It’s a Blog’s Life After All

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It's a Blog's Life

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I recently read an article about a blog’s life cycle. You know, the phases it goes through. I thought I would share this with you to see where you’re at in your blog’s life cycle. And if you don’t have a blog yet, why the heck not?!? It’s a blog’s life, after all.

The main point the article was trying to make was that there really is no shortcut when it comes to developing and growing your blog. They said you have to go through all of the stages to reach success. But, they said each stage not only has its own challenges but also its own rewards.

They listed five stages that you, uh, your blog has to go through.

1 – Conception
2 – Infancy
3 – Toddler
4 – Young Adult
5 – Expert or Adult

Obviously, they were using the analogy of human development when speaking of a blog’s “life”.

So, let’s continue by discussing each of these phases and what they entail.

1 – Conception

You’re not getting any traffic and you don’t have any search engine ranking.

It begins with setting up your blog, trying out a few themes to find the one that’s right for your blog. You start building your blog, you start posting. In this stage, you usually have less than ten posts. It may be hard to get the number built up if you are still trying to find “your voice”. That is to say, the best tone and style to use.

I remember they said that it could be frustrating to have as many as twenty posts and still not getting traffic. Yep. The article also said that a lot of people are surprised (and not in a good way) by how long this phase can take.

I look at this phase as “the journeyman” phase. You’ve made or are making some major decisions about your site and your business. Your practicing and refining your writing skills, your SEO skills, and whatever other skills you are developing during this stage.

If you want to achieve success, you have to press on through.

2 – Infancy

Traffic is starting to trickle in little by little, but you still don’t have any significant search engine rankings, which explains the light traffic. But if you don’t have any rankings, where is this smidgen of traffic coming from?

You may have posted an article with your site’s URL in the signature or maybe you commented on someone else’s blog that you are interested in or that is run by a friend. It could seem totally random. You might discover a mysterious backlink for a site you’ve never heard of, that has nothing to do with your blog’s topic or niche. It may not even be in English (presuming your blog would be in English since I’m writing this in English).

But, all in all, at this stage you’ve started to find an audience. This stage can be challenging. Believe me, if you haven’t been there yet, it can take some willpower to write newsletter after newsletter or post after post knowing that a sum total of five or six people are reading that content. But remember, everyone’s audience, or tribe as it’s now called, started small.

3 – Toddler

Now you’re getting a bit of traffic. Not tons but at least now some people are “showing up”. They’re leaving a record on your Google Analytics account. You do have Google Analytics set up don’t you? I told you in the previous post that you must track to be successful. Otherwise, it’s hard to know what’s working best and what’s a waste of time.

Back to the subject, so people are visiting and making repeat visits and they seem to listen to you and to trust your advice.

In the toddler stage, the blog finally gets some pages or posts ranked in the search engines. It could take as many as fifty posts before this happens, could be more. But it should be satisfying to see your site showing up in search results.

You’ve apparently built some trust with a few folks since they are returning to your site and starting to respond to your marketing and advertising. Yay!

It may be time to start a newsletter if you haven’t already. It might also be time to spruce up the site. Especially if you’ve been using a free theme up to this point. Maybe it’s time to invest in a custom design.

4 – Young Adult

Now you’re making enough money to make a real difference in your life. You might be making enough to support yourself, on a budget. You might be approached with some advertising inquiries.

Checking your backlinks you see that there a more than there used to be. Someone is linking to you and you haven’t even had to ask.

Hey, look at that, more of your pages and posts are getting ranked. That leads to more traffic to your site.

And finally, you can notice the response to your ads. When you recommend a product, you see a rise in your commissions. People are starting to take you seriously.

Hopefully, you’ve been careful to build a good reputation. Because if so, at this point you should see signs that people trust you and respect your opinion. That should lead to greater sales.

5 – Expert or Adult

At this point, in phase 5, you would have one of the top blogs in your niche or industry. Your name would be recognized at industry events and conferences. People would ask to take a selfie with you.

Now, you have to realize that most blogs don’t make it to this level. But if yours does, there will be benefits to be enjoyed.

For example, you would enjoy high levels of traffic. A lot of it would be direct traffic, meaning people sat down at their keyboard and typed in your website address or they clicked a link they had access to – in an email, in an ebook, on a web page. By this time you would also be creating (or likely outsourcing) and selling your own products and getting regular and numerous sales.

So there you have it. Those are supposed to be the five phases that a blog ideally goes through in its life. To get through all the phases you’ll have to make sure you provide top-notch content and materials while at the same time exercising great patience while you build your reputation.

To successfully take a blog through this entire sequence will, in almost all cases, take years to accomplish, but it sure would be worth it. It’s a blog’s life after all.

‘Til next time,

This is Dave

Dave

PS – if you want to start a blog but you aren’t sure where to begin or you just don’t think you can, then check out this Beginner Blogging Course. You don’t have to subscribe. Just scroll down to Part 1: Creating Your WordPress Blog. In case you need it, they even offer free installation and set up, no strings attached. But you may find that the course is enough for now.

Dave Hodges
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