So I’ve been blogging for almost 6 years now….. (the first big chunk at my personal site Those Crazy Schuberts).
At what point have I ‘made it’? Sure, I have more readers now, I have a stronger blogging schedule and I even have some products to sell now….
… but what really constitutes blogging success?
Are y’all bloggers? If you’re not a blogger – imagine the word ‘business’ or ‘big craft project’ instead of blog throughout this post. Same principles apply for any creative work you have.
I guess what we really have to focus on is WHY.
Why are you blogging? Why do you make the time every week? Why do you want people to read your blog?
What is the goal? Is it building an income? Is it simply influence and popularity? Or is it something distinctly tangible like a book deal?
Traffic is nice, but what does it do for you? Is it more important for you to have thousands of eyeballs every day on your just-for-fun blog, or to have only a few hundred that help you pay the bills?
What is the MINIMUM that needs to be done to make you feel like you’ve accomplished something?
And finally, what metric are you using to measure that?
I don’t have the answer for you.
I have the answer for ME.
My goal is to build Lemon and Raspberry into a full-time job. Which means I measure income, I keep track of my return on investment, and I don’t freak out about my Google Friend Connect number.
If we’re talking about your etsy shop – maybe your goal is to get to 30 sales each month. If that is the case you would of course keep track of how many sales you’re at now, maybe keep track of your best customers and learn how to write better sales copy for your listings.
These are of course just examples, but I encourage you to take a look at your blog, your business or your other on-going creative project and really focus on the ONE goal, the WHY you are doing all that creative work.
You’ll never know if you’re succeeding if you don’t know what success looks like.
So, what about you? What are you working on and what makes you feel like you’re making progress on it?
P.S. For another example of how to measure success, have you seen Moneyball yet?
P.P.S. For help building your blog content for the readers you want, check out my Better Blog Content workbook – complete with nearly 100 pages of resources, actionable steps and easy ideas for improving the content you post day after day.
At the moment I’m still at the stage that if I get 1 comment on a blog post then I’m a happy bunny – if I get 2 or more then I’m flipping ecstatic lol. I take part in a 100 Word Challenge which means that I get like 5 or 6 comments on that one post – which kind of throws the metrics out the window.
I wrote a blog post about two years ago and because I used some images from Google I regularly get my blog post pinging up in searches but people arrive on that one post take a look and leave again – so I some how need to extend it so that they land on that post and then read others and stay a while.
Also on my mind at the moment is about changing my layout – is it too colourful? is it too dark? does it work as a whole? Yes being in my head is like a merry go round!
I’m focus my blog on design. Mainly fiber (crochet) and fabric (sewing) design. For crochet I want to show a fashionable side of it, allowing the reader(s) to stretch their imagination of what it could look like. For sewing I want to teach how easy it is to do, fun projects, easy techniques, fashionable outcome. Of course my blog is also for my shop…designs and patterns.
Theres been about 2-3 years of me struggling with trying to find my voice in the blog world. I felt divided in to what I was trying to represent. I finally took a step in the right direction by purely viewing my blog as part of my business. it was a mental step really. I was for awhile deciding on whether I should give it up. Now I thin I’m ready to make a smoother transition to being in the blog world.