How I Got 100,000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits
By Leo Babauta http://alistbloggingbootcamps.com
How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits Table of Contents Intro: Anyone Can Do This ....................................................................................... 3 The Beginning: No Goals, No Money ...................................................................... 6 Early Success .......................................................................................................... 8 Enthusiastic Early Readers ......................................................................................10 My New Goal: Liberate Myself .................................................................................12 Branding...................................................................................................................13 Flooding the Market .................................................................................................15 Posting Frequently, Finding the Time.......................................................................17 Quick Growth and Digg ............................................................................................19 The Days of Success ...............................................................................................21 Ebooks and My Print Book.......................................................................................23 Uncopyright and the Spread of My Brand................................................................25 Going from Popular to Uber-Popular .......................................................................27 Lessons from Zen Habits .........................................................................................30 A-List Blogging Bootcamps ......................................................................................33 What now? ...............................................................................................................36
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits Intro: Anyone can do this
Intro
Do you dream of creating a massive blog? But your blog isn’t getting off the ground. Your subscriber numbers grow at an alarmingly slow rate. And you just can’t imagine how to get into the top league of A-list bloggers. Frustrating, right? Maybe you’re looking for that magic key that instantly sends your blog on the rise to fame with millions of adoring readers instantly knocking on your virtual doorstep. I’m sorry. There isn’t one. There’s no magic key, but ... You do need to have a coherent growth strategy in order to really get your blog off the ground and then skyrocket your subscriber count. It took me a long time to really understand what makes blogs grow. At first it was just trial and error. Then, after a while, I started to develop a coherent set of strategies that really works.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits Is it too late to create a massive blog?
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When you look at the big bogs like Zen Habits or 43 Folders, they’ve all been around for at least a couple of years. There are millions of blogs out there and more are created each day. Maybe you’ll be thinking, ‘If only I had started earlier!’ So, is it too late now? The truth is: it’s even easier to create a massive blog now than it was two years ago - if you know how to. If I had to start all over again, it might take me even less time to get to 100,000 subscribers. It’s really a question of having a coherent set of strategies for growth, and of leveraging every action. But the question is, does it take special talent in order to create an A-list blog? Maybe you think you haven’t got what it takes? That’s what I thought when I first started Zen Habits. In fact, I started off without goals, without money, and with no time. Now Zen Habits (http://zenhabits.net) has more than 100,000 subscribers—and a thousand more are joining each week. The good news is that you don’t have to be a genius to create an A-list blog.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits If I can do it, anyone can.
Intro
Of course, you’ll need to be a decent writer, and being knowledgeable about something, anything, is also good. You have to be willing to put your best writing out there, and to be a bit self-promotional - unfortunately for most of us who don’t naturally feel comfortable tooting our own horn, it’s just a part of the business. That said, I always find inspiration in reading about how others have achieved success, and in the telling of the story they often share more about themselves and how they got to where they are than they realize. So in hopes of providing similar inspiration for other bloggers out there, I’m going to share my story. It’s a good story, I think, because I’m someone who succeeded without any hopes of success, against overwhelming odds, with not much but a love for learning and for words on his side. And it’s a story with a happy ending, and we all like that, right? So here’s the Zen Habits story - my meteoric rise to success in the wild world of blogging. I hope you enjoy it. I certainly have enjoyed living it.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits The Beginning: No goals, no money
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When I started Zen Habits, I had a full-time job at the Guam Legislature and was doing freelance writing for newspapers and magazines on the side. With six kids and a wife, I certainly didn’t have time for another part-time job as a blogger. Blogging as a job, let alone a career, was nowhere on my radar. But I’d been reading blogs - favorites such as GetRichSlowly.org, Lifehacker.com, and Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project - for almost a year, and after reading a bunch of self-improvement posts on a slew of different blogs, I realized: I could have written some of these posts. I can write, and I know a lot of the things these blogs are talking about - I’d been making major changes in my life for over a year at that point. My self-improvement growth is really what sparked Zen Habits. I had changed a number of habits in the past year, including quitting smoking, starting running (and eventually running a marathon), waking early, eating healthier, losing weight, simplifying my life, beginning to eliminate my debt, becoming more organized and productive, achieving my goals, writing a novel, and much more. I wanted to share my enthusiasm for changing habits and improving my life, and hoped to help others learn some of the amazing things I’d been learning.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits
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So I started Zen Habits in January 2007, with no time, no money (I was still deep in debt and living frugally), no office or staff, and no knowledge about blogging at all. And what’s more, no expectations or goals. I just wanted to share my thoughts and what I’ve been learning, but didn’t expect to reach a thousand readers, let alone hundreds of thousands or millions. Boy, was I ignorant back then! It’s funny, because I can still remember my state of mind when I started the blog. Blogging was a mystery to me, and every day was a learning experience. When I discovered Google Adsense, and that it took nothing to be able to make money on a blog - well, I have to admit that for a second or two, I had dreams of making it rich just by inserting some Adsense code into my blog. That didn’t last for long, as I couldn’t make 5 cents a day in the beginning... even though I was checking my Adsense earnings every 20 minutes! Apparently, Adsense doesn’t reward you for checking frequently - I thought for sure I should have gotten a few cents each time I logged in! Those days of innocence are long gone. But I kinda miss them, when I didn’t expect any readers to find my blog and certainly wasn’t getting them in that first month.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits Early Success
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But actually, very quickly I started to get a handful of readers. By February—just a month into it—hundreds had found me, and it was an eye-opener. I found my early readers mostly by commenting on other blogs - just a few here and there, though at such an early stage every reader counts. In addition to commenting, the lure of riches from Google Adsense had me trying a bunch of other methods: submission of my best posts to sites that publish free articles, submission to blog carnivals, emailing my best posts to bigger bloggers, and so on. None of them worked very well - commenting was easily my top method for finding new readers. At first, though I was getting a steady trickle of new visitors, my subscriber numbers didn’t rise very rapidly, and I didn’t get a lot of comments. It looked like a ghost town, and I’m embarrassed to admit this: I asked a few friends to leave some comments, just so that the blog wouldn’t look so empty. But slowly, the conversation began to pick up in the comments, and I responded to each comment with the fervor of the host of a party that has only a couple of guests. I coddled them, I cherished them; I loved my early commenters. We were fast friends. And then something happened that changed Zen Habits forever: one of my posts
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits
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was linked to by a bigger blog. Not a huge blog, and I regrettably don’t even remember which blog it was. But it was a link nonetheless, and a good number of people read my post. Then the post was linked to from Dumb Little Man, which had like 75K subscribers at that time, and I got a flood of traffic. I was in heaven. I remember checking my stats one morning, and my eyes shot out of my head like a cartoon character when I saw the huge rise in traffic. I looked at where the traffic was coming from, and saw the post from Dumb Little Man. I can’t begin to describe the thrill. The post was Top 20 Motivational Hacks, and with the incoming traffic it soon became popular on delicious.com—which sent me crazy traffic. The Top 20 post was a deliberate experiment in seeing whether or not I could get a popular post, after reading dozens of Top 10 or Top 20 posts on other sites. I filled it with my best information, and tried to make it insanely useful, and the title and format were catchy enough to shoot it to popularity. That kind of success with one post was a mixed blessing - it was great because of the traffic and new readers I got, but it kind of made me addicted to popularity and list posts. And while I still do list posts today, because I’ve found them to be incredibly useful to most readers, on many days I try to break out of that format because I don’t want to get stuck in a rut.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits Enthusiastic Early Readers
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The audience I had in those days, though it soon grew into the hundreds, was extremely warm, enthusiastic, encouraging. I loved that audience. There were readers who wanted me, after just a month and a half of writing, to write a book. There were readers who told me I’d be a huge success one day. They were so supportive, and I loved, loved, loved writing for Zen Habits. Today that hasn’t changed, though the nature of my audience has of course changed with the size of my audience and my success. But those days... I miss those days, when I could communicate almost intimately with a much smaller audience. I still tried to respond to every comment, and email, and prided myself in being responsive to all my readers. There’s nothing like having a blog with an audience of a few hundred to perhaps a couple thousand readers at most. The enthusiasm of these readers made it a joy to write for Zen Habits, and the more fun I had, the more encouraging they became. I’d never done any writing, in 17 years of writing for various publications, that was such much fun. I couldn’t believe how much I loved it, and soon I realized: I wished this could be my full-time job. And soon I realized: maybe I was good enough to do this for a living. Maybe this was my *calling*.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits
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And so that became my dream. It wasn’t a solid dream yet, but it was a dream nonetheless. And that dream was born because of a few hundred readers—a handful of people who were so supportive, so enthusiastic, so wonderful that they made me want to quit my day job and do this all the time. I can’t thank you, my early readers, enough for what you did for me.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits My New Goal: Liberate Myself
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Once I had that thought in my head - that maybe I could blog full-time, that maybe I could live this dream - it started to take root, to become more solid and more... exciting. And then one day I decided I was going to go for it - it was going to become my One Goal for the rest of 2007. I was going to get serious about this blogging stuff. I even had a mantra to help me stay focused... the mantra was only two words: “Liberate Yourself”. I repeated that mantra every day, and it kept my eye on the prize - of liberating myself from my day job. And while that dream would come true, it’s not as easy as just saying it every day and then it magically happens. It took some dedication and focus, and I made some sacrifices of my free time. Other projects took a backseat. Instead of pursuing my second marathon, for example, I decided to wait until 2008 to do some serious marathon training (I ran two marathons in 2008). I made a bunch of sacrifices like this so I could stay focused on my One Goal. What follows in the rest of this story are the things I did to go from early success to being one of the top blogs in my niche.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits Branding
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The first thing I did was some research into branding - some reading and thinking about how the big companies did it - guys like Coke and Pepsi and McDonald’s and Nike and Apple. And I found that they tied their brand - which consists not only of their name but their logo and often a slogan - to an image that they tried to create in the potential customer’s brain. If their branding efforts worked, every time you heard their name or saw their logo, you’d have a certain image in your mind. This took a lot of repetition and a lot of consistency in their message - everything they did had to repeat this same message, this same image. And so I decided to try the same method with Zen Habits. I’d already put a lot of thought into the name - it consisted of two words that each summed up one half of the philosophy I was writing about on the blog. “Zen” conjures up images of peacefulness, calm, and living in the moment. “Habits” were the key to making the changes I was writing about. Together, they formed an image that was consistent with my philosophy and writings.
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I also created a simple design, so that I was consistent with the message. And to make the message even clearer, I created a sub-title for the blog, or a slogan: “Simple Productivity“. Together, all of these elements created my brand and the image I wanted to create in people’s minds. The key was to be consistent, not only in the design and title and slogan, but in what I wrote, in my guest posts, in the comments, in my emails, in all communication. I had to send the same message all the time, or my branding efforts would be less effective. The second key was to repeat the brand and message as often as possible to my potential audience. I did this through guest posts - which I’ll go into in the next section.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits Flooding the Market
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The big companies mentioned above, of course, use millions of dollars in advertising to achieve their branding goals. I had an advertising budget of significantly less ($0), so I had to be more creative. I used guest posts, frequently, far and wide, as my main means of branding. I tried to reach as many blogs as possible, especially those that had decent audiences that I was trying to reach. So if there was a productivity blog, or a personal development blog, or a health and fitness blog, or a blog on frugality or parenting or simplicity, I’d try to be on it with a guest post. I started simply by networking with other bloggers, sending them friendly emails and offering to collaborate somehow, perhaps with an exchange of guest posts. Sometimes I got lucky, lots of times I didn’t. Still, I persisted, and over time I was able to get lots of guest posting slots on lots of blogs.
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I added to these frequent guest posts by doing a lot of freelance writing for major blogs in my niche. One at a time, I got weekly writing gigs for four major blogs: Lifehack.org, Dumb Little Man, Web Workers Daily and FreelanceSwitch. These blogs represented audiences of hundreds of thousands of readers, in total. So at my peak, I was writing four paid posts a week, plus anywhere from 1 to 3 guest posts for various blogs. People who read multiple blogs in this sphere saw my name all the time, all over the place. At the end of each post, paid or unpaid, was my name, my brand, and a link back to Zen Habits. Slowly, this strategy paid off. I built up dozens of links back to Zen Habits, but more importantly, my brand began to take hold in the minds of many of my potential readers. Once that happened, I became *the* name in “simple productivity” and I became an authority on the topic. That gave me lots of attention, incoming links, and most importantly, readers. I don’t think bloggers should use branding insincerely, as a cynical way to gain fame. But there’s nothing wrong with some careful thinking about the image you’re creating in people’s minds, with being consistent with your message, and with getting your brand out there as much as possible (to the right audience). In fact, I’d argue that it’s very important in this day when there’s so much competition for people’s attention.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits Posting Frequently, Finding the Time
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With the above strategy of writing a ton of guest posts and doing lots of freelancing (not to mention having a full-time job, a wife and six kids), you might wonder how I was able to post with any frequency at all on Zen Habits. And that’s an excellent question. It wasn’t easy. The answer is that I learned to focus, better than I ever had before. With a full-time job and a family and, you know, a life... I had limited time for writing. But I blocked that time off, in the early morning, during lunch, and a little after work. And I learned that I had to cut out all distractions during this time, and focus, and just write. I wrote (and still write) using just text files. I’m writing these words, for example, using a great Mac program called WriteRoom, which turns your computer into an old-fashioned word processor, making the entire screen blank and only showing the text of whatever you’re writing. On the PC, there’s an identical program called DarkRoom. Even if you just use your regular old text program (such as TextEdit or Notepad), the key is to keep it simple and shut down your Internet browser. I learned that, as a blogger, there are lots of things I could do - read and respond to comments, answer email, check my stats, check my earnings, fiddle with the design
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or blog widgets, mess around with different ad systems, chat with other bloggers, and so on and so on. But there was only one thing that really mattered for my branding efforts and for the growth of my blog: writing great posts. I tried to post quality articles on Zen Habits 3-5 times a week - I was doing daily posts early on, but discovered that it overwhelmed my readers, so I learned that 4-5 was more ideal, and 3 posts in a week was the minimum. And so that became all that I focused on: writing the best posts I could - for Zen Habits and for other blogs. These quality posts were the things that drew readers and kept them coming back for more. A great post could get popular on delicious.com, draw dozens of incoming links, and get me dozens of new readers. I still did the other stuff, but not during writing time. Writing time was (and is) sacred, because it was the most important thing I was doing at the time. Still is. Everything else was just distraction. Strip away everything that gets in the way of writing, and focus on the writing.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits Quick Growth, and Digg
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The branding efforts with frequent guest posts, as well as my focus on high-quality, useful posts, paid off very quickly. I went from several hundred readers to several thousand readers in a matter of a few months. One thing that helped, once I got my readership into the thousands, was social media. I’ve already mentioned my first success on delicious.com, and this soon became a regular occurrence on Zen Habits. Every week or two, I’d get a popular post on delicious.com, and after awhile it became more than once a week. But after 6–8 months of regular growth, another phenomenon occurred: becoming popular on Digg.com. I’d written this off as impossible for a small blog like mine, based on some early attempts at submitting my own stuff (I don’t recommend it at all). When a more popular Digg user submitted one of my posts, however, I hit the front page of Digg, and it was a rush. Until my server crashed from all the traffic, that is. That was disappointing, but I soon switched hosts (I had moved from the free Blogger.com to Bluehost.com, which cost like $8/month) and the Digg effect (of crashing my server) never happened again. I’ve been on the front page of Digg more often than any other blog my size, just about, and it was one of the most important factors
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in the growth of Zen Habits. From the fall of 2007 to the spring/summer of 2008, I had dozens of posts on the front page of Digg, and my traffic went through the roof. It’s hard to explain the success of Zen Habits on Digg, other than I had a decentsized audience, catchy titles, what I hoped were really useful posts, and concise posts often in list formats that readers seem to like. It also helped, later on, when top Diggers were submitting my posts because I had so much success. These days, I rarely make the Digg front page, because they changed their algorithm for promoting articles to the front page and the change made it almost impossible for my posts to become popular, even with 200 Diggs. Also, the popularity of Zen Habits on Digg caused a lot of Diggers to think, incorrectly, that I was spamming Digg with my posts, using a ring of voters or somehow “gaming” the site to make my posts popular. I stay away from Digg these days, even though it’s still a great site with lots of great articles, because it’s not the best use of my time as a blogger. These days, my success in social media comes from three sources: delicious.com, StumbleUpon, and Twitter. I don’t measure the stats for each, but a snapshot of my stats each day shows these to be regular sources of traffic. They’re also much easier to get popular on, as it only takes a handful of my readers to vote for my posts.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits The Days of Success
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Success in the blogosphere has a snowball effect. Once I started getting noticed and getting some social media success, and hit a critical mass of popularity, it just took off all on its own. I could do less promotion and focus more on content something that I prefer to do anyway. Once I became established as an authority, other personal development and productivity bloggers began linking to my posts, began commenting on my site every day, and began asking to do guest posts. I was seen not only as a productivity expert, but a blogging expert, even if I didn’t promote myself as such. And because of this new status as an authority, I gained a lot of links, and this gained me a stronger status as an authority, and so on. Soon, people began seeking me out to write posts for their blogs, to contribute to their books, and to interview me. Authority is an interesting phenomenon. You can claim to be an authority, and write with authority, but it’s not until others start calling you an authority that you become one. I never sought out this status, but I noticed it began to be thrust upon me after a certain amount of popularity.
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I didn’t shun this status, of course. I’d be an idiot if I did. While being an authority and a blogging celebrity is something I’m not very comfortable with, I have to admit I don’t mind the extra readership and especially opportunities that come with it. One such opportunity was the chance to publish a book. Once I had 20K subscribers or so, I began to be noticed by the publishing world - agents and small publishers who wanted me to do a book. It’s always been a dream of mine, so I jumped at the chance, even if I was a little nervous about the whole thing. In late 2007, I signed with a book agent, and then soon thereafter I signed with a publisher, Hyperion, to write a book (with a decent advance thrown in there). I was super excited.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits Ebooks and my Print Book
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Around the time that I signed my book deal, I also published an ebook, called Zen To Done - the Ultimate Simple Productivity System. It was based on a popular series of posts on Zen Habits, and a number of readers had requested the ebook. Not only did I include the ZTD posts in the ebook, but I expanded upon them, added some additional chapters and forms and resources, and hired a great designer to make it look awesome. Then I published it, deciding to go with a low price-point ($9.50) because I wanted volume - the more people who bought it, the better. When I released it, I also allowed people to sign up as affiliates through ejunkie.com. To my amazement, not only did a lot of people buy the book from my site directly, there were also a lot of affiliates that signed on immediately. They made a lot of money off the sales of my ebooks, but so did I, and best yet, my ebook, my ideas, and my brand were spread to a much wider audience. Today, Zen To Done is the best-selling productivity ebook ever. It has sold tens of thousands of copies, and continues to sell to this day. In fact, it’s my biggest income stream.
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But more than that, it has been an incredible tool to spread my brand. Lots of people who had never heard of Zen Habits learned about it from ZTD, and that has grown my blog even more. In 2008, at the request of a bunch of readers, I released some of the best Zen Habits posts on key topics in an ebook called the Zen Habits Handbook for Life. While it hasn’t been quite the success of ZTD (which I think was more original and more useful), it has also done very well and has helped spread my brand. Then, at the end of 2008, my book came out: The Power of Less - The Fine Art of Limiting Yourself to the Essential, in Business and in Life. It was an instant bestseller on Amazon.com, and with it came a whole slew of publicity - I was interviewed for print publications, on radio shows across the nation, and on blogs everywhere, small and large. That was nice because I was reaching whole new oceans of readers I hadn’t reached before. The print book, and my eBooks, have been incredible promotional tools for Zen Habits. I don’t recommend that most bloggers do them right away, though - it’s best to have an audience and some influence in the blogging community before you release an ebook (or a print book), because then when you do, the ebook will really take off.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits Uncopyright and the Spread of My Brand
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I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk a bit about my Uncopyright. In 2008 I decided to release the copyright for Zen Habits and both of my ebooks. This had several effects: 1. It got a fair amount of attention, as this was something fairly new to bloggers, and my blog was pretty popular. It was nice to get the attention, but better yet that a lot of other bloggers followed suit, inspired by my move. 2. A lot of people used my content - no longer needing my permission - in a variety of ways: in their blogs, in newsletters, in handouts for conferences, in the classroom, in ebooks and print books. This was gratifying for me, because I love to see my ideas being used in as many ways as possible, and for people to benefit from them. 3. It helped spread my brand much more widely. As I talked about above, when people buy my ebooks (for example), it helps me to reach new audiences. The same happens when they reuse any of my content and link back to me. And while some people use the content without crediting me, that’s OK - a lot more will give credit where it’s due.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits
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4. As a result of the brand spreading more widely, I’ve gained even more readers and sold even more ebooks. That’s right - even though people can give away my ebook for free, as it is Uncopyrighted, many people still buy it.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits Going from Popular to Uber-Popular
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When I had 10K subscribers, or 20K, I was pretty proud of that accomplishment. I was in awe of my success and the size of my readership. Not in my wildest dreams did I think I’d ever achieve that kind of widespread success. But over the course of 2008 and early 2009, my growth rate continued to snowball. Soon 20K subscribers looked like peanuts, as I passed 50K and 80K subscribers. It was unbelievable. I’ve talked about the things that helped this snowball happen, but briefly: 1. Popularity on social media such as Digg, delicious and StumbleUpon, that resulted from my post style and headlines and large number of readers who vote on my posts. 2. A lot of incoming links and mentions on other sites because of my growing status as an authority. 3. The spread of my brand through my ebooks and my print book. 4. The spread of my brand through my Uncopyright, and people reusing my material in a large variety of ways.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits
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Of course, none of the growth would have happened if I didn’t focus on producing top-notch content. I have always tried to challenge myself by continuing to produce content that people find engaging and useful, with engaging headlines to match. This has always been the core of my success - the content has to be interesting and exceedingly useful, or none of the other things will happen. But the growth did continue, and soon as I approached 90K subscribers it became apparent that hitting 100K was inevitable. I did nothing different to reach that number but continue to produce as much content as possible. While I’d hate to be seen as complaining about success, there are downsides to having so many readers. I should mention them for anyone who is considering shooting for such a large audience: l
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I can’t be as intimate with my readers. When I only had a few hundred readers, I knew most of them - or at least, the ones who commented frequently. I felt close to them. These days, with such a large audience, it’s impossible to have that kind of relationship with my readers, and that’s a loss I feel greatly. I still love my readers, but I miss the old days too. I don’t have as much time for writing guest posts. Managing a blog with this many readers takes up more time than Zen Habits did when it was much smaller. This gives me less time for writing posts on other sites, which I miss - it’s always great to connect to new audiences. 2
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits l
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I’m a little more self-conscious about what I write. I used to have a lot more freedom and carelessness about my writing - I didn’t much care if some people didn’t like it. But these days, I am more careful, as I know my posts are going out to 100K people. This is a natural thing, I think, and inevitable. It’s also not all bad - it helps push me to write my best, all the time.
But on balance, I’m very happy with my success. Reaching 100K subscribers has been a miracle, and I am thankful every day for having the opportunity to write for this amazing audience. I’m in love with my job, and my readers. Even more than that, my blogging success has changed my life. It has allowed me to completely eliminate my debt and become financially secure. It has allowed me to achieve a dream I never thought possible before: to quit my day job and become my own boss. Now I own my own business, I work from home - or anywhere I feel like working - I set my own hours, and I do work that I’m passionate about. I never thought this possible, but blogging success has made it a reality. I’m happier than I’ve ever been before.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits Lessons from Zen Habits
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So, having plowed through my story, what lessons are there for you as an aspiring blogger who wants similar success? First of all, let’s take a look at what traits and talents you need in order to become a top blogger. I achieved blogging success because I have a coincidental blend of a number of characteristics: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7)
I love writing and am fairly good at it, having done it for almost 20 years; I know my topic and am passionate about it, living it daily in real life; I love technology and have a passion for learning this medium; I love connecting with others and do it with enthusiasm; I have a background in headline writing, at a daily newspaper; I am a reflective person; I have knowledge and interest in marketing, and have really studied a lot of key principles and simplified them for my purposes.
It’s because of all of these traits that I have become the blogger I am.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits
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That said, there are many more people out there with these and other great characteristics, and those of you who are lacking in a few of them can, with enough passion and drive, learn them. And you don’t need to have my exact blend of traits to be successful—there is no one formula, of course. But these things have definitely helped me, and if you are lacking in most or all of them, you’ll have a much tougher time than I did. Here are three main things you need to focus upon: First, as the saying goes, Content is King. All of the other stuff really helps, but it starts and ends with great content. You have to write posts that are relevant to your potential readers - teach her to do things she’s always wanted to do. You have to write posts that are extremely useful and packed with info they need but at the same time, concise and not too wordy. You need to write posts that are accessible, scannable, and have great headlines. That’s the key to successful blogging. Focus on that. Each day should be spent writing great posts, not on social media or networking or marketing or checking stats or working on ads or your blog design or widgets or the latest apps or email or RSS reading or anything else. Write great posts. That should be your main occupation, and do this before any thing else. If not, you’ll fail as a blogger.
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Second, once you’ve got the content, learn some cheap but effective ways to promote it. Networking, writing LOTS of guest posts, and when you get large enough, promotion through social media and ebooks. That’s pretty simple, but of course it takes a lot of hard work. Don’t forget to keep your focus on the content, however. Third, it’s all about the reader. When you start writing about things that are only of interest to you, or putting things on your blog to make money but not benefit the reader, or linking to things because you hope it’ll help with networking efforts but forgetting to ask whether the reader cares about these links... you’ve forgotten the reader. And then the reader will soon forget you. Everything you do should be for the reader. And you’ll be rewarded with great readers - and that’s what it’s all about. When you make a connection with your readers, it’s a magical thing. It’s something that can change your life, and theirs. It’s what blogging is all about, and it makes all the hard work more than worth it. If you focus on these three aspects, your blog will grow for sure.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits A-List Blogging Bootcamps
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I’ll say it again…there has never been a better time to build a massive blog. If you know how to do it. More and more people are turning to blogs in order to be informed, inspired or entertained. So there is a lot of opportunity out there. OK, there’s lots of competition too. But you can learn to leverage the success of others. This is the great thing about blogging - it’s not a culture of competition, but a culture of cooperation. To create an A-list blog, you need to create a community. Get that right, market it successfully, and you’ll never worry about figuring out how to “make money online” again. I can say from experience that blogging is one of the best ways to futureproof your life! Of course, trends change quickly on the Net. That’s why you need to know what’s hot and what works, so that you can put in place coherent strategies for rapid growth.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits Here are 10 things you’ll need to know to succeed in this next wave of blogging:
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1. The psychology of subscribing: know the secrets of what makes readers subscribe. 2. Why usability is a key to keeping visitors on your blog 3. How to use design to hook readers 4. How create loyal followers with your About page 5. What kind of content creates subscribers and how to write it 6. How to craft headlines that lure readers to your blog 7. What kind of images attract readers 8. How to interpret and use stats for fast growth 9. How to promote your blog: strategies that rock 10. How to leverage social media for super success Creating and writing for Zen Habits has been one of the most rewarding things in my life. Not just because it makes me money and helps me to do a job I love doing. Not just because it has made me successful. But because of the readers - wonderful, encouraging, supportive, smart, funny, beautiful readers who make every day a rewarding one. Don’t forget to be grateful to your readers. I am, every day. In this Zen Habits report, I’ve shown you the foundational knowledge and the mindset that enabled me to become an A-list blogger. And I’ll be providing you with additional free articles that will help you to develop a better strategy for growth.
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But for those of you who want to get on the fast track, I have another option. A-list Blogging Bootcamps is a training program that will show you, step-by-step, how to create a viral blog. My business partner is Mary Jaksch, Chief Editor of Write to Done, and we are knee deep in planning our first A-list Blogging Bootcamp: “Skyrocket Your Subscriber Count” I’ll be drilling down in one particular area of knowledge in every A-List Bootcamp. And I’ll give you a paint-by-numbers guide on how to implement each strategy. As I said before, I really miss the early days of Zen Habits when I had a personal relationship with all my readers. That’s one of the reasons why I’m starting my Alist Blogging Bootcamps. I want to create a mentoring community of keen bloggers. We can hang out together in the private forum and you can get some answers to your pressing questions. Yes, I really want to see you skyrocket your blog! The other reason for creating the A-list Blogging Bootcamps is that I want to give something back to the blogging community. I know that blogging can be a lonely uphill struggle. Many fellow bloggers helped me on my journey, and now it’s my turn to reach out a helping hand to those coming up after me. The A-list Blogging Bootcamps will give you all the strategies that made me a top blogger - and I’ll show you exactly how to implement them.
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How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits What Now?
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We’ll keep you in the loop about out A-list Blogging Bootcamps. Our next one should be ready very soon! Thanks for reading. I hope to have a new and exciting relationship with you in the near future.
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This ebook was designed in partnership with the smokin' design and copywriting team, Men with Pens. Click here to check out more of their handiwork.
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