In the online blogosphere there are millions of bloggers… the sad fact is, only a few of those will make it. There are hundreds of blogs out there with somewhat decent content, but they never see the light of day and often give up after posting consistently and then realising no one wants to visit.

The problem with bloggers online is that few actually let their personality shine through. You see, whereas blogs certainly are read for the content they contain, they’re more read for the man (or woman) behind the content. I want to know what you think, what your opinion is and what you’re doing, not some rehashed rubbish I could find anywhere else - that’s the main reason I don’t read news orientated, or community blogs. Without a personality to your blog, you run the risk of being a faceless entity, one that will be forgotten as soon as your visitor closes the page. What are the main reasons you should let your personality shine through?

Stuff on the Internet is generally repeated over and over and over again

The very fact that the niches of make money online and blogging (to use the two that this blog is supposed to be about) means that it is near impossible to come up with 100% unique content. Yes, I’ve spoken about top WordPress plugins you should use, or tips for monetization, or even milking proxies for all they’re worth - those topics have been discussed thousands of times before. Without an opinion on what you’re talking about, you risk becoming just a regurgitating blog - all you’re doing is taking content that’s been analysed before and then spitting it out in a rewritten format.

You leave a strong impression on your readers

Now, sure - I could write a post without any opinion, and just state the cold hard facts - that kind of post might be well liked, and readers would remember it - would they remember where it came from though? The average blogger reads a good 5-10 blogs a day - if you’re a university student like me, with loads of free time… there’s the good chance you’ll read more. Now, considering all the blogs read are in the same niche, and a lot of them are going to be the same topics and ideas, readers are only going to come back if they’re something that stands out - in some cases, it’s a kick-ass logo that leaves a mark; in other cases it’s the killer content that drives your point home.

While you should let your personality shine through, there are limits. For example, I’m a person who swears a lot (meet me in real life and you’ll find out :) ) - repeatedly swearing on here would not just make this blog seem vulgar, but also get rid of a lot of potential readers - readers that just don’t like or want to read that kind of language. Another thing to avoid is poor spelling - once you’re big, sure, by all means tpye leki tdis, but when you’re starting out, or progressing as a medium sized blog, you may drive people away with your poor spelling - if you can’t be bothered to spell check your content, then why should I be bothered to read it? ;)

This isn’t for all blogs - there are a few that have amazing content with their own views, but are rarely read. What can you do if you’re one of those?

Have a contest. Now, I probably come across a new contest every day - make sure that you have useful prizes though, or else no one is going to enter. While giving away a sponsored review on a blog that people actually read is an good idea, competitions that give away reviews and ad spots on a blog with an Alexa ranking of 10,000,000 are amusing, but ultimately aren’t going to generate a lot of interest.

Launch a calculated assault. Yes, by assault, I do mean attack, but remember - not in a mean spirited way. Openly bashing someone is going to generate nothing except a bunch of people thinking you’re an idiot, but a controlled attack, one that gears interest and debate is always a good thing. A great example is SEONoobs post about title tags and Internet Babel’s post on big bloggers with bad grammar - both of them got mentioned on Shoemoney (the latter on John Chow as well I think) driving a tonne of traffic to their sites and better yet, comments and RSS subscribers.

Write a controversial post. If you want to drive traffic, but don’t have the cojones to use the above idea, you could always write a general controversial post - disagree with a common viewpoint and you’ll get some decent traffic sent your way :)

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