“What was ‘the tipping point’ for your blog?”
This question is one that I’m regularly asked in interviews, and it is one that is challenging to answer. The assumption behind the question is that there is often some kind of event that pushes a blog into the limelight. The reality is that it’s not always this way.
Let me illustrate this by telling the stories of my two main blogs—ProBlogger and Digital Photography School.
ProBlogger’s tipping point: dramatic growth
Here on ProBlogger, the only real tipping point-type event that I can identify is when I mentioned in an interview I did on another blog that I was earning six figures a year from my blogging. Back then (it was 2005), nobody was making money from blogs (or if they were, they weren’t talking about it) so it was news that quickly got passed around.
It was picked up by quite a few other bloggers but also went viral on Slashdot, which was the closest thing that there was to social bookmarking back then.
While I didn’t really consider that there would be much effect from saying I was a six figure blogger in that interview, the impact was pretty significant (in terms of traffic but, more importantly, in terms of profile/brand) for a few reasons:
- The statement was somewhat controversial (the idea of monetizing the “pure” medium of blogging was something that some were dead against) and that caused some buzz. But being the first to announce I was a full-time blogger also created a desire for others to do likewise.
- The idea of blogging for money was sown in the minds of many. As I was not only making a living from blogging, but also writing about that journey here on ProBlogger, I guess there was some credibility built from that statement.
- Coining of the term “ProBlogger”—again being first and having a site called ProBlogger meant that people started to talk about making money from blogs as being a pro blogger, which just grew the site even more.
While all this was fantastic for the growth of ProBlogger and for building my profile, it was all fairly lucky. I didn’t make the statement with any intentions of leveraging it, but once the groundswell of reactions started, I did act fast to make the most of it.
Digital Photography School tipping points: slow but steady growth
Digital Photography School (dPS) on the other hand was a different story. I can’t really think of a single tipping point moment that really stands out as being one that boosted the site to becoming popular (and today is is six or seven times the size of ProBlogger despite being a couple of years younger).
Instead, dPS had a much more steady growth, mainly through a variety of smaller events:
- I did have ProBlogger and a previous camera review site linked to dPS, but after the initial launch, traffic from these sources wasn’t significant.
- We were featured in some mainstream media publications in the early days (Wall Street Journal, New York Times, etc.) but none of these caused any significant jump in traffic.
- We had days of significant traffic from sites like Lifehacker and social bookmarking sites like Digg, but in general this type of traffic didn’t hang around.
These events certainly didn’t hurt us, but none of them stands out as a tipping point that we never looked back from. Rather, traffic and the brand slowly grew over those first few years from launch.
More significant for dPS than any of the above in mind mind is that I put real emphasis upon a few activities for the first couple of years (warning: none of these are rocket science or spectacular … but they worked):
- Regular useful content: Daily “how to” posts that solved problems, showed people how to achieve their goals and improve their photography was 90% of the content that I produced.
- Shareable content: Content that I knew was more likely to be shared (inspirational posts, breaking news, humor, controversy (I didn’t really focus on this), grand list posts, and so on. This type of content was around 5% of what I produced.
- Community: The other 5% of posts was more focused upon community activities like reader discussions, giving readers a chance to show off their photos, debates, polls, etc. We started a forum in time, too, to build this community further.
- Email newsletter: If there’s one thing that grew the site more than any other, it was that we started collecting people’s email addresses early and began sending them weekly updates/newsletters.
- Promotion: I defined who I wanted to read my blog and did the exercise of asking where they gathered. This lead me to sites like Flickr, other blogs, and some social networking sites where I developed presence, was useful and in time shared our content.
These tasks took almost 100% of my focus in the early days. I didn’t spend a heap of time on social media, did limited networking with other sites (although did develop friendships with a few in time), and focused little upon SEO. The promotion I did was focused to those sites where I knew potential readers were gathering, but the main effort was upon content creation and looking after the readers I already had.
Note: I share quite a bit of the story of how I grew dPS in the 2nd edition of the ProBlogger Book (and have updated and expanded it a little in the soon to be released 3rd edition).
The resulting growth on dPS was far from dramatic or explosive, but in the long term, it was on a far greater scale than here on ProBlogger.
Did your blog have a tipping point for growth?
There is no one way to grow a blog. They come in all shapes and sizes, and their growth cycles vary considerably. I’d love to hear your own story. Did your blog have a tipping point, or was it a slow and steady process? Or do you have another experience all together?
Hi Darren,
I cannot get tired of reading how you grew these two monster blogs you have.
In my case, Los Ziegler grew in a steady and slow manner. It was like rising a child. I can easily relate to some of the points you listed for dPs… mainly because I’m your reader since 2007 and I learned to apply them successfully.
Regular quality content, community and promotion are what made my blog the leader on its niche. I started with email newsletters late, but after a few months I’m able to see the results.
Last year I decided to go for my own, private sponsors and by end of 2011 I had made 6k+ of income with advertising and other strategies. And you are to thank for that.
Thanks for helping me be a patient blogger. I’m on my way to the top.
See you there!
Guillermo
For me, I had a really strong start to my blog that suffered a big lurch when I had some family issues early on. For several years, I thought that I hadn’t seen much of a change in the numbers, but after looking at the data, I realize that truly, overall, it has had very slow, but steady growth.
Outside sources have been key to the credibility boosts I’ve needed along the way, though. At the beginning, for example, a friend of mine already had a big following in her career, and also had a blog. So one link from her had all her fans hopping over to my site for months.
Later, it was babble.com who hired me on as a contributing blogger for their site that gave me even more credibility, and then later, signing on as part of an exclusive blogging network, and most recently, getting a book contract.
I wouldn’t say my blog has ever had phenomenal numbers, but they are growing, just the same.
My site experienced a huge surge of growth a few years after getting started, and almost all of it related to search traffic. Unfortunately, I’ve learned the hard way that, while you don’t ignore SEO, search can’t be the entire focus. Our site traffic has dropped significantly, and now we’re basically starting over, trying to build that community. I’ve been following a similar strategy as what you outline for dPS.
Did you ever feel like you were writing great content but no-one sees it? How did effectively share your content?
Yeah, yesterday was a tipping point: I had 5 readers, kind of doubled my audience all of the sudden…
I think it’s because I made it to the Technorati 100 Health blog ;-)
No seriously, I think it is difficult to start today and experience something else than organic growth, unless you promise loads of cash for no effort.
I also think than as internet matures as a media (and its users get older with it), the audience will change and not look for info about blogging or instant cash anymore. It will come closer to topics covered by magazines and books today.
But maybe it’s just my wishful thinking…
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and find my 6th reader…
Very interesting to read about the two ways your blogs grew. I’m making good money from my blog (not quite six figures but getting close) but I’m still waiting for my “tipping point” in terms of traffic and readership. It’s solid but nothing staggering. Instead, my blog has been more of an advertisement for myself in terms of getting an agent, landing endorsement deals, etc. So from that perspective, I’d say that I’ve tipped, but from a traffic standpoint that point is still fairly elusive. Which is why I’ve become more consistent in posting regularly!
Thanks for a great article.
I’m kinda growing a blog more like dPS, than like problogger.
Steady growth (mostly from search engines) is the key success I’m aiming at. And can’t complain about results, as traffic increases steadily about 20-30% every month. So does income. :)
However, I’m currently working on my first series about a topic that is already working well on my site. I don’t think it will be a tipping point after which everything will change, but I hope it will give a bit of a boost in two ways:
– more engagement from readers – there will be a reason to stick around if I have tens of posts around similar topic, linking to each other and mainly to and from a something what Darren calls “sneeze page”.
– more search traffic, because some related keywords are already high, and there is a lot of space for improvement.
– more search traffic because of posting more often.
If I’m right, I’m probably going to concentrate on post series most of the time. It’s actually a lot easier and more productive than writing about whatever comes in mind. But that is not related to Darren’s post above, anymore.
P.S. don’t get me wrong, I’m not bragging about myself, I’m just trying to share technique, I personally believe must work well.
Abraham Lincoln said, “I will prepare and some day my chance will come,” which applies to both ways of growing a blog. Everyone loves and envies stories of the six-month success, overlooking the luck and timing aspect usually not mentioned.
My blog’s slow and steady growth constantly enkindles my personal growth, and I wouldn’t trade that.
“Tipping Point” is probably not the best description for my blog since it’s still very new and growing, but I was looking through the keywords people were searching when they found my site and kept stumbling upon a weird collection of sentences. It ended up being a hoax that was going around Facebook. So, assuming people wanted to know more about that hoax, I wrote a blog post about it. I went to getting a couple of hundred views to several thousand almost immediately.
Sometimes it’s just a matter of researching what people want.
Of course, that wasn’t a true tipping point since that would imply maintaining a high level of growth. But that moment was when my blog first became viral across Facebook.
It seems like a slow and steady process for us so far. We promote our blog through our email marketing and social media as well. We just started blogging in August and are still learning all the tricks like focusing on keywords which will increase SEO.
nice and i agree to make blog growth with your unique content
Thanks for all the tips. I was wondering, I don’t seem to get the Email collecting process. I thought that I was doing that but I haven’t received one email adress. I have an average of 40- 50 views per day over the last month. My blog is still new (first month). I never expected it to be much but I am getting a great response. Now I would like to expand my message.
I guess what I’m asking is: How do the email thing? lol
Hi Darren,
I like the contrast here between the 2 blogs.
This proves your points: providing solid, steady content and building relationships with your readers creates success. Forget attaching to any outcome, or looking for a critical tipping point. That type of stuff is out of our control. As the saying goes, success comes in unexpected hours.
Focus on what you can do. Help and connect. Repeat each day. Your breaks will come, whether in tiny increments or one massive burst.
Studying successes helps me realize that each person’s experience is way different. Some seem to grow into a celebrity overnight. Others, over time. The key: Using the word “seem”, because behind the appearances of overnight of perceived slow growth is the basic truth that you get what you give.
You sow what you reap. You worked hard on each blog, put yourself out there, and things have worked out nicely for you. You persisted, and you prospered. This formula is stunningly simple but many are impatient and rush things, moving forward at too quickly a pace to make any real impact.
1 day, 1 strategy. Check inbox. How many sales or subscribers? Not enough, no good, change strategy. This mindset permeates blogging and society in general. Stick to simple, because simple becomes powerful as your simple but valuable acts compound over time.
I have been guilty of this, and watch my impatient urges pass with greater awareness these days.
Keen note too on shareable content. Others can leverage your presence quickly if you write content which is shareable, and also provide your readers with the proper tools to share it. Make your content usable enough to share, then make it easy to share.
Thanks for sharing your insight Darren.
Ryan
Having been around only since April of 2011 I can’t really say there’s been any major tipping point, but the guest post I wrote for dPS back in November did have a noticeable effect on my readership and I’m looking forward to my second post going live in the coming days.
It does seem like it’s more or less a slow steady growth and I take what you said about find where potential readers are and show them you’re worth reading approach seriously. I focus a great deal of Facebook and Flickr and growing my community on that site. I stay fairly active and enjoy communicating with everyone. I dabble in Twitter and G+, but feel that those two networks offer less for a photography related blog – Although G+ has proven to be fairly powerful for some photographers I’ve yet to get much traction.
Anyways, as you said, there really isn’t a noticeable tipping point, when things happen they happen. It could be an amazing photograph that I post that people want to share, or maybe I solve someone’s problem? Who knows – All I know is that my traffic seems to be growing and the earnings from various monetization methods have improved as well.
Thanks for the stories tho Darren, always love hearing about the past from successful bloggers!
I’m new in the business of blogging. It’s been very challenging and excitement. There’s still so much i still need to learn.
My blog seems to be growing at the slow and steady pace but it is only 1 month old. I plan on having a significnat growth spurt over the next few months once I implement my growth plan. Great ppost, Darren.
Just start my new blog in January 2012. I think I need to take it easy for myself not dreaming having a huge growth in a couple of months.
I have started my web hosting package for 3 years. The first years I will focus on content marketing. I am not so dreaming on having it successful in just couple of months since I have some weakness that I have to face on.
I am a full passionate blogger but at the same time I am a part time blogger, I have limited time to blog, I am not a writer, thus it take much time for me to make a post.
I have my 1rst year plans on making contents, product review and an interview. Interview has the most impact to my blogs. I have one interview post and it spread to google+, facebook, and twitter in the first time I published, that amazing. The only problems in making my interview is not all people want to accept our offers? Let say … if I ask an interview sessions with Darren Rowse, would he accepted it? :)
The moment I talked about body confidence and published non-photoshopped images of me in a swimsuit. It wasn’t a stunt or a planned post, it just happened and just like you I tried to keep things up but it can be tricky… and people can be mean.
I think slow and steady and tip top content is the only way…there is so much talk about ‘tricks’ to get popular/traffic/followers but if the only real way to grow that is to keep them coming back for more…
I enjoyed this post, it was interesting to read about your journey
Sarah
We’re only a few months old but we’re going for the slow and steady option. We just try to do things with an end goal in site, and we’re growing steadily which is important for us. Our biggest restriction is time to write, and fit our blog in around all the tasks that go along with being parents and small business owners, but we love it, and as long as we’re growing we’re happy, I know if we tried to pressure ourselves to grow too quickly we’d end up being stressed and not enjoying the process quite so much…..
I think it is important to determine what is essential to your particular blog. Some blogs may need to have greater growth than others. Sometimes a blog author may just want to have different goals, even among the variety of blogs that they own.
This was one of the posts I was most hoping you would write! It’s really fascinating to me seeing how your projects have grown and gives me hope for my blog one day becoming a lot more successful.
I started Blogging immediately after returning from my first writing conference at the end of Sept.2011. I reached out to my friends and acquaintances first and voiced my goal of accumulating 100 followers. I reached that goal shortly before the new year!! I also started a short email that I send to these 100+ folks whenever a new story is up, and post the new stories on Facebook. The growth is slow and steady, and my goal is to give readers a taste of my writing before I get published. I hope my stories offer something fresh and different. I am also attempting to interact more with my readers, but posting a question or two at the end of a blog. I also try to comment on sites I feel are focusing on similar themes, be it marriage, kayaking, parenting, writing, fighting breast cancer, the Giants, etc., and that has drawn a little more traffic. Any thoughts?? Would love to know how other writers have drawn more traffic before they were published?? Thanks. :)
Like a lot of people who also read your blog, I’m also trying to grow my blog as well. I’ve been experimenting with SEO but have felt that it somewhat goes against my approach to marketing in general. Apart from the fact that Google cannot and should not be relied on, I’m always for leveraging and getting people to share your stuff.
If they share it around without you having to tell them to, this means that:
a. your material is genuinely useful/entertaining,
b. it’s the “best” form of marketing, that is, marketing that is done with as little effort done on your part as possible.
Great post Darren.
We share funny pictures on our blog, it came about accidentally. We setup a website on the side to see how it would go. To our surprise, we started getting good response (average 1,000 views daily). We used mostly Facebook in the begining. When we started using Social bookmarking sites – Stumbleupon and Reddit, we started getting over 2,000 views.
One day our server (shared hosting) became so slow it wouldn’t even load our website. We found out we had 13,000 visits and traffic came from StumbleUpon and Reddit. Since then we have been growing, got better server and one day we hit 133,000 visits. We have been getting anywhere from 20,000 to 60,000 visits daily.
Within this short 6 month lifespan, we have have over 3 Million pageviews, 1.73 million unique visitors and good Adsense earnings.
To be successful, you have to keep adding content consistently (we add 60-100 posts daily) – when you stop adding content you notice traffic dropping within a week. Our Facebook page also grew to over 8,700 followers steadily since. We share our posts on Facebook, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Twitter (Twitter is almost useless for this niche). You have to keep sharing your posts in channels where your following is, and you never know when your post will go Viral.
Hi Darren.
sound like a good domain name also important to make sure people believe what you’re talking about. :)
Your blog name Problogger get my attention when I first started blogging in 2009. I had been a regular readers of your blog ever since. Thanks for the useful tips.
Thanks for asking! I started my new blog just before Christmas. I created an infographic about “Our Pinterest Marketing Plan”, and an “Ultimate Pinterest Marketing Guide”. A few days later bam! People started tweeting about the infographic. It drove a lot of retweets (for us anyway) & then people on Pinterest started pinning it as “An Infographic about Pinterest on Pinterest”. That traffic sort of kick-started our efforts. I guess it fits with your sons advice to “Say Something Important”.
Your advice is incredibly helpful. Thanks.
Jason Miles
Ps. Love your video posts – they are fantastic!
Great post Darren
i think slow and steady process increase Tales of Blog Growth
About 6-7 months after I launched, traffic on my article on setting consulting fees went crazy. I realized ads were great, but that there was potential for an ebook, so I put one together. Today, my traffic is much, much higher, with about 50,000 uniques each month, but I still consider than the tipping point.
1. Contents is King.
2. BackLinks is Queen.
Follow that way to grow a blog. That’s my opinion!
Great post, Darren! My blog is already 2 years old and it’s showing slow but steady growth. There wasn’t any tipping point for growth in my case. I simply go on producing content, and it’s growing.
Thanks for sharing the post, it inspired me. I sometimes think that this growth should be faster or better dramatic and this makes me fall into despair. But… thanks God I go on doing the job I like!
You actually make it seem so easy with your presentation but I find this topic to be actually something which I think I would never understand. It seems too complicated and extremely broad for me. I’m looking forward for your next post, I will try to get the hang of it!
I would have to say it was some of the most obsecure posts that got in early on a breaking story that just never went away, but this all came crashing down in November when my WordPress.com blog which I was using got shut down by WordPress. So over the last 3 months i’ve been frantically trying to build up the traffic to similar levels, this involved being more active, following up on old links and getting them updated and re-thinking what I actually want from that blog as it was never monetised.
Focusing on being useful to readers is a good starting point. Many who want to get in on making money online by blogging have a hard time doing this though. Keyword research and SEO work isn’t always conducive to a good reader experience.
Early on it was some mentions and links from other key blogs in the niche, but I’ve had a few points that made significant impacts along the way:
1. Switching from blogger to a .com domain on WordPress (2010)
2. Starting an email list with a lead magnet eBook of 60,000 words (2010)
3. Launching the first product (2011)
4. Redesigning the website with a new logo and a premium theme from Studiopress (2012)
Each of these steps have resulted in tremendous growth that escalated growth incrementally.
Good to read your experience. I started my blog last May. I got many useful tips from you.
My blog is growing at a slow speed. Thanks for sharing your blogs tipping point.
It’s been pretty slow and steady, but I am happy with the growth rate thus far. Heading in the general direction of “up” works for me!
I haven’t had a tipping point for my new blog as it’s still being built, but one thing I have learnt is that making your blog look and feel unique is massively important, hence why i’m completely overhauling this sites them, and putting in those little details that count, have a look and see what you make of it so far (it’s still very much in the design phase, so no content just yet).
I have been a subscriber to problogger for roughly 2 years now, and I did have a mens lifestyle blog which problogger helped me with, The tipping point for me on that site was gaining almost 1000 subscribers and eventually selling it after a year for 4 figures, why did I sell it? well to be honest I sold it because I didnt care about it anymore, I quickly learnt that I was only interested in writing the topics on food, with it being a mens lifestyle site it had numerous topics like cars, women, gadgets etc which apart from food i had no interest in at all, it became a burden and after a nagging girlfriend in my ear all the time about not spending enough time with her i decided to sell, it wasnt the only thing i got from the site, a bunch load of companies like brylcreem, carlsberg, jacamo and others sent me tons of free stuff.
But like I said whats the point if your not interested? So this year is a new tipping point for me, doing it properly and doing what I want to do, and thats write about and involve myself with food. I thinks it’s rubbish when people say you cant monetize certain niches, you can monetize any niche if you do it right.
Anyway I shall finish rambling and thank you for the advice.
I had a single big month a while ago, which I continued to scratch my head and wonder why. There wasn’t anything different or glaringly obvious and was more of a one month anomaly in terms of numbers.
This month will be my biggest month since starting Naked Girl in a Dress by several thousand page views. What I am realizing this time is that it is the slow growth model and happened by consistently providing content, staying on message (writing to the theme of the blog), and the growth in social media connections for promotion. From looking at my 90 day trend, I see this time it as growth and that is sustainable with a consistent posting schedule.
I run several blogs, a few have had tipping points.
One about a hockey player (Ray Emery) got a lot more visitors and credibility when Ray himself mentioned it in a tweet.
Another one of my blogs, this one about business cards, got mentioned on Smashing Magazine and that sent the traffic through the roof.
I would say not yet :) I am having slow and steady growth which I can’t complaint about, it beats no growth at all. Considering how saturated my market is I am very satisfied with it. However, some of the tips about your Photography blog gave me a few ideas for another site of mine, I think I missed one of them to try and implement them on it.
Thanks.
I feel like I’m living my tipping point right now.
We’re just over a month shy of our 1st anniversary, just broke the 1000 mark for email subscribers (yesterday) with the last 100 coming from the last 2 weeks alone. While I occassionally do some guest posting on larger sites that bring me traffic, the last 2 months have grown without that simply between writing fabulous content for my readers and people sharing it more and more on Pinterest. I really think that’s going to be a huge medium for my blog as the site goes forward.
Monetizing has gone really well too, and we’ll break the $10k mark (cumulatively, not monthly) sometime in the next few weeks as well. Having my own product to promote + promoting quality affiliate products have been key, but again there really haven’t been tipping points there either.
It’s exciting and I’m looking forward to seeing where it ends up by this time next year!
I haven’t had the luxury of this happening to me yet (my blog is around 2 months old), but I’m seeing steady growth so far. I don’t really expect anything big to bring major traffic to my site. Still, making an effort to write quality, helpful content everyday.
I have tried several things and yet my blog is not that much popular as it should be right now. It is already 1 year and I am getting pretty much traffic to it after a year. the last blog I did techrony.com is a success. in less than 6 months I got page rank, traffic and some willing bloggers to guest post on it. I want to see how much it goes. The trick I use is to concentrate on one niche and post only related articles to the keywords.
And guys there is a thing call luck. You’ll need it.
Darren inspired me to create my second blog…it is personal but still has a social juice…
Hi Darren,
The tipping point is approaching and with your learning materials and discipline, it is going to be soon. Thank you for this post. For me, it is motivating. Thanks again and much success to you!
Thanks Darren,
It really gives a nice perspective on blog growth. Personally I feel dPS method would be best for me. Slow growth than a sudden burst into fame.
I did enjoy the benefits from developing my facebook page after participating for problogger’s facebook marketing webinar. Guest posting on problogger also helped drive a sizable traffic.
I guess the emphasis on SEO, social media presence and networking sometimes cloud your main objective of content creation and looking after your readers.
I have definitely hit a small tipping point in my blog that increased my readers by over 250 a day. I have started making a certain thing that is drawing tons of traffic to my blog, but only at the end of each month. I have also just started advertising on my blog and am so excited to say that I have made almost $60 this month alone for my first month. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot, but to me I am thrilled. A lot of people are finding my site through Pinterest which is great and link ups are so important for a small blog.
I hosted a giveaway at the beginning of this month and that brought in a lot of traffic as well. These are just small things that have grown my blog in the past month.
I love your blog!! It has been such a helpful resource.
Blessings to you,
Valerie
In my case, traffic is growing faster because there is very less number of blogger in my niche. It is Clothing manufacturing and clothing engineering. I think it’s my tipping point. In one year time, even in a unpopular niche I am getting good number of visitors daily.
My tipping point started in December 2010 when I had two websites which I merged into one. From going from two sites that had barley any traffic I went from getting my average monthly visits everyday just by merging two sites.
My second tipping point is writing one article that is now getting about 60% of traffic to my site, which is having great effects on my Adsense account. However, most of these visitors are new, but they’re not returning. So when I work out a way to convert those readers to subscribers, that would be good. I have tried a few things, but when the page they visit hasn’t really got anything to do about the site genre, it’s a bit hard.
A good article to write would be: How to convert traffic from a popular article to loyal readers.
Its really great to hear the experiences of other bloggers. I have been blogging for almost 2 years now, although I have taken it more seriously only in the past year. My plan is focus purely on writing quality content and this has seen a slow but steady growth in visits. Monetising is poor but then again I have never really focused on it except for the odd adsense unit here and there. I receive on an average 350 to 400 visits per day which is not that much. I aspire to be able to give up my job and focus completely on my blog. I think I can do it in one more year. My blog seems to have taken longer than others to achieve a regular stream of visitors but I am confident that I will achieve my objectives by the end of 2012.