Follow a few simple rules to ensure your blog gets the readership it deserves
I love blogging. The idea that anyone with a cheap computer and a $20-a-month Internet connection can publish words, pictures, videos, and audio to a potential audience of a billion people never fails to excites me. This kind of media broadcasting power would have cost millions of dollars just a decade or two ago. I wrote an article about blogging for a business magazine called the Industry Standard and fell in love with this form of self-publishing. (The Standard killed the article because the editors thought blogs were a passing fad! The Earth Review ended up publishing the article in its Winter 2000 edition. You can read it here: (kk.org/tools/page52-54.pdf.)
With over half a decade of blogging under my belt, I’ve learned a lot about publishing a successful blog. Today, Boing Boing is the most popular English-language blog in the world, according to the blog-ranking service Technorati (technorati.com). It’s won Webby awards and Bloggy awards for several years running, and has over one million daily readers (including people who subscribe to it via RSS). I edit Boing Boing with three friends: Cory Doctorow (a science fiction author) and Xeni Jardin (a freelance journalist and regular technology contributor to National Public Radio). Boing Boing’s business manager, John Battelle, was the founder and publisher of The Industry Standard-oh, the irony! In all Fairness, though, John didn’t deal with editorial content for the magazine and had no idea I’d written the article. Today, Boing Boing has turned into a profitable business, thanks to advertising revenue.
Through all of this, I’ve thought about what it is that has mad e Boing Boing (and other blogs) successful and interesting. Here are some tips that should come in handy:
1. Write about what you’re interested in. The cardinal rule of blogging is to write about the things that fascinate you. It may sound obvious, but I’m surprised at the number of people who post things just because they think they will attract more readers to their site. Nothing is further from the truth. if you aren’t passionate about the thing you’re writing about, readers will quickly become bored and never return. If you happen to love collecting vintage guitar-string envelopes, then by all means start a blog about it. I promise you that the other thousand people around the world who share interests will find you and become loyal readers. In short, create the kind of blog that you would like to read yourself.
2. Don’t worry about being the first person to post something. Some bloggers think it’s crucial to be the first to blog a story. Casing after scoops is foolish. With literally millions of blogs out there, and thousands of new ones appearing every day, it’s unlikely you’ll be the first one in the blogosphere to cover a news event. Instead, focus on finding things that interest you (rule#1, again) and adding your unique perspective. And re-member, if a piece of new to a lot other people as well.
3. limit the number of links you have in an entry. On Boing boing, we usually try to include just one link per entry, and place it at the bottom of the entry. That’s because each entry should be about one idea, not a bunch of scattered thoughts with links going in all different directions across the Web. there are exception to this rule, of course, and sometimes you really do need to have two or more links in an entry for comparison purpose, but the “one –entry/one link” restriction is a good starting point.
4. Write at least one entry every day (weekends excepted). Think of your readers as laboratory animals in an experimental cage that’s equipped with a bunch of levers. The leavers are blogs. If the lever you control dispenses a tasty morsel each time it’s pushed, the animals’ effort, the animals will stop pressing your lever and look for a more reliable source of nutrition. That’s why it’s good to post at least one blog entry a day, because people will get used to the idea that your blog will deliver a treat each time they visit.
5. Use pictures. If you own the rights (or have the permission from the rights holder) to a photo or illustration that pertains to the subject you’re writing about, by all means use it. Images are the quickest way for people to determine whether or not a blog entry is worth the time to read. I always include the cover of any book, DVD, CD, or comic book I’m reviewing because it makes the blog page look more interesting. (I don’t worry about securing permission to use them in these cases, because I feel confident that my use of them in a critical review constitutes “fair use”). A few good places to find photos that you can see for free are Open Photo (openphoto.net), Flickr (flickr.com/creativecommons), and Creative Commons (search.creativecommons.org).
Another option is paying to use photos on your blog. iStockphoto (istockphoto.com) is a royalty-free stock photograph community where you can buy the rights to use over a million images on your blog for as little as $1 each and videos for $5 and up. The quality of most photos is excellent, and I guarantee that if you use images that illustrate you writing in a creative and appropriate way, it will make you blog more successful. (If you’re a photographer or illustrator, you can upload your work to iStockphoto and collect royalties when other people use your images.)
6. Include a way for people to suggest links for you to write about. Boing Boing has a “Suggest a Link” from to let readers send us ideas for things to write about and link to. Web get lots of good leads from, you can either install a Formmail script (like the one here: nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/scripts.shtml), which requires some technical know-how, or you can use a form service like Formmail. to (which charges $1 a month) to handle everything for you. Of course, you can also include your email address on your site (or use a Gmail address especially for handling link suggestions), but if you go that route, you should “mask” the address from email-harvesting software used by spammers (see page 363 to learn how to foil email-harvesters).
7. Credit your sources. When someone tells you about an interesting link, or you write about something you discovered while reading another blog, credit that source by providing a link to it. Your source will appreciate it, and will repay you in kind the next time they blog something they came across on your blog.
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