Here is a quote from Paul Allen that I should be tattooed to the foreheads of all bloggers hoping to make it rich via their blogging efforts:
‘My brother Curt, founder of Folio Corp, former CEO of MyFamily.com, and current CEO of Agilix, a venture-backed company, is fond of saying telling how his company was going to be an overnight success…after 10 years of hard work.
I believe that the single most important key to success in an online venture is doing the little things day after day for years and years until you magically reach the tipping point and everyone seems to have heard of you. In other words, persistence is required for most successful ventures.’
Last night I had just finished posting on 15 new digital cameras and printers that had been announced by Canon – it was 2am – and I was just about to close my laptop when my instant messenger beeped – signaling someone wanted a chat. 2am is not my favorite time of the day to start IM conversations but my curiosity got the better of me and I opened the window to find out who it was. It turned out to be a journalist from a pretty major online publication wanting an interview (glad I checked).
I am a little fearful of the article that will be the result of the interview because at 2.00am to 2.30am in I don’t generally have much that is worthwhile to say – however the one thing that I found myself saying to every second question is ‘it takes time’. The questions were varied – but the answer remained.
• How do you build up a readership?
• How do you get ranked in Search Engines?
• How do you start so many blogs?
• How did you learn your craft?
• How did you get credibility in the area you blog in?
• How quickly can you build a successful blog?
It takes time. As a result essential qualities of successful entrepreneurial bloggers are patience and persistence. If you have these you just might find yourself becoming an overnight success – eventually.
Read Paul’s post – How to have Overnight Internet Success
While you read it I’m going back to bed – I’ve got a blogging hangover.
I once had a business providing computer support to home and small business. I spoke to many, many business owners and learned two things:
1) You need more than one income stream.
2) It takes five years to build a business to a point where you’d consider it successful.
My business ultimately wound up for those two reasons. I didn’t discover another income stream for the business, and my wife wasn’t in a position to take a job (due to having four children under 6 and the newborn spending her first 7 weeks in hospital); so consequently we couldn’t wait the five years necessary, despite knowing it would succeed if we could. After two years the business was solid, reliable, self supporting but only contributing 80 dollars per weeek to our household income, with no rapid increase in sight.
So yes, it does take time. And even after it’s making good money, it may not yet be successful. It’s not successful until you can get hospitalized and for a month and come back to find it hasn’t disappeared off the planet. Not easy for a blog.
Don’t forget that while dedicating “day after day, year after year” you may not see the results you hope for.
That’s why, for the most part, most people, even while having great concepts, do not make it. It seems very glorious from the outside, but then while in the inside, and while going through these “day after day, year after year” it is very easy to loose track and quit…
BTW: I’ve been lurking for a while, this is my first comment, wanted to thank you Darren for your dedication to helping others and for the inspiration I get from reading your blog (okay enough kiss a** ;).
Congrats on that.
As Roy Castle used to say, “Dedication’s what you need” (for any of you who used to watch “Record Breakers” (sp?)
My main site has been going for three years, its only in the last 4 months I’ve looked at adding a revenue stream to it, and the last month I’ve started to seriously look at optimising the site.
I’m expecting it to take another 18months of work to get it right, and well known enough to support itself and its bandwidth costs.
I’ve spent some time over the last few days reading old copied of create online, looking at some of the showcase sites they’d got in there, and then checking to see if they were still going – I’d say 50% have died, and the domains no longer exist.
My point – even with a mention in a popular publication, and a huge amount of visitors, it doens;t enusre any kind of long lasting success – to do this you need that steady stream of visitors to keep coming back – that tkaes time and patience to build. Overnights successes are just that – an overnight success that will fizzle out if care isn’t taken.
Yes I agree, persistence and time. They start to show after a couple of months – you just have to keep going.
I believe it is the responsibility of the visibly successful to explain that their success is the result of hard work (if that is the case, of course), day after day, year after year. Too many kids these days, including myself at one time, are part of the “hit the lottery” mentality where they think success can be had without hard work. Every so often though, someone visibly successful needs to go out there and remind everyone that people reach success through diligence and persistence.
I’ve had my blog and switched over from standard web design to blog design for only a few months (since May) and have seen reasonably steady increases in traffic the whole time. In this case, much of the traffic comes from people who are not my clientele, but other blog consultants and designers. I know that eventually business will increase as well. For now, I’m glad to have a day job.
Reminds me of the saying,
“How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.”
Hey,
Cool, I think thats the first Google Adsense for RSS I have actually seen.
Molly
PS. Google, where’s mine? ;-)
Any suggestions for my site pokerjoke to generate some income?
How To Be An Overnight Success?
“It takes time. As a result essential qualities of successful entrepreneurial bloggers are patience and persistence. If you have these you just might find yourself becoming an overnight success – eventually.”
nuff said.
Johncy Edward
http://your-credit-score-n-you.blogspot.com/
My dad said he was an overnight success.
Overnight, overnight, overnight, overnight, overnight for 20 years.
just goes to show you can get rich slow!
Excellent point to make, i am a true believer that success does take time in most cases, and is not something that you can quickly achieve.