If you write daily, regularly check your stats, and do search engine optimization work seriously, are you a problogger now? No. Of course not.
If you have a premium theme along with the great plug-ins (even if they’re paid), the professional logos and all the stunning design works, then, are you a problogger now? No. Maybe not yet.
What about if you have your own ebook, a decent newsletter subscription, a long contact list of friends (A-lists too), and a lot of following in all those social media sites, well now, are you a problogger? Probably. But I’d still say no.
So what’s the point of all of these? How do you really become a problogger?
I used to think there are checklists
Back then, whenever I hear the term ‘problogger’, I think of metrics and visible gauges. Like a letter ‘K’ in the feedburner chicklet for example, or even something as shallow as the average number of comments each posts are receiving. I sometimes even judge by the looks of the theme (you can’t blame me, I started blogging back in a time when John Chow heavily promoted custom themes made by Unique Blog Designs).
I even went as far as actually trying to figure out all the things in the supposedly ‘problogger’ checklist. I know… I was that determined. But the thing is, I never figure out the exact formula.
Now I know why, there’s none
Yes. You heard that heard. There’s no formula in being a problogger (at least that’s my opinion). Sometimes, it’s not about how regular you post (like Maki of Dosh Dosh), or how elaborate your blog theme is (Seth Godin surely wouldn’t really care), or how large your newsletter list (Darren started one just recently) or even how good you are in the SERPs results (John Chow was punished by Google for a year remeber?).
If you want to be a problogger, wake up, there’s no magic formula. You could have the most normal looking theme, or the most inconsistent posting frequency and it wouldn’t matter.
It just all boils down to one thing – make a bang
What is a bang?
Probloggers are probloggers because they know how to put themselves in the center of an explosive mayhem. It’s not about blending it and getting along with the crowd, it’s about standing out and making the crowd follow you.
A bang creates a point of reference
Let’s be honest. Being a founder of a blog is never enough. It’s about being the person behind something big that could leverage your blog. It could be an absurdly great product (for example, Robb’s Ramped Reviews eBook did place him in thousands of people’s radar) or coaching program (like Yaro’s Blog Mastermind), it might even be a one-of-a-kind free report (remember Authority Rules by Brian Clark?).
If blogging examples are not enough, how about listening to one of Einstein’s Laws of Motion…
“Every action creates an equal and opposite reaction…”
The bottomline of this post is simple – if you want to make it big, do something big. Make a bang.
Bio: Liane is 17, and she founded Better Blogging For Bloggers and Twarks Twitter Designs. She spends her free time reading books, watching any kind of movie except Japanese horror films (seriously scary!), goofing around with her Photoshop and beating guys in badminton. Oh, let’s not forget blogging too (it’s highly addictive).
Liane also created a really cool poster for bloggers titled “70 Ideas for Your Next 70 Posts”. You can check it out by clicking here.
Image by Garp B
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