How-To Successfully Blog Without Killing Yourself

Below I have posted a video presentation given by Tim Ferriss at Wordcamp.  Tim used his blog to successfully promote his book The 4-Hour Workweek.  In fact at one point in time, the book hit #1 on the New York Times business hardcover bestseller list.  Since the video is a long 50:52, I have distilled the best information and posted it below.

• When displaying your blog’s categories, you should change the name to topics.  This improved the amount of time people stayed on Tim Ferriss’ blog.
• When using the popularity contest plugin, use a recently popular list as the default list or first tab for you blog.  If you use a most popular of all time list, then you will create a self-fulfilling prophecy regarding your popular posts by encouraging clicks on the existing popular posts.
• To keep first time visitors, do not give them anything to click on above the fold that takes them away from your content.  You may have increasing followers on Twitter or getting more friends on Facebook as secondary goals, but you should not drive people away from your content.
• If you plan on advertising on you website, do not push your RSS feed aggressively.  It is harder to monetize RSS.
• If you have been blogging awhile and plan creating a recommended products page, then you should test the location of the link for the highest clickthrough rates.
• Move the date publisher to the end of the post.  People arriving at your blog via links and search engines will be predisposed against older content.
• If you use video on your blog, recap what is discussed in the video.  This post is a good example, not many people want to spend 50 minutes watching a video for a few helpful nuggets of information.  Take notes while you watch a video and distill the video into the best information.
• If you are having trouble finding an image to use with a post, utilize Flickr.  Search flicker for creative commons licensed material and sort by the most interesting photos.
• If you post obvious rules, they will be followed.  A good example is Tim Ferriss’ rules for commenting on his blog.
• Tim tries to minimize the plugins used on his blog, because they ’sometimes don’t play nice with each other’.
• The advice on dealing with Twitter which begins about 30 minutes into the video I found very helpful.
• If you are going to have multiple topics on one blog, then make sure that your design reflects this.  Do not upset and surprise your readership by ambushing them with completely off topic information.

Enjoy!

Related posts:

1. Top 5 Benefits Of A Superior Online Brand For Your Blog
2. How To Get StumbleUpon Traffic
3. Video Blog Post: Homesteaders & Terra Prime Demo
4. One Week Twitter Traffic Experiment Results
5. Response: “Thoughts on writing timeless blog posts and post bylines”
6. The 13 Wordpress Plugins That I Use And Why You Should Use Them Too
7. Attracting And Developing An Audience — Part 4

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Tagged as: Blogging, experiment, Publishing, Wordpress