Are you jumping up and down on the one spot with your Blog or are you using it as a launching pad for something else?
While I was in Washington at the Underground Online Seminar, one of the speakers (I can’t remember which one) spoke in passing about an entrepreneurial principle of always looking at what you’re doing now as a springboard into what you will do next.
As he spoke I naturally started to apply it to blogging and found myself thinking about three types of bloggers:
1. Jumping Up and Down on the Same Spot – this blogger starts a blog, grows it to it’s potential but allows it to become stagnant but doing the same sorts of things that they’ve always done on it in the same ways. Their vision is generally to grow what they’re doing by doing what they’ve always done in the same way that they’ve always done it. While this type of blogger can build successful blogs – they could be missing out on reaching their potential by not leveraging their current success to do new things.
2. Jumping from One Random Thing to Another – this type of blogger is a serial starter of new blogs. They have an entrepreneurial spirit but find it difficult to stick at things and see them through to their potential. They’re easily distracted by the next ‘big thing’ and as a result don’t tend to fulfill their potential in the current things that they do.
3. Springboard Bloggers – this type of blogger probably falls somewhere between the first two types in that they have the ability to build successful blogs and stick with them long enough to see them reach some sort of tipping point – however they’re always thinking about their next venture and are often able to leverage their current and past success to launch their new thing.
This last group of springboard bloggers usually start out with smaller blogs but use even the small influence that they build their to launch themselves into new and bigger ventures. Perhaps one of the best recent examples of this was Wendy’s recent announcement that she’s about to start blogging for Entrepreneur.com’s new Women’s blog.
My Story – while I’ve not really thought of my blogging in this way before – my own growth in blogging has really happened in a springboard type way. In brief, here it is:
First Blog on Blogger – the day I discovered blogging I started my first Blogger blog. It was largely a personal journal talking about life and being involved in a church. Readership was tiny – a few friends, a few others thinking about similar styles of church.
LivingRoom Blog – after a few months on my blogger blog I began to see the potential of blogging to build a personal voice and connect with others around the world thinking about similar things. The few readers that I had suggested I start a blog on my own domain and get a more custom made design. One of my readers even volunteered to help me do it. My new LivingRoom blog was born. Again it was on a similar topic to my first but as a result of the new design and branding it grew in readership.
Digital Photography Blog – after a trip overseas when I wanted to share my photos with friends and family I started a photoblog on the livingroom domain. Really my vision for it was a personal photosharing site (this was pre Flickr). Of course no one looked at my photos – but the camera review that I wrote became popular in Google as the domain I was using was ranking well. I began to aggregate reviews and camera news and readership grew – largely based upon the search engine ranking of my previous blog on the domain.
ProBlogger – this blog actually started on my personal blog on the livingroom domain. I was writing there about the lessons I was learning about blogging for money on my photography blog. While a segment of my readers appreciated my blog tips – others began to complain that I had to diverse a spread of topics on the one blog. I moved the archives that I’d already written and a segment of my readership over to ProBlogger.net and launched with a smallish but loyal readership.
b5media – after blogging at ProBlogger for a year or so and building a readership and profile as someone who knew something about blogging for money I was approached by a number of other bloggers to become partners in a new blog network – b5media was born. As a result of the profile of us as founders we were able to attract some kick ass bloggers to the network and have been able to scale up pretty quickly.
Other Blogging Related Projects – a series of other opportunities have arisen since starting ProBlogger including the Six Figure Blogging course, speaking engagements, writing opportunities and more. Each have come as a result of this blog.
DPS – launching off the back of my Digital Photography News and Reviews Aggregation blog I launched a digital photography tips blog – Digital Photography School. Having 10000 daily readers and a size-able newsletter list already on a similar topic a definitely helped launch this new venture. Writing about the blog here at ProBlogger helped a little also. DPS is now a year old and in the coming months is likely to become my largest blog in terms of readership. In recent times I’ve also added a forum to DPS and have had approaches to write books/ebooks and do speaking on the topic also.
Tomorrow want to continue this discussion with a few tips on how to be a ‘springboard’ blogger and to leverage your blog to bigger things.
In the mean time I’d love to stories from readers with examples of how they’ve used their blogs as a springboard (or are planning to).
