of cyber real estate.

      ...you have to make the argument that your blog is worth spending some time on to make it successful.
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      • Profile picture of the author fin
        Originally Posted by GMD View Post

        I'm not so sure that the amount of blog entries is as important is the topic and what the blog is actually about.

        At the end of the day, quality articles don't matter if people, in general, just aren't interested in reading what you're writing about.


        The big question you have to ask yourself is: what am I writing about, how am I going to present it differently than anybody/everybody else in the entire world, and are people going to stop (and come back) to read it?
        When I read a quality article or two, I will always think of that blog of quality, and always go back to it.

        Yeah, I'll present it differently from others - my own views.

        Letting them know when new articles are posted is a good idea. Just got to get them signed up.
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    • Profile picture of the author fin
      Originally Posted by wfhblueprints View Post

      Hi fin,

      Start the moment the blog is up.....

      Traffic is an accumulative thing and every little bit you do adds to it...

      Personally I post on my blog 6 days a week....which means I have fresh content everyday for my readers to come back to...

      I would get started as soon as it is up and has some content.

      Just remember to remind your newsletter subscribers whenever you post new content.

      Regards

      Chris
      I don't think I could post that many articles per week, not while working full-time + marketing the blog.
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      • Profile picture of the author wfhblueprints
        Originally Posted by fin View Post

        I don't think I could post that many articles per week, not while working full-time + marketing the blog.
        Fin,

        If you are determined enough you can.....

        Sit down one weekend and write the updates for the entire week.

        That means you can just update the site during the day.

        Regards

        Chris
        Signature
        [$5 WSO] Attract a HUGE Amount of Traffic For Less Than $0.05/click
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        • Profile picture of the author JohnMcCabe
          Fin, I'm going to propose a slight change in perspective. Rather than looking at when you should start promoting your blog as a whole, look at the individual articles. When you post one that you think is worthy, work on getting eyeballs on that. Then do it again. And again. And...

          Just make sure your opt-in is prominently visible.

          As for syndicating your articles, I can only answer for myself. If your content is of sufficient quality and it fits what I'm looking for, I don't really care how many other articles you have on your blog. Good content is good content.
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          • Profile picture of the author fin
            Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe View Post

            Fin, I'm going to propose a slight change in perspective. Rather than looking at when you should start promoting your blog as a whole, look at the individual articles. When you post one that you think is worthy, work on getting eyeballs on that. Then do it again. And again. And...
            That's a nice idea...

            It makes it a lot easier to handle, breaking it down into smaller pieces.
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  • Profile picture of the author kret0s
    Try to be consistent with fresh content.. and post on a regular basis...

    This is better than doing 10 articles at once and just leaving the site
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  • Profile picture of the author sriram rajan
    consistency as you mentioned is a good thing, but mix it up with differnet forms of content , you can have pdf giveaways , videos in addition to routine blog content as that will keep your visitors more interested ...also getting case studies , interviews etc will add more value and can get more traffic by word of mouth too if you encourage your readers to help take your blog viral
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  • Profile picture of the author peptone
    I think that the answer depends on what your goals for the Blog are.

    For example, if you want good SEO then the more articles the better. A new one each day would be great. Create backlinks to the articles and also link your articles together. If you don't have a lot of time for that, at the moment, maybe you can create the articles on a Saturday and then drip feed them in during the week. There's software that can do the dripfeeding.

    As you intend to drive traffic to a Squeeze Page, and build a list, then you could start driving traffic straight away and email your list when you post new articles. After they optin to your free gift and before going to the download page you could offer them an OTO that is such good value that some will buy it. This creates good will with your list but also funds the cost of buying traffic, which you may want to do until you get a good google ranking.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by fin View Post

    I'm guessing I should start with:

    An opt-in gift (with Y amount of auto-responder messages)
    Landing page
    About Page
    Legal Stuff
    X amount of articles
    Sounds about right.

    Originally Posted by fin View Post

    Then start to drive visitors to the site, but what do you think X should be?
    It doesn't matter, much. Maybe 3? (I think I normally have 3 or 4, to start. I'm not convinced they're necessary, actually).

    I agree with what John McCabe said above, of course.

    Originally Posted by fin View Post

    Also, I'm just going to add 2 quality articles per week, and spend most of my time promoting. Is this OK?
    Yes, absolutely fine.

    None of my niche sites gets as many as 2 articles per week. If they're lucky, they get one every 9/10 days, something like that. I have 8 of them and write about 25 articles per month in total.

    Originally Posted by fin View Post

    I have plans to start doing it full-time at the end of October and I'm not worrying about profits just now, but 10 months will give me the chance to build at least 80 high quality articles, probably hitting 100 with reviews and extra.
    You don't need anything like as many as 80 articles. It matters what you do with them and who syndicates them and how many people you get reading them, not how many of them there are.

    Granted, it's good to add a little, now and again. And you need to send out autoresponder messages anyway, and can re-use some of the "article work" toward those too, of course. I'm certainly not suggesting you should put up a site with 4/5 articles and never add anything to it at all, but you really don't need 80 articles!

    I would aim at perhaps 15, instead, over that time-period, and use all the time the extra 65 would have taken in having the 15 articles syndicated in front of as many suitable audiences as you can and thereby attracting targeted traffic. That's what builds businesses.

    Originally Posted by fin View Post

    I keep thinking people won't return if they just see the 10 articles - is this wrong?
    I think so, yes.

    You need them to opt in. Once they opt in, they return, because you can (if you want) put a link to your site in every email you send them. (Not a bad thing to do, either - because it gets them used to clicking your links and expecting and finding something valuable/interesting. This greatly increases the click-through rate from the emails in which you send them a specific promotion).
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  • Profile picture of the author udeyjohnson
    I'd start right now if I were you.
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    When in doubt - simplify.
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