The Secret To Blogging Success?

I wish I could tell you the secret to blogging financial success, and all you would have to do is follow my plan and you would become a world famous blogger and make all kinds of money. I wish I could tell you that, because that would mean that I would be rich and famous as well.

However, wishing is nice, but it doesn't seem to make much money in terms of blogging. Trying to make a living, or even some extra money from a website, blog or series of blogs is a great deal of work. And a great deal of time and effort. And the returns, except for the very few, are small. The secret, is to find the secret of the few rich and famous bloggers and try to be like them.

I know a couple by name, but I don't want to name them, at least not yet. For one thing, I don't know how rich and famous they are, and for another I'm not sure everyone can do what they are doing. It takes some special ability and knowledge, perhaps even some advance website skills on top of writing ability to do what they are doing. If you have that, you certainly don't need me....

My other reason, is I don't want you to leave me, at least not yet and go to them....pretty self serving of me isn't it? Well not exactly, depends on what you want I guess. I am trying to write posts that are simple and practical and give you something to think about in your quest for blogging riches.

I am also trying to develop my plan with your help, even if it is one sided. Everytime I write a post in this blog or one of my other blogs, I learn something, and I hope you learn something.

I will be honest. I am the least technical person, perhaps on the internet. In all likelyhood I am the least technical person who is writing, designing and producing over 30 blogs, about several topics. Some targeted, some not so much. And as of this post I have about 1100 blog posts to my credit. (not blogs, posts, stories etc) That is a lot of writing since I began blogging a little more than 2 years ago.

I've also managed to find about 130,000 readers to read at least one of my posts. Or I have found one reader who read my posts 130,000 times....Now you know why I haven't posted here too much. I have been off doing the research.

So what has 1100 blog posts taught me? It's taught me about writing, about gathering story ideas, it's taught me the value of a plan and the old axiom, plan your work and work your plan. (More about that in another post.) It's also given me a fairly good idea about what works and what doesn't, and I have figured out most of the affiliate and advertising programs available for bloggers and webmasters.

In closing, as this blog is getting too long, I have come to some conclusions.

The first is that I love to write, and writing and being read is ultimately more important to me in terms of personal growth and satisfaction. Secondly, I have learned that making money online is difficult to say the least, but not impossible. Thirdly, after 30 years of working at other jobs, I have found one that I truly love, if only I could make a living at it.

Blogging is a lot like celebrity, like acting or being a rockstar...many try but only a few succeed. Actors don't have the amount of competition in terms of sheer volume of other actors, that bloggers have, and look how many of them are out of work.

I know I said I was closing, but I have one more point to make. In order to reach success blogging, or with anything for that matter, you have to decide what success means to to you. Is is money? Is it readers? Is it just a place to exercise your creativity? Or is it all of those things?

For me, I started out figuring I had something to say, and just wanting to write it somewhere others would read it. So I started The View From Silverhorn Mountain. Which was really without any thought about money, or advertising revenue or selling anything. It was all about the writing.

Then, somewhere along the way it became a quest for money. But in hindsight, not really because I wanted money, but because making this pay would give me the abilty to do what I really want to do, which is write more blogs for people to read.

I know now why writers have agents to look after making the money. They want to write. Making the money takes a lot of effort and time away from writing. Let's leave that one for now, and talk about it in another post.

So, there ya have it. Technically, I am a paid writer, as long as no one asks how much I make....

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