How Do You Measure Your Blog’s Success?

Maki has written a quite interesting post on how to measure the success of your blog. Maki says that according to him, the most important blog success metric is income.

I beg to differ.

According to me, there are two phases of any blog’s life. The first one is the building up phase, where you build up your blog’s traffic, readership, income sources, etc. The second phase is the one where every blogger wants to be. It’s the steady and life-of-luxury phase. You’ve got lots of traffic, you have a huge readership base, and you’ve got the money rolling in. This is the life of luxury for your blog(which comes after hardwork).

Since there are two different phases, I believe that each has its own blog success metric. Let me explain.
The first phase is the most difficult time of your blog’s life. You’ve got a brand new blog which has no traffic, no readers, and no income, and no content. You’ve got to write loads of quality content, attract traffic, establish a loyal reader base and then monetize all that traffic. It’s all hard stuff and takes time.



Especially if you’ve set up your blog in a brutally competitive niche. You’ve got many competitors who’ve been in the business for years and have long since entered the second phase of their blogs. They’ve got a huge number of readers who are fiercely loyal and they’ve got the money rolling

If you can hang in there and be patient, you’ll make it through the difficult first phase. And if you make it through the first phase, you can definitely call this a GREAT success!

in. You’re going to have a hard time getting your self established and forcing some of their readers to come to you, and then convince them to stay on your blog, in addition to attracting new readers. So you’ve got to do two things. Hard, hard work, isn’t it?

And if you don’t carry on struggling, your blog won’t be able to stand up on its feet and will die like 90% of the new blogs in the niche.

Therefore, in the first phase, the most important blog success factor would be how long you are able to hang in there. How persistent are you? If you can hang in there and be patient no matter what disaster strikes, and accept all the bitter medicine you get, you’ll make it through the difficult first phase. And if you make it through the first phase, you can definitely call this a GREAT success! Because you have accomplished what thousands of other fellow, new bloggers like you were not able to do. You’ve just delivered a punch-in-the-gut to the big bloggers, who are now in danger of losing their readers .

Now comes the second phase. You’ve struggled through the first phase, gotten some bad bruises on the way, and you’ve been patient in difficult times and are now reaping the benefits of your patience. Now, the success metric or factor changes. It’s no more persistence, because you now have readers and traffic and even some money flowing in and there’s no need to heavily work on traffic building. You should still work on blog promotion , but not as heavily as in the first phase.

The success factor here in the second phase isn’t income either, as Maki says. Not all bloggers blog for money. Skellie, a popular blogger, doesn’t have any ads or affiliate links on her blog. Essentially she makes nothing

from her blog. So does that mean that her blog is not successful at all (if the blog success metric is ‘income’) ? Not at all! Look at the number of readers she has. The 2500+ feed subscribers of her blog. The number of comments on her blog. Her standing in the blogosphere. If she isn’t a failure, what went wrong?

The ‘income’ factor, as Maki says, and says rightly, toward the end of his article, doesn’t work for everyone. It’s only suitable for those who blog for money. Bloggers who don’t blog for money will have different success yardsticks like traffic or readers or feed subscribers, and so on. Therefore, different bloggers will have a different success meter for measuring the success of their blog.

For me, it’s the true, loyal readers. Underline the words true and loyal. These are very important. Loyal readers are a very important factor for determining the success of a blog since a blog is nothing without people to read it, right? The reader base is important since it shows how many people appreciate and respect you and your blog. It shows how many readers like your content and consider you as an authority on the subject.

Notice I said true and loyal. Essentially, you’ll have thousands of visitors to your blog. Many of them will be just casual readers who just read for leisure. Many will be hit-and-run visitors who just come and go: not very

You’ve got many competitors who’ve been in the business for years and have long since entered the second phase of their blogs. You’re going to have a hard time getting your self established

important. And so on. You’ve got to separate these casual and uninterested readers from the true and loyal readers who regularly visit your blog and leave meaningful comments and participate in activities and trust and believe you. These are the most important people for your blog. And the more you have of ‘em, the more successful you can call yourself with your blog.

Also, you can earn money off your blogs using illegitimate techniques or using clever techniques, but you can’t get true readers illegally. You have to work hard to make them come to you and become loyal readers of your blog.

OK, I agree that income is an important factor too, but then it’s different for everyone. I too blog for money. That’s why I have these ads on my site. But for me, the amount of money I earn isn’t a success factor. It’s how many readers I have who trust and believe in what I say. That’s what’s important, even more than income. After all, a blog is first and foremost for the readers, isn’t it

But one thing I think we all can agree upon is the fact that during the first phase, the most reliable blog success metric you can use is the amount of persistence/patience you have, and everyone’s doing the same thing during the first phase: building up their blogs. If you can’t survive the first phase, all the fame and fortune and the second phase stuff is completely out of the question! But once in the second phase, priorities change, and so does the success determining factor.

So, what do you do? Choose the factor which suits you the most. For example, if you blog just for fun, the ‘money’ metric isn’t going to work for you. Maybe it’s traffic or readers or even feed subscribers. Don’t follow others. Set your own example. No problem if you admire a successful blogger. Adopt their ways, but keep the line which separates you from them intact. Find which success factor which works for you, and work on improving upon that factor. This will help you a great deal.

It’s your turn to speak up: What do YOU think is the most important blog success factor?