First of all, this is an honor for me to write about the greatest of Bloggers around, Darren Rowse of Problogger.net. It wont be wrong if we tag him as the guru of todays Blogging arena.
Darren started out with the popular blog, that shares blogging tips. Now he also blogs at a digital photography blog.
This post isn't just meant to be a motivational source for young bloggers, but here by, i aim to highlight few of the countless skills and qualities that Darren has showed up to the world in his years of blogging experience, thus being know as a 'ProBlogger'!
Darren's Skill 1# Approach, Aim, Goal
You would often see experienced bloggers mentioning the importance of setting up a goal for your blogging career. Darren's first move was to name his blog domain as 'Problogger.net'. It was his aim to become a problogger later in his career.He had to try out every method, every technique that could make him achieve his sky touching aim. He could for see him self at this great position, at what he is now.
So just think for a moment, what you have planned for your blogging career. Where you want to be with it in coming years?
Darren's Skill 2# Mature Approach
You would have often heard of blogging gurus talking about the 'right' approach to have. What is that 'right' approach?
The approach where you consider your blog as a business. When you think of it as this way, you are ready to invest in it. Whether your precious time, money or what ever. He knew if he had to leave out his daily job, he had to build 'something', that could play that part and fill out the gap.
He bought him self a premium template from Genesis Frame Work, got Aweber (email auto-responder service) etc. He had to take the right approach and act like pros.
Such temperament is normally missing in many people around starting off with blogging. Sitting out in home, and starting off blogging as a hobby, often makes this blogging idea, a mere hobby for their entire career (that may last few weeks).
They never get out of that shell that they have created for themselves.
Darren's Skill 3# Hard Work For 1 Year (Without considering income)
Blogging without taking income in consideration can be a huge obstacle for many. Posting articles daily for a whole long 1 year is what made Darren a great guy that he is today. The initial traffic is what all matters. After that it comes on exponentially, so building out the base line is the hardest part, that many fail to pass.
He fought that period like a Gladiator.
Darren's Skill 4# Post Consistency
The magic lies behind consistent posting. How often you come by problogger.net and you find a blog not being updated daily? He never let that day come by. So what happened? People need new quality content coming by their ways, and was exactly what they got on probloggers.
Articles that Darren shared were based on true logic and shared his experience all along. He would never pass out any figures that he was not sure of him self. Thus a great guy started to get attention from the masses.
Darren's Skill 5# Tracking Out The Blog Growth
Darren's Skill 6# Never Neglected Social Media
You would have read a lot about the power of social media and the role that it can play in a blogs growth. Darren was one of the first persons to start using Social media for his blog. May it be Facebook or Twitter, he would have shared views with his loyal readers on these platforms.
It was more of a family that was building up under the surveillance of a Problogger.
Darren's Skill 7# Proper SEO
Without search engine optimization, a blog could be nothing. With the search engine being the main source of traffic for Problogger, it was obvious for him to get friendly to search engines. The better relations he had with search engines bots, the more his chances were of becoming the Problogger.
You may want to read these few articles on necessary SEO techniques:
- Top 4 SEO Plugins For WordPress In 2012
- How I Increased Google Page Rank To PR 4 And Why You Couldnt
- 4 Essential Ways To Build Back Links For Your Blog
Darren's Skill 8# Setting Trends
Great player in every field that we know, set the trends that other follows. Darren is one of them. He likes testing out new techniques and ideas that could give a further push to his blog in his entire career. It was him who liked to show his personnel picture on his blog, 7-8 years back when it was not much of a trend.
Darren's Skill 9# Started Out When The Competition Was Low
This has some impact on the success of early bloggers too. Every month, year, Internet is growing with such an immense rate, increasing out the competition in every niche. Blogging its self was a kind of new idea back then too. So it attracted visitors in that regard too.
Darren's Skill 10# Conferences And Real Time Socialization
Thinking out of the box, Darren meets up other great blogging personalities and like to be social in real life too. Attending conferences also promotes the Problogger brand its self. He gets featured on media, gets interview world wide, making him even more popular, than what he already is.Darren's Skill 11# Regards His Guest Authors
Guest authors are of great value to a blog and can be a soul of a blog. There are thousands of guest authors willing to get featured on Probloggers platform. Darren regard them to the best he can, and that makes him even more successful.
People like to contribute to his blog more than ever. Guest posts are kept on long waiting lists.
Darren's Skill 12# He Used WordPress
This can be controversial here. But the only aspect that i believe that makes WordPress a better blogging platform than any other popular ones like Blogger, that its ability to handle the guest authors. Having an opportunity to sign up and make a guest authors account, really motivates people to get started right away.
This helped him to get even more people willing to contribute quality stuff with ProBloggers audience.
Another success!
Darren's Skill 13# Encouraged Commentators
Just like guest authors, commentators also play a vital role in a blogs success. You would notice what a great community Problogger has become to discus blogging matters. There are intellectual people giving out their views on regular basis.Darren, on first place built such an enabling environment for commentators to grow on, plus always appreciated them.
Darren's Skill 14# Wasn't Afraid to Test Out
Testing out new stuff and to find what works best for a blogger him self, is the key. There were so many strategies tested out by Darren on Problogger, so many plugins or what not. He wasn't afraid of testing out stuff. Each time he learned and added a new better flavour to the blog.
There was an evolution going on at the Probloggers nest.
Darren's Skill 15# Gave Priority To Getting Email Subscribers
Email subscribers play a great role in building blogs long term traffic. Imagine every time a visitor gets to your blog, he reads out few articles and never come back. But when you get his email address, you get a chance to attract him back to the blog, for almost ever!
When you get thousands of email subscribers, you built up your own audience that you always have in your hand. Even Google updates like 'panda' cant really effect the blogs name. Why? Because you can still reach out to all of your visitors without depending upon the search engines to provide traffic.
Darren applied every great strategy to increase his email subscribers. You may like to read 7 Reasons Why Your Email Subscribers Are Not Increasing.
Darren's Skill 16# He Built His Own Product
Building out your own product is something really endorsed by top bloggers from ever and thats what we all should planing for in future. Darren has couple of products (eBooks, videos series, guides etc) that was one of the main pushers for Problogger brand.So this is pretty much an overview of the reasons behind Darren Rowse success. There are countless skills that he has. Would you like to mention any of them in the comment section below? Why do you think Darren was able to become a 'problogger'.
Astalavista!
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