By jdroth
I have a friend who is starting a niche personal finance blog. He’s very interested in the subject, and knowledgeable, and I think he could make it an interesting site.
When the idea first came to him a few months ago, he approached me. “How do I make this a successful blog?” he asked.
“Post lots of good content,” I told him.
“Yeah,” he said. “But what else?”
“There is no ‘what else’,” I said. Actually, I ranted and raved about how too many people focus on things that aren’t important and don’t bother to spend time on the content, but essentially it all amounted to “there is no ‘what else’”.
My friend went away for a few weeks to work on his site. When I talked to him again he told me, “I’ve switched from WordPress to Drupal. Do you think that’ll make a difference?”
“It’ll make no difference at all,” I said. “Readers don’t care what weblog tool you use. All they care about is the content.”
“Yeah, but Drupal offers so many more features,” he said. I just shook my head.
About a month ago, he launched his site. He posted an introductory article. “Looks good,” I said.
“Can you point people to the site?” he asked.
“Not yet,” I said. “You don’t have any content.”
Meanwhile he put up some Google ads and some Amazon ads. He posted a single link to another article at a big news site. I talked to him a couple weeks later. “Nobody’s coming to my site,” he told me. “Not a single person has clicked on an ad.”
“That’s because there’s nothing there,” I told him.
“What do you mean?” he said. “I spent a lot of time creating the layout and putting up the ads.”
“You need to focus on content,” I told him.
So he wrote another article. It was moderately interesting, but it was all in one h-u-g-e paragraph. That was on February 21st. There’s been nothing new posted to the site since then. The site layout has changed a half-dozen times, though, as my friend looks to make it as pretty as possible.
He IMed me last night. “Nobody’s coming to the site,” he said.
“It needs content,” I told him.
“I don’t have time,” he said. “I’m so busy.” I pointed out that he wasn’t too busy to party with friends. He wasn’t too busy to play soccer. He wasn’t too busy to tinker with the layout. These are all fine things, but none of them have anything to do with getting readers. “Can’t you point people to my site?” he asked.
“Maybe in a couple months,” I said. “Maybe once you have some content.”
This concept has been beat into the ground a thousand times before, but it’s the single most important factor in creating a successful weblog: To gain readers, you must publish quality content on a regular basis. Sure, readers like a pretty site. Sure, it would be nice if there were ads for them to click on. But all of this is secondary. All that really matters is the content.
That, my friends, is all that you ever need to know about blogging.
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I’m so with you (and your friend for that mater). I wrote a guest post for Jon’s art of money blog on this topic (I play the friend who’s addicted to setting up his blog). It should be up on Monday. I’ll try to to remember to come back and leave the link.
I agree wholeheartedly. Content is king. Some of the most successful blogs I read (and by “successful” I’m not necessarily talking about money, but that too) have basic designs that come packaged with blog software, but all have one thing in common: the content is in a class above the rest.
Couldn’t be more right!
The way I’ve gone about launching my blog since beginning of this year is to divide my time spent on the blog in creating content, and fine tuning the layout at the same time.
For every article I wrote, I worked a little on optimizing the layout, applying many tips from the likes of Daily Blog Tips blogs.
Here’s the link I eluded to in the first comment now that it’s out:
http://www.artofmoney.org/internet-business/the-5-minute-wordpress-install/
About 5 months ago, I was exactly like your friend JD. :) and didn’t believe anyone who told me about content. Things eventually changed (fortunately).
I guess it’s a new-blogger-trap….everyone falls into it but, only some get out of it.
Probably, eventually he will realize that he needs to change his attitude and will mend his ways. That’s probably too much optimism for someone who is ignoring blogging advice from the man behind Get Rich Slowly.
Doesn’t layout count for a little :)? It is “fun” to tweak and play with the tools. I recently started a blog after years of reading personal finance blogs. What I didn’t realize was all the neat tools, add-ons, etc that can take up time and distract from the reason people are interested in a blog. Thanks for the article and the advice!
I fully agree with the importance of good content. However, promoting the site is also extremely important. Many good blogs with great content are languishing out there because nobody knows where to find them.
I would say that in the initial stages of a blog time should be divided 60% to create new content and 40% to promote it. Promoting it includes some SEO, networking and basic use of the most popular social bookmarking sites (I’ve found Stumbleupon very effective in driving targeted traffic).
Let’s also not underestimate the importance of a good layout. Information can be found in so many places these days, that those who now how to present it better (better “packaging”) and have a more clear, usable site, will get more readers.
In your example, your friend clearly had his priorities upside down. Generally, it is better to build your site and your readership before thinking of making money off it.