youmakemecool_1.gifAs most of us are aware, blogging is a time consuming activity and can lead to burn out rather easily. Blogging 5 times a week, writing guest posts for other blogs, keeping up with the latest social networking, commenting on other sites, visiting forums . . . all of this can easily take its toll on you. So what keeps veteran bloggers happy, and what prevents new bloggers from giving up?

The answer came to me today. Recognition of the work you have done is the driving force behind all bloggers. Whether its in the form of feedback, comments, an increase in web traffic, more RSS subscribers, or money from your ads, this recognition is the fuel that powers us to continue blogging. For many new blogs, none of this stuff comes easily, so it’s simple to see why most new blogs fail. Since it takes a while for a new blog to get established, it can be extremely discouraging when you don’t get any comments on your posts and when you have only 15 visitors a day (with half of these being your friends and family). The key is to fight through everything in order to get over the blogging hump. Once you’re past the hump, things seem easier and less frustrating. Thats the case for me at least.

This blog can definitely relate to the growing pains of being a new blog. For a while, there was only one post about ListChecker bringing in any decent traffic. A bunch of the tutorials that I wrote for Matlab were getting almost no hits. At times, I wondered why I was still writing these tutorials. But then a funny thing happened. recently. People started visiting the site, they started to leave comments, they contacted me through the contact form asking questions. Traffic was up. I had more subscribers. With this kind of activity going on, it made it much easier to go about my daily blogging routine. I was invigorated. I was empowered. Blogging was worthwhile again, and it seemed that this blog finally got past the dreaded blogging hump of doom.

So how did blinkdagger get past the hump? In my opinion, it was a matter of perseverance and persistence. All the tips you read about how to increase web traffic such as commenting on other blogs, visiting forums, providing feedback, exploiting social networking sites, and the like are all key components that actually do work. In theory, it sounds easy to apply these techniques. But i think what separates blogging failure from blogging success is the persistence factor. You can’t just promote your site for one day and then lay off. You have to keep on it and be adamant about it. As they say, “Rome was not built in one day.” Well, your blog can’t be built in one day either.

So in order to be successful in blogging, you need to get through the trials and tribulations of the beginning phase where it seems that nothing you do has any effect. If you keep at it, there is a good chance that you blog WILL get noticed. And once you get noticed, it motivates you that much more to keep working hard because people are starting to recognize your hard work. We all need positive reinforcement at times to continue our work, and I think this applies to both new and veteran bloggers alike. Good luck to everyone in their own blogging endeavors!