Successful Blogging Is 10% Blogging And 90% Marketing
Posted on August 30, 2007 by
Dee Barizo 
Blogging, Internet Marketing 
14 Comments
The title is a quote from John Chow’s post, If You Build It They Won’t Come. You may not agree with the percentages, but it’s hard to argue with someone who has close to 8000 RSS subscribers. You can have the best content in the world, but if you’re not marketing, how will anyone find your blog in the midst of the millions of blogs on the web?
John Chow admits,
There are tons of small blogs that can write better content than me.
However, because he focuses so much on marketing, he has a much more visitors than those small blogs. He writes,
Learning how to generate a buzz will get you a lot further than learning how to write a better blog post.
Here’s my theory. A blogger who posts twice a week and spends 4 hours a week marketing will have much more traffic than a blogger who posts 4 times a week and spends 2 hours a week marketing.
Check out this comment from John’s post:
One of the best things I did is cut my posting down a little bit and spend that extra time promoting and since then my RSS is up and traffic has increased five fold!
Marketing dictates how much targeted traffic you will get. And targeted traffic dictates how much money you will earn. And don’t think I’m saying, forget about content. High quality content is crucial to the long-term success of any site. However, you probably don’t need to create as much weekly content as you think. Quality over quantity. And then, market that quality content like crazy :)
Write less. Market more.
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Totally agree with the theory “posting twice a week and spending 4 hours a week marketing will have much more traffic than posting 4 times a week and spending 2 hours a week marketing.”
10-90 is a bit exaggerated, as you can’t exactly put up something from a lorem ipsum generator and expect to be successful. It gets the point accross however! Marketing is extremely important obvious, because it includes everything you do to attract visitors to your site, and the information you provide will determine whether or not the people you are able to attract will come back.
I think a 50-50 scenario is more realistic, but of course it doesn’t sound quite as sensational ;)
sensational titles = increased CTR
:)
Good points.
My main problem is I read several good, high traffic blogs, but I hardly ever comment…
Take the small amount of time it takes to comment on the posts you like. You’ll get targeted traffic :)
[...] last, but certainly not least. Dee Barizo tells us how Successful blogging is only 10% blogging, definitely one to read for the [...]
Are you based in the UK coz I am. Just thinking if you know any laws or who to contact to for an advise in making promotional prizes via online. Users doesnt have to pay anything though.
Sorry, I’m not from the UK.
Totally agree with you. I used to blog at blogger and recently shifted to wordpress and since then I have been totally concentrating on marketing as i already have good amount of quality posts…
but hey I wont give up writing quality content!!
;)
Good luck on your marketing! Keep us posted on the success of your marketing efforts.
I’m one of those people that likes to write articles, but gets lazy when it comes to advertising. =/ After reading this article, I’m going to force myself to advertise more! Maybe I won’t go to the extreme of 10/90 though.
Glad to help you market more. Good luck! Keep us posted on your marketing efforts.
[...] I just realized I’ve been making a rookie blogging mistake. About two week ago, I asked Adie (the owner of this blog) if I could post lower my posting schedule to 3-4 times a week instead of 7 times a week. I asked for this because I wanted to spend time marketing instead of just blogging. [...]
Dee,
Good (and common sense) ideas! Most people will flip the 10/90 approach. I know I’ve caught myself doing that before.