If you know exactly what you're doing, you can build a blog that gets over 100,000 visitors per month in less than year—from scratch.
Chances are, however, you don't know exactly what you need to do to achieve that, but that's okay.
The fact that you're here and ready to learn means that one day, you will know what you need to do to create a fully sustainable business from your blog.
Another factor is the time it takes. Some of you may be able to build a thriving blog in a year, while others may take two, three, or even five years.
During this journey, your blog will progress through five distinct stages:
In this article, I'll outline the five stages of blog growth to help you understand where you're today and how far you have left to go.
Stage 1: Your Blog is BornExpected time to complete: Less than two weeks.
When you read most blogs on creating an online business and online marketing, the sexy parts involve hundreds of thousands of visitors and profit.
But traffic and profit are the result; your foundation is the cause of those results. Figuring out the important details of your blog isn't always easy, but without a solid foundation, you can't build a skyscraper.
There are four things you need to do in this preparatory phase.
Even if you already have a blog, you may benefit from going over these things again and improving them if you skipped them before.
1. Define Your NicheThis is the first step—the step where most blog owners fail. It is crucial to know who is going to benefit from your content.
In other words: who do you want to serve?
You don't need to know how you're going to do it yet. The products you will make, the content you will create, and your traffic generating methods don't matter yet. The audience you want to help comes first.
You need to be able to state what type of people you're trying to serve and be as specific as possible. It's better to be too specific than too general as you can always expand later.
For example, you may want to serve office workers who want to learn how to eat healthy at work.
Here are 124 niche case studies, both good and bad.
2. Create a Reader PersonaNow that you know the people you want to serve, you need to learn more about them.
In order to create content that actually helps them, you must understand who they are, how they act, and what they struggle with.
You can learn about your target audience in many ways, for example:
By the end of your research, you should know your target audience's:
You can even give your reader persona a name. Note that all of these have to be as specific as possible. For instance, 25-35 years old isn't an age, it's a range. Pick one age that accurately describes your ideal reader.
In the end, you want to have one specific person in mind you can write for. This will help you create content that resonates with your readers.
3. Create Your BlogIf you're going to build a blog-based business, you will at some point need a functional blog.
Unless you need some really unique features, I recommend sticking with WordPress for now. It's the simplest option to get you up and running, and you can always redesign the blog in the future. Here's how to install WordPress—it's pretty simple.
Alternatively, if you're already running your site on a platform like HubSpot, it might be even easier for you to create a blog.
What I don't advise you do is go out and spend thousands of dollars on a custom CMS or design. The first version of any blog isn't going to be perfect, and it's going to change a lot down the line.
Focus on getting a simple, functional, and not completely ugly blog up and running as fast as possible. Don't waste weeks or months trying to make everything look perfect.
4. Discover Where Your Readers Hang OutBefore you can even attempt to draw your target audience to your blog, you have to figure out where they spend their time.
Note that in some niches, you may have to get offline and go to conventions or local meetings to connect with your target audience and get them on your site.
To start with, find the most popular blogs in your niche. The easiest ways to do this is by Googling "top [your general niche] blogs."
Create a spreadsheet to keep track of these sites. In one column, indicate if the blog allows comments, and in another, if it allows guest posts. To check for guest posts, Google "[domain name] guest post."
Go through any big lists of blogs, and visit each one individually. Look for signs of high traffic such as several comments on each blog post or a lot of social shares.
Add the best ones to your list. You want to identify blogs your reader persona visits so you can eventually get them over to your site. Ideally, you want to identify as many as you can, but at least 50. If you're having trouble getting that many, think broader, e.g., "best health sites" instead of "best nutrition sites".
After blogs, it's time to check out forums in your niche. Again, search for "[your general niche]+ forum," and go through the results on the first few pages.
If you find forums you believe your target audience visits regularly, record them in a separate section of your spreadsheet. Note the number of members, or active members, to indicate activity and popularity.
Forums typically aren't big enough to use as a main traffic strategy at any point, but they can help you refine your reader persona and can be used for certain promotion tactics.
Stage 2: Finding Your 100 True FansExpected time to complete: Less than four months.
Back in 2008, Kevin Kelly coined a concept called 1,000 true fans. It really took off when Seth Godin started referencing it in his advice.
In short, he described how anyone could make a great living if they interacted with and had support from 1,000 true fans.
This article was written in the context of being a musician or an artist, but the same applies to most small businesses. A relatively small group of loyal readers can make your business a big enough success to allow you to become a full-time blogger (if you aren't already).
If you have a new blog, going from zero to 1,000 is a big leap. Too big, in my opinion, and unnecessary.
A better goal is to gather 100 true fans.
When you first begin a blog, you're starting at zero. No matter how well you research your target audience, you're going to make mistakes. The problem here is that no one will tell you what mistakes you're making—at least not yet.
As long as you define your target audience well enough, you will have the ability to attract your first 100 fans (although it could take a while). These fans will play an instrumental role in the growth of your blog.
Source: The 5 Stages of Blog Growth: How Your Traffic Tactics Should Change as You Grow
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