8 Habits of Highly Successful Bloggers

Blogging about the topic you’re passionate about is fulfilling. It could even give you financial freedom if you managed to properly monetize it, as many blogging gurus, like John Chow or Darren Rowse, do. But, as you might realize, it’s not for everyone. Some people just don’t have enough motivation to do it. They are interested for a while, probably for about a week or two, but then their drive halted and they threw away the possibility of blogging for money. Anthony Robbins, my favorite personal development guru, mentioned that all of our actions are based on our needs to avoid pains and obtain pleasures. In order to become highly successful bloggers, you need to control, and consciously selected, what gives you pain and what gives you pleasure, until your new understandings become your habits. These are the 8 habits of highly successful bloggers.

1. Set Goals

Highly successful bloggers are able to manage their time properly by creating a short-term and long-term goals. Short-term goals could be something that you need to achieve in a couple of minutes to something that you need to get done in a couple of days. Some examples of short-term goals are half-an hour article research, 2 hours article writing, or maybe 1 day recording and editing videos (if you are doing video blogging or video tutorials), etc. Successful bloggers are also able to manage their long term deadlines properly by setting up goals that they have to meet in the near and far future. These goals could be traffic goals (I must have 1,0000 visitors by next month), subscription goals(I must have 200 subscribers by next month), or many others.

2. Never Stop Learning

Successful bloggers never stop learning, whether from other bloggers in their niche or their surroundings. They are interested in expanding their general knowledge, things that happen around the world and have their own personal take on them. They are also consistently interested in obtaining specific knowledge (information) about the topic they are blogging about. By combining those two interests together, they are able to create blog posts that are accessible (as they use real world examples and situations) and informative (as the bloggers have a deep knowledge of the niche).

3. Stay Motivated

Bloggers who are highly successful train themselves to be extremely motivated throughout the day. How do they do that? They change their physiology (body posture). They sit upwards as if they are the most successful person in the whole world. They smiled with confidence when they are faced with difficulties, problems, or even failures because they believed no matter what the result is, they could learned something from it. They use carrot-and-stick to motivate themselves, by thinking of what pleasure they would obtain if they blog (or finish other important tasks) and what are the dreadful things that would happen to them if they don’t take the actions. Or as Anthony Robbins put it, they get leverage on themselves.

4. Active in the community

The most successful bloggers spend their time socializing and building relationship with other bloggers, their readers and subscribers. They feel compelled to comment on someone else’s blogs, with comments that further the discussions or expanding the actual blog posts. They are active in forums, helping others if they are able to, or just talk about things they are passionate about. They are also readily available, replying to emails from their subscribers or readers.

5. Make schedules

Highly successful bloggers understand the power of time management and discipline. So they create schedules that fit their needs and follow them daily. They don’t want to waste their time browsing the internet or watching some random YouTube videos. The schedules could be written on a notebook or printed on a piece of paper, it doesn’t matter. What matter is the schedule allow them to organize their day to be as productive as they possibly can. They know what task need to be finished in that day and how to do it in a step-by-step manners. Making your own schedule is extremely important as it creates discipline and habits that would turn you into a more successful blogger.

6. Strive to be Unique

Successful bloggers spend each of their waking hours to be different than the rest of the crowds. They don’t want their blogs to be what the CEO of Acer, Stan Shih, called ‘me too’ blogs. The positioning of your blog is affecting your authority and credibility in the niche you’re in. You have to be regarded as the expert in your field in order to properly monetize your blog. Just look at Darren Rowse who is the authority when it comes to blogging advices with his ProBlogger blog, or Leo Baubata, with his Zen Habits blog, when it comes to productivity. All the best blogs in the world focus their efforts on a particular niche. So strive to be different.

7. Understand their Readers

The most successful bloggers spend some time to know and study their readers, whether through the Google analytics report, the readers comments in their blogs, or polls. They understand their demographic and  took notice of what might offend them. They post articles, videos, podcasts, or tutorials that corresponds directly to what their readers want. Those readers who are happy with the consistent quality of the posts would turn into subscribers of the blog, and then into loyal fans.

8.Market Your Article

Highly successful bloggers do not just sit their ass off writing the articles. They are not the type who wait and hope for good things to come to them (“Oh hopefully someone Tweet or Digg my post”).Instead, they would go and reach for what they want, which in this case mean higher traffic volume and more subscribers. They do whatever it takes to market their articles, be it using Twitter, Digg, Stumble Upon, video marketing, article marketing, so that more and more people could enjoy their writings. And thus helping their blogs to gain popularity and traffic that they need.

These are the 8 habits that highly effective bloggers trained themselves to do day by day until they are etched in their subconscious or reach their personal level of perfection. Feel free to leave comments or tweet it if you like it.

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