Ev BogueYou're probably not going to read this post all the way through, because you have a hard time focusing your attention over the course of 2,400+ words.
That's too bad, because contained within are time-proven secrets of blogging success.
The final secret of blogging success is hidden carefully within all of the reasons. You'll probably miss it if you don't read every word.
So pay attention. If you can't right now, you'd best just stop reading and come back later when you can focus.
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This scene is so very familiar:
You're just about to push the publish button on just another blog post. It's good, but not brilliant. It's solid, but not mind-blowing. It's "epic" but not deep. It's noise, but you think it might have the potential to be signal.
...and you push publish anyway.
2 Retweets. 0 trackbacks. Oh if only you had so many comments that you had to turn them off.
Sadness, for you.
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We never stopped to ask the question why.
Why does your blog deserve to exist?
You see, it's a big world out there. It's filled with terrible blogs that no one reads. Why does your blog deserve to be read, when someone else's goes unheard of.
Why should I choose, out of the billions of other channels out there, to waste my time on your blog?
The thing is, yours probably doesn't deserve my time. In fact, no one cares. Why? Because you don't have the guts to create an amazing blog that actually matters.
Now, your mind is probably racing right about now. You're having heart palpetations. Why has this blog post so deeply unsettled you, and yet promised so much.
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The reason is because we all need to ask ourselves regularly why we deserve to be out here on the Net.
Why do we have the right to ask for someone else's attention?
The answer is: I'm not sure. Why? Because I've asked the question constantly of myself.
Why do I deserve to exist here?
I recently killed my blog, Far Beyond The Stars, which over the last year I grew from zero to 8,700 subscribers while creating a stable location independent income for myself as I traveled wherever I wanted to.
Now, I'm plowing through the creation of post-mortem on how FBTS was so successful.
The question I've been asking myself is this:
Why did I deserve to build one of the fastest growing lifestyle blogs in 2010?
I think it comes back to asking why the blog deserved to exist to begin with. I asked: what am I contributing here?
The truth is, I failed more times than one during the last year.
I exaggerated headlines. I made shit up. I sometimes grew complacent in the writing. I pretended like my life was more awesome than it was. I even let other peoples opinions of my work, especially close relationships, decide how much of myself I would put into my work.
Sometimes I even let my work plateau, because I wanted to be safe, and because I was making too much money -- I knew that a topic would be successful, so I just re-hashed it over and over again, despite the fact that it no longer challenged my own personal edge.
I committed more than a few of the offenses below. The difference between my blog and yours is that I (hopefully) learned from a few of them. That's why you're still reading this -- because for some reason after a year of blogging my work is still standing out above the noise.
Is anyone reading yours?
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Didn't you click into this blog post because you wanted to read 27 simple reasons? Well, here you are now. Read away.
Maybe your blog won't suck so much by the time you get to the end of this post.
Here are 27 reasons why your blog doesn't deserve to exist:
1. Because your life is boring.
A boring life does not an A-list blog make.
In order to create a successful blog, you need to also architect a life that other people want to pay attention to. By "pay attention", I mean by subscribing to a paid newsletter, perhaps by buying your e-book, or hiring you to do consulting.
Maybe you'll even get paid to hold someone's hand, and tell them that it'll all be okay. They too can create a blog that doesn't suck so much.
All you need to do is a few things that most people don't do. It's that easy, but you somehow missed it. Far Beyond The Stars was successful because I threw away all of my stuff, and I designed a location independent lifestyle. Yes, I could have failed, but I would have actually learned something about something if I had.
If you live a boring life, no one cares. Sorry.
2. Because you're a terrible writer.
Nothing will save your blog if readers click into it and they can't tell what the frak you're talking about.
The truth is that there aren't that many brilliant writers in the world, and you're not going to be one if you don't take the time to write every single day.
In fact, most of the greatest bloggers I know don't make themselves write every day. They HAVE to write every day. When I wake in the morning, I jump out of bed (after pulling a hot girl off of me) and say "oh my god, I need to write this down."
This happened to me this morning too. It's why you're reading about why I think you're a terrible writer.
Thankfully, there is a solution: write until you've written something worth reading, then write more.
3. Because you don't have balls.
Guess what, there are 1,971+ million people on the Internet.
Someone is going to hate what you're saying in that mix. You're going to get a lot of emails saying "why would you EVER do that amazing thing that I don't have the balls to do?"
People will even start parody sites that point out everything you're doing wrong with your blog on a bi-weekly basis. Why? Because some people don't have the balls to start their own successful blogs.
I think J. said it best:
"Sometimes, I like to think about all the people who almost made the right decision. They got to the edge and then just... stopped. These are the almost-Steve-Jobs, the almost-Vivienne-Westwoods, and the almost-MLKs. They all had very good reasons. There are millions of them, and you know none of their names."
J.'s post above is an example something could have written that would get you laid and make your business $100,000 extra per year, but you didn't.
Instead, you're trying to make all 1,971+ million people (including your mom) on the Internet happy, aren't you?
4. Your blog looks like crap.
Do you know what the #1 reason for people to click away from your site less than a half a second after they clicked in? Your crappy stock art photography and your terrible template.
Before I was a professional blogger, I photo edited New York Magazine's blog network every single day for three years. In that time, I color corrected a lot of really crappy photos into something presentable for the web.
The truth is, if your template sucks, if your photos suck, if your photo of yourself sucks, you will get what's called a "bounce" in blogging vocabulary.
Go read A List Apart until you know something about making a website look decent.
5. You didn't put a photo of your face on your blog.
The first thing we need to see of you, anywhere you are on the Internet, is your face. We're humans, we want to read humans (and make out with humans.) If you hide yourself behind your hand, or someone else's kitten, we don't care.
Take a photo of yourself and put that as the first thing people will see on your blog.
6. You read A-List blogs that have been around forever.
Blogs with 171k readers were built during the age when everyone on the Internet used Digg.
A couple of people got really lucky one day, and three-bazillion people ended up on their site. These bloggers then kindly asked all those readers to sign up for Google Reader and subscribe to their blog. These people didn't know any better, because they were dumb Digg users, so they did. Now, a couple of blogs have huge subscriber counts for the last five years.
...and for some reason you believe that people actually read them.
These bloggers don't know how to teach you how to blog, because they just got lucky once upon a time. Now they're haz-been-cheezeburgers waiting for the next Internet to come and kill off their blogs once and for all.
7. You aren't being yourself.
Every full-time blogger who I've met this year is freakin' weird.
You know what? We actually want you to let your weirdness out on the Internet. The weird ones really stand out above the crowd. Unsuccessful bloggers are all pretending to be normal.
Let's replace the work weird with awesome, and you'll see why it's necessary.
You see, most people are trying to be so fucking safe with their lives that awesome just grabs them by the face and pulls them into their iPads.
Don't pretend to be a watered down business coach when you're awesomely weird in real life. People want to be strange. Why do you think you're reading this now? Because I paint my finger nails. I don't own things. I'm not afraid to tell you that you don't have balls.
Sometimes I will walk away from people who are talking about the latest thing they saw on TV whilst picking my nose.
8. Because you've given up, had two kids, bought a house in the suburbs that you couldn't afford and then filled it with stuff that you thought would make you happy. Minivan, muddy soccer shoes, gatorade, McDonalds, etc.
Enough said.
9. You aren't willing to write a strong captivating headline.
Most people only click into your blog because of the headline. Whatever platform they're browsing from, whether it's Twitter or Flipboard, the biggest thing they'll see is your headline.
If your headline is this: "self-indulgent nonsense about something" They will skip right over it.
Instead, you need to learn how to write a headline like you worked on Madison Avenue in the 1960s.
10. You're self-depreciating.
"Whaaaa I'm a terrible blogger who lives in the midwest. No one reads me."
Who cares. I don't. Go blog in obscurity then.
11. You're half-assing your mission.
There are 534,234,543 blogs about minimalism. Most of them are half-assing their mission. You can't be a minimalist blogging success if you're living the lifestyle described in reason #8. Likewise, anything more than 47 things at this point is kind of an absurd amount of stuff to live with.
The truth is that you're going to have to live a pretty extraordinary lifestyle if you're going to stand out above the noise. How are you going to do that? By doing something different, and doing it with a full heart.
12. You don't know how to use the Internet.
The Internet is a series of tubes. No, wait. There Internet is a series of HYPERLINKs. We've forgotten in the age of Facebook that in order for a blog to sustain itself, it needs to drive traffic in the way that the Internet was originally built. Facebook won't be around forever, your Facebook friends also won't buy your e-book.
In order to create a successful blog, you'll need to...
Oh wait. I can't tell you everything -- not yet anyway. Why? Because there's one final element that you forgot about.
It's the reason that you're still stuck at home in Indiana while we're out exploring our worlds.
It's so simple that it's almost silly...
13. You don't charge money for your best work.
You'll never earn money on the Internet if you aren't willing to ask for it. It doesn't matter if you are living an amazing life, are a brilliant writer who has balls, with a beautiful blog with a beautiful face, who experimented instead of just listening to old farts with large subscriber counts, who lives all over the world while writing headlines that we can't stop clicking.
If you can't ask for money at some point, you're never going to make money from your blog.
This is the #1 reason why Far Beyond The Stars grew into a 8,700 subscriber blog: I didn't give away my best work.
Instead, I saved it for an exclusive group of intuitive and intelligent readers who were willing to pay a little extra for the knowledge that would put them ahead of everyone else in the game.
So you think your blog deserves to exist? Really?
Prove it.
Because we all need to remember reason #15 why your blog doesn't deserve to exist: because you're unwilling to pay for quality education.
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I'm not going to apologize to you for hurting your feelings.