With Round 3 of "The First Posts", it’s time to broaden our horizons a bit (read The First Posts Round 1 and Round 2).
So far, the blogs I’ve profiled in this series have focused on the Blogging Blogs..blogs that are focused on providing advice and resources about creating a successful blog, making money online, search engine optimization, etc. I’ve focused on those blogs so far because that’s what I’ve been targeting as a niche for Chronicles of a (Wannabe) Pro Blogger. A recent Business Week article about How Top Bloggers Earn Money makes it very clear that if your objective is to create a profitable blog, the meta-blogging or "blogging about blogging" niche is probably not your best bet. So to provide a more rounded perspective, today we’ll take a look at how five of the more mainstream blogs got their start.
Birth Date: May 26, 2002 Age: 5 years
Google PageRank: 7
Technorati Rank: 8
Alexa Traffic Rank: 4,878
First Post Title: Day 1
First Blog Subject: Markos Moulitsas’ started things out with a personal blog (fishyshark.com) to express his political views. Things quickly evolved, and within a month he was ready to move to his current domain at www.dailykos.com. Markos still owns fishyshark.com which has been converted to a photo-journal of his wife’s pregnancies. He’s never purported to provide a balanced view, but his strong liberal opinions have gotten him noticed by popular right-wing bloggers and journalists as well..which really hasn’t hurt his popularity in the least. He grew his traffic consistently for the first three years before reaching his peak popularity.
Historical Alexa Daily Reach:
Birth Date: Jan 31, 2005 Age: 32 months
Google PageRank: 7
Technorati Rank: 6
Alexa Traffic Rank: 1,050
First Post Title: Lifehacker launches
First Blog Subject: It’s beginning to get old at this point, but LifeHacker started out like many of the more successful blogs profiled so far. They chose a well-defined niche, and have stuck to it. If you’re look for a model of how to execute a new website launch, look no further. Good domain name, clearly defined niche that addresses a need of almost everyone that accesses the internet, and solid execution from the beginning.
Historical Alexa Daily Reach:
Birth Date: Jan 11, 2007 Age: 8 months
Google PageRank: 3
Technorati Rank: 16
Alexa Traffic Rank: 211
First Post Title: I Can Has Cheezburger?
First Blog Subject: Hmm…how to describe this one? In one word..viral. I’m not sure ICanHasCheezburger has the legs for long-term success, but it’s a killer example of a blog that stumbled into fame. The first post, shown above, was reportedly supposed to be a joke. Read more about how Erick Nakagawa and his partner "Tofuburger" got their start in this Business Week article.
Historical Alexa Daily Reach:
Birth Date: Dec 30, 2005 Age: 20 months
Google PageRank: 7
Technorati Rank: 18
Alexa Traffic Rank: 9,739
First Post Title: Better Late Than Arrogant
First Blog Subject: There aren’t many people that can kick off a blog one day and within a week spike to an Alexa daily reach of .02. Guy Kawasaki’s blog is an example of what pre-existing relationships and reputation can do for you if you’re launching a new blog. Being a bestselling author certainly gives you a head-start..not to mention the years of writing and well-developed ideas to draw from. Most of us aren’t currently in a position to mimic Guy’s launch today, but that doesn’t mean we can’t be in the future!
Historical Alexa Daily Reach:
Birth Date: Oct 13, 2005 (scobleizer.com), Dec 15, 2000 (scobleizer.manilasites.com)
Age: 2-7 years
Google PageRank: 7
Technorati Rank: 32
Alexa Traffic Rank: 11,729
First Post Title: Oh no, not another BLOG (scobleizer.manilasites.com), Time to switch to WordPress (scobleizer.com)
First Blog Subject: That depends which of Robert Scoble’s multiple blogs you’re talking about. Above, you’ll find his first posts from two of his blogs over the years: scobleizer.manilasites.com (circa Dec 2000) and scobleizer.com (Aug, 2007). For a period Robert moved his blog to UserLand, where it stayed for about four years before landing at its current home. He dabbled at other sites as well along the way. Robert is unique among the Bloggers we’ve profiled because he’s stuck with the "personal" blog branding, while moving the blog multiple times and completely changing its purpose. You can see from Robert’s very first post that he actually started the blog to thank the organizers and participants of two technology conferences he was involved in and to get some feedback to improve it in the future. It has morphed over the years into what it is today (from his Technorati blurb): "…a geek that writes about the technology industry and especially Silicon Valley’s Web, consumer electronics, computer, and other high tech companies."
Historical Alexa Daily Reach:
What Now?
This will be the last post in this initial series, but we’re just getting started.
Now it’s time to really dig in and get our hands dirty.
What did these bloggers do that was so right? Where could they have done better? Where did they get their first big breaks, and what did they do to keep going after that first break? Where did they falter and why? And what lessons can you learn if you want to follow in their footsteps? The answers to all these questions are just waiting to be discovered. So let’s discover them!
Sphere: Related Content
7 responses so far ↓
1 Rob Kingston // Aug 6, 2007 at 11:54 am
Wow… that’s interesting. When you put this info together like this you can actually look at it objectively (duh, why didn’t I think of this!
).
I think I can distinctly see parts where these sites would have gotten Dugg. It’s quite late here so I’ll only leave you with three things I believe helped these guys, so far:
- Developing Link Bait
- Leveraging Social Media
- Help from other Bloggers
Checking back to see what develops in the morning, Zen!
2 Zen Zoomie // Aug 6, 2007 at 10:32 pm
@Robert, I think you’re right on all counts. It will probably be easiest to dig up evidence of the link bait by analyzing the traffic & posts. The use of social media and help from other bloggers is a bit tougher to quantify–unless the blog talks about what they’re doing as the go along, but it’ll be really interesting to see what turns up.
Keep checking back. This type of article is taking me a bit longer to write, but it should definitely be worth it!
3 John Bennett // Aug 7, 2007 at 1:43 pm
That’s an interesting look at each of those websites. Great post. I still don’t get the appeal of ICanHasCheezburger but more people like it than my blog, so they must be doing something right.
4 Zen Zoomie // Aug 7, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Thanks John–and thanks for stopping by. I don’t get the level of success ICanHasCheezburger has had either. I’m guessing it’ll fizzle out by next year, but we’ll see…
5 Real Estate Editorial // Aug 14, 2007 at 12:58 pm
It gives hope to us guys who don’t blog about making money online. I want to make money too, but blogging about isn’t my passion
6 DayJobNuker // Aug 18, 2007 at 5:46 pm
You could have left off the Daily Kos. He stated he was not a socialist…thats right, more like a communist.
7 Zen Zoomie // Aug 19, 2007 at 1:53 pm
@Real estate. Looks like you’ve chosen a good niche to me! Sky’s the limit for people interested in real-estate. Has to be at least as big as the potential audience for a make money online niche…
P.S. glad to see you’re back and posting again!
@DayJobNuker. I actually chose his site because of his “extreme” views and the success he’s had expressing his opinion. More to follow when I get to the analysis of his site, but whether I agree with his views or not, he’s obviously taking full advantage of his freedom of expression the capitalist nature of our society!
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