3. My Name: Chris Coyier
My Blog: CSS-Tricks (http://css-tricks.com)
I think it’s successful because:
• I enjoy working on it
• It makes job-level money
• It has opened a lot of opportunities for me
4. TIP #1 Never title things like that.
Sensationalist
Poor English
Vague
List posts have incredible value* =(
* http://thenetsetter.com/blog/blogging/just-how-popular-are-list-posts/
AppStorm.com gets about 8x more traffic from lists than reviews and how-to’s
5. 10 THINGS I’VE LEARNED
ABOUT HOW TO RUN
A SUCCESSFUL BLOG
6. I swear to god I’m going to walk out of here if
this guy’s first slide is about how you have to be
“passionate” what you blog about.
9. Should be:
Your life is already largely about this thing.
Blog is extension of that life.
Should not be:
You sense a “gap in the market”
Help blog on every single Adobe product! Rah rah rah!
10. Not Everybody has a thing.
Most people don’t have a thing.
Jealous?
Work on that first.
13. You should never run out of ideas.
You should have 100 ideas easily.
Writers block is for writers.
Strategies:
Be prepared to capture ideas*
Start writing drafts ASAP (not just title)
* http://cameronmoll.tumblr.com/post/757723641/capturing-ideas-in-the-shower
Writing down ideas in the shower (!)
14.
15. Design is important.
Obviously.
It’s kind of like cheating.
A great blog post on an ugly site will probably
“do” worse than an average post on a beautifully
designed site.
“do” = more traffic, more comments/engagement
20. Google Analytics, blah blah blah.
Don’t spend all day in there.
10 minutes a month.
Only spend more time with it if you can find things to do that
are actionable.
21. My blog isn’t doing very well.
(Low traffic, Low comments, No fame or fortune.)
You haven’t given it enough time
Time = time spent on each article.
Time = time since you’ve started blogging. Has it been a year?
Your content isn’t good enough
Great articles never sit around gathering dust.
23. How do you protect against plagiarism?
(“Scraper” blogs)
You don’t. Do you want to spend all your time
writing takedown notices? Hiring lawyers?
Being mad?
No. Spend it blogging.
24. Besides, your website...
• is on a domain with more trust.
• published that article first.
• is coded better for SEO than theirs.
• is better designed than theirs.
• isn’t at risk for serious penalization from search engines.
27. HOT TAKE AWAY TIPS
One well written, well researched, interesting
article equals 15,700 poorly written, poorly
researched, not interesting articles.
28. HOT TAKE AWAY TIPS
Frequency doesn’t matter. It’s a blog not
CNN.com. Do not feel pressure to post before you
are ready. Even if some reader whines about it.
The only reason they are whining at all is
because they are used to your high quality.
29. HOT TAKE AWAY TIPS
It may take you over a year of super hard work to
have any real success, and you might never get
there. Should have been side project anyway.
