Blogging is a tough journey. There can be ups and downs. You might be doing all the hard work over the days and still feel you are in the same place - like walking on the treadmill.
You might be sweating, your heartbeat will increase, you might have a great sense of walking miles - but when you look at the simple fact, you are on the same place.
It might be OK (not just OK but, great) with a treadmill workout, but not with blogging.
When you are blogging (assuming you do it as a business) you ought to see some progress. You have to have moved from where you started.
Let’s talk about blogging success first
Now, if I want to help you in this post to identify whether you are on the right track to blogging success, I should first talk about blogging success.
As I’ve said many times in my content at this blog, without having clarity it is not possible for you to work towards achieving your end goal.
You have to define your goal first. It is not rocket science. Simply, precisely answer these questions:
- What is the purpose of your blog?
- What do you want to achieve with this blog?
- What is your expectation off your blog?
That’s it.
Without defining “your version” of success, you cannot find out if you are on the right track to blogging success. Have I made that point clear?
If you are blogging for a while now and still don’t know what your blog is REALLY about, you are not alone. Don’t get discouraged! As Andrew points out in this post, he too did’t find the purpose of his blog right away!
Here’s something in his own words:
When I started this blog, I didn’t know what the purpose of it was.
I didn’t know the type of content I wanted to write about. Didn’t know who my target audience really was. So, I foolishly started writing about whatever topic that came to mind.
Few months into it, I realized that was getting me nowhere fast.
But you have to find out the purpose of your NOW, without any further delay!
Now, let’s talk about figuring out if you are on the right track to blogging success.
Numbers
Trust me, I’m not a fan of numbers. But I don’t hate them as well. Because they tell a lot about anything we are interested in.
Be it traffic numbers, subscriber numbers, number of sales, number of leads whatever - if you take a close look at the numbers they tell a lot about your progress in anything.
Depending upon how many months you are blogging you should see a substantial rise in those numbers. If there is nothing happening, then surely you are not on the right track.
This is when you have to stop doing the same thing over and over again and try out new things and implement new strategies to get those numbers moving up.
Or if the numbers are on the rise and fall, you have to analyse what causes those changes. Eliminate doing stuff that is damaging your progress and do more of what works.
Growth in authority
If you are a sincere blogger aiming to do serious business with blogging your authority should have grown over the time. Since you would be sharing some expert tips, knowledge and useful strategies at your bog (hopefully), people would start to look at you as an expert.
Over the time, your authority should be growing. This could mean:
- Your content showing up on top in SERPs for your niche keywords.
- People emailing you asking for expert advice.
- People emailing you asking to be included in expert roundups.
- Fellow bloggers mentioning you and linking to your content as resource
- and so on.
Guest post requests
OK this one is something that could end up more annoying over the time. But this is a nice indication that your site is showing up to those people when they are searching for places to guest post.
Make no mistake I am not making fun of the genuine guest bloggers here. But when your blog grows you will also get a substantial number of spammy guest post requests like the one below (this is a guest post request for this blog - Problogging Success!):
OK, don’t panic. You will also get the requests from the nice bloggers too 
Increase in the quality of your content
This one is kind of mandatory. Over the time, if the quality of your content is not improved then you are certainly not moving in the right direction towards success.
Because quality and success go hand in hand - and if you have not improved the quality of the content (or the quality of your site/product/business, in general) success will be in question - there is no doubt to this!
Analyse your website and business on the whole to see if you have improved on the quality of stuff.
Well, you might think why should one “improve” on the quality of the content? Should a website have high quality content right from the beginning?
Yes ideally, that’s the truth. But we all are human beings and we only improvise over the time. Problogging Success has improved a lot over the years and is now established as an authority site (I can say that because of all the loveable readers - that is YOU :)).
But if you browse some of the posts I published during the time when this blog was started you will certainly see that I have improved a lot, lol. You can see so much immaturity and grammatical errors in those posts. As well as those posts have too little usefulness from the reader’s point of view.
Increase in engagement on your blog
This one is obvious. In fact, when someone checks a blog to know about its popularity, what they naturally look for is the number of comments, and number of social shares it gets.
If a blog’s content is actively shared by people on social media, then there’s something right about it. People won’t simply talk about a brand or a product for sure.
When people start to talk about you (shares in social media, linking to you etc.) and start to leave meaningful comments, it implies that you are on the right track, for sure.
Word of mouth marketing is also a nice by-product of people liking your business.
Are you on the right track to blogging success?
Everyone wants to succeed. Bloggers are no exception. In particular, given that blogging is not an easy task, every blogger wants to reap the benefits.
The “benefit” or the term “success” could be different for each one of us. But the bottom line is this - we all want to achieve what we wanted to achieve from this blogging business, right?
So ya, go ahead, analyse your blog/business and see if you’ve got any of these signs.
If not, don’t panic. Simply change your strategies, adopt new stuff and keep going.
And if you have lost track, make sure you rediscover your desire for blogging (click to read Adrienne’s post).
You can surely get on track!
If you are already on the right track, give yourself a nice pat on the back and do more of what works!
Hey Jane,
What excellent advice here and I could relate to a lot of what you shared. I could even relate to what Andrew had shared over at his place too.
Although I had a direction when I first started blogging that soon started to change. I hear a lot of people today say that they blog about a lot of different topics and although I’m sure they enjoy them all, I think that’s more of a mistake on their part. Being way too broad isn’t going to help you because it ends up confusing people.
I do believe that if you’re starting a blog then you need a clear direction unless it’s your personal blog and you just want to write for the sake of writing. If you’re building a business though you HAVE to be clear on your direction or you will not get the results you’ve shared with us here and you will not see things progress.
Everything does take time but it doesn’t have to take years. For me personally and several other newer bloggers that I have met they’ve been able to share great content, get in front of the right people and their blogs have really picked up steam within a very short period of time. Does that mean instant success? No but it means getting in front of the right people at the right time in order to help you move forward a lot quicker.
Really great advice Jane and I’ll be eager to share this one with my friends as well. Oh and thank you for mentioning my post here, I think it will help those who may have either lost their drive or gotten sidetracked. Hopefully my advice has helped as well.
Be sure to enjoy your week and keep that awesome content coming.
~Adrienne
Hey Adrienne,
Its quite true. We all start at some point with a particular goal and changing course in the mean time is something un-avoidable. For some the interests might change, for some some other choice might sound profitable - whatever be the case; it is OK to change course. What is NOT OK is to start without a clear goal in the first place
You are right - everything takes time. Sometimes you have to figure it all out by yourself via trial and error.
And most of us even have felt like quitting at some point - it is all normal. As long as we know where we are going, we can be cool
It is my pleasure to link to that post Adrienne; I found it to be very appropriate!
Thanks for your comment. Have a wonder rest of the week.
Cheers,
Jane.
Hi Jane, I like your analogy of a treadmill, it’s so true. You keep on running, get two steps ahead and then go back one step. I have had an increase in traffic and subscriber count so I’m happy with those for now. I think most bloggers always want to do better and the ones that don’t are the ones that quit too soon.
You are so right about defining success, it means something different to each person. I think we must enjoy it as well to continue.
Great post Jane! Have a great rest of the week.
Hey Lisa,
Yes, the treadmill analogy goes quite well with the situation isn’t? I’m glad you’re happy with your traffic and subscriber and I wish you success in the coming years.
You are right, those who don’t do anything to improve the situation end up quitting - pathetic story and it happens a lot in the blogosphere!
Thanks for stopping by and have a wonderful week
Cheers,
Jane.
Hey Jane,
Yup you are right on track with this post lol… I use to hate looking at numbers until I realized I wasn’t going anywhere with my blog. So I started to change my strategies aand started to curtail my content towards the interests of my audience.
As a result I started writing better content, more meaningful content, and more traffic. Thus is all due to making some minute changes which made a big difference!
Thanks for sharing Jane! Have a great rest of the week!
Truly amazing!
To make any difference you really need to know that whether your blog is on the right track or not. Otherwise, your blogging career might be at end very soon.
I think traffic and blog conversion rate is the most important tools to track a blogging success (especially when you’re blogging for money). Although I have already written on this topic a month ago, still, your points are really helpful to all the bloggers who are serious about their blogging career.
Excellent thought!!!
To make your blog successful, you need to stop and see whether you’re going in the right direction.
If you’re a beginner, it’d be better to focus on visitor retention rather than increasing page views. Great share Jane.
Hi Jane,
Great advice. I have switched focus many times on blogging, and it started out to be about money, but now it’s more about learning and building relationships and engagement (and eventually building trust and authority).
One thing that serves as an indicator for me is the number of returning visitors. When I post something new, day by day I find that more people come back to read it. While the email subscription growth is an indication, it doesn’t always show the subscribers actual interest.
Hi, Jane, what excellent advice!
I know how important it is to take stock and make changes. On my own site I’ve definitely cut out lots of subjects. Things that people don’t read and don’t relate to anything else. The old posts are still there but I no longer have category lilnks advertising them.
Right at the start of the post you spoke about the need for clarity. And without clarity you are just churning out words going nowhere, as you say like on a treadmill. You definitely know how to get people to aim for a point
Have a good week!
Hi Jane,
To make my blog successful, I’am learning and building relationships and engagement with my visitor. Sometimes I used email subscription, to interact with them. I think most bloggers always want to know who are they visitor…
Thanks for sharing Jane!
Hey Jane,
Yes, one needs to keep improving the stats and the numbers - that is how you can tell if your blog is growing over time. Excellent thought about the treadmill - that made a great connection.
The subscription list, the social shares and the number of comments or the rise in traffic etc. are good metrics to analyze a blogs progress.
If the trend is going downwards and everything is on the decline - then perhaps it is time to start fixing the issues and get back on the right track.
Hey Jane,
According to me, when you start getting genuine guest post requests from fellow bloggers, and not link building agencies, that’s when you know that you are on the right path.
When people start noticing you, only then you will receive guest post requests. So work hard, promote your blog hard and enjoy the benefits in the long run.
Thanks for the article!
Thanks for sharing your proven road map Jane!
I think those two emails you got are so funny!
When newbies are starting out, a lot of times their straight forwardness,
for lack of knowing what to do, can be kinda refreshing, even if their actual approach
lacks any real sophistication!
They’re just trying to gain some much need traction, the only way they
know how!
You’ve offered some solid and extremely practical advise!Thanks!
Great post. I noticed that when i publish new post i get more visitors and the week i don’t publish my visitors are lower.