Earlier in the week I was asked the following question:
‘How long does it take a blog to come of age?’
It’s a question I get asked regularly, usually by bloggers who have been blogging for a month or two who are wondering how long to stick with it.
I always struggle to answer the question so today thought I’d try doing so a little differently – with a tangent (hold on tight – this could be a little freaky)….
Here are the gestation periods for some of some mammals:
- Mice – 19 days
- Rabbits – 33 days
- Foxes – 52 days
- Lions – 112 days
- Goats – 151 days
- Baboons – 183 days
- Humans – 267 days
- Whales – 490 days
- Elephants (Asian) – 645 days
As you can see – in the animal kingdom there’s a fair bit of variation between the length of time between conception of birth.
In a similar way different blogs have a large variety of gestation periods (at least the blogs I’ve been involved with have).
For some – it seems like a matter of weeks between the first post to that day when they burst forth with a flurry of inbound links from bigger sites and quickly build a loyal readership.
For others the growth is much slower and takes a long time, adding readers one by one rather than in leaps and bounds.
Of course the analogy of looking at animals breaks down when you look at the size vs days. In the list above it’s the larger animals that take the longest and the smaller ones that don’t take long – however there’s no such pattern with blogs!
How long did it take for your blog ‘take off’?
Depends on what you define as ‘taking off’?
How long it took me to start writing consistently: About 3 Months
How long it took to start seeing semi-regular comments: About 6 months
How long it took to have a solid faithful readership: About 9 months
I think I am in the first trimester of creating mine. Basically, I am getting links out there, learning how to build my content correctly, modifying my site (www.digmann.com) to be SEO, and making semi regular posts. Once these initial steps are under my belt, I think I can get a clear picture of my progress. I will keep you posted.
I’m grateful. My baby has seen over 50,000 pageviews in a short period of time. Thank you for all your tips and then some…
http://paulamooney.blogspot.com/
Did I reach the tipping point in blogging? Well certainly not. My blog targets a truely new niche here in Europe. It is about clinical depression and coping with that illness.
Blogging itself is fairly new to Europeans especially Germany. That´s why I am considering the following 2 points:
– since I started very early on this topic I belong to the first and highest ranked at google
– when blogging/blogs get more attention my blog will gain attention, too
It is an experiment for sure. I believe highly in the virtue of passion and persistence. After all I am not into it for the money, but for the fun of it. If I gain money that why – wonderful!
Since around 10% of our country´s people (Germany) seem to be clinical depressed that means 8 mio people. If I only reach 0,1 percent of them I am still in the game. :)
I love to help people and I believe that my personal message will help other people grow. I have been there where many depressed people are.
In the US, pretty much any field is somewhat crowded (on the internet). I happen to think that I can hold my own in the pack and progressively move toward the front – and the bank.
I have several blogs and write in at least one of them every day … sometimes posting two or more good posts (est. ~100-800 words) in the same day. This is governed by how well the creative juices flow on any given day. My idea of ‘good’ may not match everyones idea of ‘good’, but I think that, given enough time, it will reach enough of them. There are a lot of people in my demographic categories, but most of them aren’t posting to blogs.
My first goal is to put up good content … and enough of it that people will come back time after time, bring their friends and click on the money links on the way out. I have faith in the ‘reader / writer contract’ and intend to ride that pony all the way down the canyon.
Speaking of the bottom of the canyon, Google is accepting banner ads that display both the phone number and URL for the advertiser. I am not too thrilled with giving a viewer two ways to respond positively respond to an ad I displayed that do not compensate me. I’ve blacklisted the advertiser and let Google know that I think this shows a paucity of ethics.