Every successful blogger has a secret and they’re not telling you what it is.
That’s right. Every blogger that finds relative success does something that contributes to his or her success. This one secret is perhaps the biggest reason for a successful blog.
However you define blogging success whether it’s a million visits per day or 5 leads per week or even simply 5 comments per post there is a secret for achieving the goal.
The best bloggers in the world are stubborn.
That’s it. Name your favorite bloggers. Go ahead, leave a comment naming your favorite blogger and I bet I can prove to you that you’re looking at a stubborn person in their professional and perhaps even personal life.
Stubborn Story #1: Problogger
Perhaps the most well-known blog about blogging is Problogger. Darren Rowse started the blog back in 2004. I believe he was blogging a couple years prior to that. He was a pioneer in the space. In fact, Darren also started Digital Photography School around the same time. I think Problogger started out more as a diary of blogging experience with DPS.
Anyway, if you look at Darren today or even over the last 2-3 years it would be easy to assume he’s always been successful. That assumption would be extremely far from the truth.
In multiple posts Darren talks about the early days of his blog. He had a regular job and the deal with his wife was that if he made $3,000/mo or something like that he could quit and blog full-time.
If I remember correctly that took about two years.
Now, depending how you look at things that could be a long time or a short time. I would be in the former simply because when we look at successful people we tend to assume they were overnight sensations. They had it all figured out from Day 1.
Darren turned his blogs into some of the most successful businesses in the small business world. He does advertising, affiliates, but of late he’s been focusing mostly on creating his own instructional content to sell as e-material.
Darren seems like a great guy, but I’m sure there’s a little stubbornness in there.
Stubborn Story #2: Neil Patel
Neil Patel’s first job was selling expensive vacuums door-to-door.
That job alone at a young age would be enough to send most people home crying to their moms. Seriously, I can’t think of anything worse than knocking on doors trying to sell vacuums. I have no idea who would buy them. There certainly have to be different things to sell.
For some reason Neil kept on working. He had it in his mind that he was right about being in business. He went on to found a successful SEO consulting firm and today he is the proud co-founder of Crazy Egg and KISSmetrics.
There have been failures along the way and a few successes. Perhaps that’s another secret. Simply try to get more wins in the end compared to the losses you’ve suffered over the years.
Everybody loses. Some will hate the feeling and will try to avoid it at all costs.
Successful people really don’t care how they’re perceived by others. They have no shame. They’ll fall flat on their face selling vacuums only to pick themselves up and keep trying until something works.
Oh by the way, Neil actually decided in those early days to vacuum people’s houses for a fee instead of trying to sell them vacuums. He was a success with those vacuums after all.
Stubborn Story #3: Dayne Shuda
Finally, here is my own story.
Back in 2007 I had the grand idea to create the “MySpace for Hunters”. My hometown paper even wrote an article about it. I wish the article was online so I could provide a link, but I can’t find it.
Also, MySpace was bigger than Facebook at that point I believe. That’s right, just five years ago MySpace was the king. Today, Facebook is the king, but you never know who will be tomorrow. That seems to be how social media works and throughout all of it blogging has been the biggest source of content, but let me get back on track.
HunterShare was a complete failure. I lost a ton of money and had no idea what I was doing.
Thinking back on that time I can’t really even say there was a thought about quitting. I wanted to have my own business one day and I was sure it would happen. It might not be HunterShare. In fact, that site closed down within a year, but not before I shelled out a thousands more for a new version of the website that never launched.
Eventually I stumbled on the blogging world and about four years later here I am working on Ghost Blog Writers.
The company is growing. We have a handful of writers on staff now working as freelancers on their own time for our clients. We’re getting new leads each week and signing up new customers.
Looking back on the many failures along the way I can only think back to a characteristic that’s always been referenced on both sides of my family. In Wisconsin we call it be bullheaded, but you can just call it being stubborn.
That trait has allowed me to create a business and a country music site (Country Music Life) that visited by tens of thousands of people each day.
Stubbornness is the biggest secret of not only successful bloggers, but successful people in general. I can think of more examples in my personal and professional life. Stubborn people simply won’t allow themselves to lose in the end.
It’s like in football. The greatest players and coaches never really feel like they lose a game. They simply run out of time.
And that’s what we’re all fighting – time.
You need to keep trying until you run out of time.
The title of this post was inspired by World’s Simplest Management Secret.