An Opening Statement from Blog Building Experiment
Hello and welcome to the new site blogbuildingexperiment.com. Blog Building Experiment is a site targeted at researching and refining exactly what it takes to build a successful blog property on the web. The site will focus primarily on blogs, however, it is expected that many of the topic principles discussed within will render themselves applicable across other facets of web publishing.
Looking into the foreseeable future, it is anticipated that this site will become host to a valuable repository of articles based around not only how to get a blog off the ground, but also ensuring it maintains steady growth. These articles will dismantle and discussing a broad array of topics, both technical and non-technical in nature. Whether it be setting up a domain or simply not upsetting your users, if it’s relevant, it’ll make its way here, so stay tuned. The site will also investigate what it takes to effectively monetize a blog so that you can get something back for all that you put in.
Before going any further, let’s define what constitutes a “successful blog” in the context of the Blog Building Experiment website. In the context of this site, “successful” refers to a blog that possesses the following qualities:
- Provides content that site visitors consider valuable
- Draws a consistently high number of visitors
- Rewards the owner for their work, financially or otherwise
Once a blog meets all three of the conditions outlined above, then by the Blog Building Experiment definition, it has become successful. The definition of a successful blog will vary between individuals, but this is the Blog Building Experiment definition and is the archetype around which this site’s content is to be based.
You might be asking where the term “experiment” fits into the whole equation. The answer would be “left, right, front and centre”. At the time of this statement’s writing, few of the topics and titles of the articles scheduled to be published are known. Why? Because the research is yet to be done. This site is not being launched, built or backed by a professional blogger or web publisher who’s “done it all before”. This site is an experiment aimed at determining what’s involved in building a successful blog by actually starting one and reporting back on progress as the blog evolves.
Many people, at some point in their lifetime, have or will learn how to ride a bike. It’s a skill that once learned becomes innate and can be performed on a subconscious level. But how many people that know how to ride a bike, could accurately describe what’s involved in learning to ride a bike? It is a strange phenomenon that applies to many scenarios in life, where an individual is quite capable of doing something; they just don’t know how they do it. Using this idea, Blog Building Experiment aims to capture the crucial information before it manifests into a fully acquired skill that is difficult to describe. Building this blog under an experimental model allows the process to be chronicled in a series of articles as new information about the process is obtained. Essentially, it is hoped that the experimental nature of this blog will allow any knowledge acquired to be conveyed more effectively to the target audience.
If it so happens that this blog fails in its endeavours to become successful, nothing has been lost. There will be nothing lost in establishing that an idea doesn’t work. As Thomas Edison once described, he didn’t fail 1000 times at inventing the light bulb, he discovered 1000 ways that did not work, and there was no need to try them again. After all, this blog is an experiment and experiments are all about trying something new and seeing what will happen. The hypothesis is that providing quality articles describing the process of starting, building, growing and maintaining a successful blog, will in turn provide an opportunity for a successful blog in itself to manifest. The Results… We shall wait and see.