Well, its really not! 🙂 But blogging has changed a lot over the past 10 years that a lot of bloggers were left (in the dust) because they’re still doing blogging the same way they’re doing it 5-10 years ago. I gotta admit that I sort of consider myself one of those who have not been doing what I’m supposed to be doing different than what I was doing before.
A couple of days ago, I read a post from one of my favorite blogs entitled ‘The Future of Blogging‘. Now I know you’re probably thinking that this is one of those cheesy posts where the author just puts something together about how blogging will still change the world, whatever, but trust me its not. The post is the longest post I’ve read in a while, and more importantly it tackles the reality of blogging and where its really heading in the future. Here’s a pretty long excerpt:
This is an important blog post, because it makes a prediction. A prediction about the future of blogging; a platform actively used by over 181 million people (Nielsen data for October 2011). Not only will you learn why I think most blogging advice is dated and ineffective, but I’ll also reveal where I believe this entire industry is heading, so you can stay ahead of the competition.
This is not only an important post, but also the longest I have ever written. It’s more like a mini-eBook, without the price tag. Don’t let its lack of cost make you doubt the value here though. I will at least sell you on what you’re about to learn:
- A weird tip I personally received from Google’s Matt Cutts which increased my ViperChill search rankings
- What Gawker does once per week to double their traffic figures. That’s going from two million to four million uniques per day
- Why the Daily Mail recently surpassed the New York Times as the number #1 newspaper website in the world
- How Mashable crushed TechCrunch on traffic numbers (even though they used to be the underdog)
- Why the successful ‘make money online’ blogs of the past have now faded into obscurity
- The number one reason Leo Babauta dominated the personal development industry in two months
- What Steve Kamb did to build a six-figure blog in the overly saturated health niche
- Why feed counts mean absolutely nothing (and never really have)
- Which Huffington Post articles attract 3X more clicks than any other
- Why the Verge was one of the fastest growing blog launches in history
…and most importantly, how this all helps me to make a prediction about what it now takes to build highly profitable blogs.
What I love about the post aside from that it covers a lot of different interesting subtopics is the fact that Glen backed up everything with numbers and proofs. I know research is overrated but the amount of effort that was done here is just phenomenal. I rarely print blog posts (not sure I ever did before) but when I read the first 60% of it, I was convinced that I should.
Again, give it a real read and I can guarantee that this post will benefit you.