Everyone starts out as small bloggers and over time eventually some of us reach the greener pasture and become a bigger blog. By saying big blog, what I mean is that the blog gets more readers than ever and obviously starts making more money. Not a lot of bloggers get into this stage and to be honest, I still think that this blog far from that.
Anyways in this post I just like to enumerate different things and signs that obviously make a blog bigger than ever.
1. Humongous number of comments
It all starts with this. I was reading shoemoney’s blog ever since not a lot of people are reading it yet. And when he started becoming popular, the number of comments per posts has started rising crazily. And long story short, Shoemoney’s blog is now one of the most popular blog in the weight loss internet marketing niche.
Of course this does not apply to all. Long time ago, I made a post about whether comments justify the success of a blog and in that writeup I revealed that anyone can really get 50ish comments per post, but that doesn’t make them established at all.
2. Increased number of ads
This is very logical. When a blog starts out with so many white space in its layout and all of a sudden looks like a Nascar, you know its just trying to make the most of its traffic. Again this does not mean any blog that looks like Nascar is a big blog, but its at least an indication that the blogger who owns it is trying to make the most out of the opportunity. 😉
3. The blog starts out churning out multiple articles per day
Heheh. This is so true. Look at problogger, look at JohnChow, these guys are posting 3-4 posts per day and the reason is sound, it is to maximize their exposure for their writing. Another more recent example is Hesham of FamousBloggers.com
If you get over thousand hits per day and 80% of them expect that you will post a couple more post before the day ends, how many repeat traffic could that possibly bring? 😉
4. When one can already confidently sell their own product or membership program
Most bloggers/marketers fail in selling info products and membership sites fora simple reason, they do it even before they establish a presence.
Now when a blogger can confidently sell something to its readerbase, then most of the time it means that he is getting enough traffic and enough publicity to be able to see his/her stuff to other people. That’s another sign.
5. When one tweets for 20+ times a day
Another thing related to getting bigger as a blogger is an increased popularity in social sites like Twitter, Facebook, or whatever it is. So naturally when you have already 10,000 (real) followers, you don’t want to waste that. Instead you want to make the most of it by either pointing them to your blog frequently or pushing affiliate products.
6. When a blog gets featured occasionally
This is pretty obvious. When someone makes mention of your blog even if its just a small mention, then it means you’re not just an ordinary blogger (lols).
A lot of mid to big bloggers occasionally do roundups of blogs that provide value to readers and when your blog gets mentioned in there, it means a lot.
7. Getting Interviewed
This is related to no.6. If you started getting those interview requests, then it means you’re slowly carving out your name in the blogosphere. Although like other reasons mentioned in this post, getting interviewed doesn’t directly mean you’re famous. There are a lot of bloggers who interview random people on a daily basis which I obviously find lame.
8. Making redesigns
Not really spoiling Problogger’s new design eh. 😉 Ok so its noticeable that once a blog gets big enough and come to the point that the theme can no longer handle whatever it has, bloggers will make that redesigns.
It’s always part of the reason. Most bloggers who start getting traffic decide to do other things like starting a newsletter or publishing more posts and in that case, making redesigns is almost always part of the equation.
9. Starts getting negative publicity
This is of course the bad side of becoming more popular. When your blog eventually gets bigger, you will start receiving troll/hate comments and messages from people who are wasting their time. You will also start getting into these controversies obviously created by other people who are looking to ride into your momentum upwards.
Its important to understand its normal. People love hating other people and they can never be contented with everything that they do. Negative publicity is still publicity after all.
10. Lesser activity in the blogopshere
This is sad yet true. When bloggers like Yaro Starak, Darren Rowse, David Risley and etc. are just small bloggers who own small blogs back then, you can almost always see them participating in forums, commenting on other blogs, replying to their readers frequently and just being active overall in the entire blogging scene.
Unfortunately as they started getting bigger, they realized its more worthy to start putting efforts on other things than interaction. Is it a bad thing? Definitively no because that is really how the process works. Hence, its a sign the blogger is getting bigger.
So you have any other ideas in mind? 😉