No matter how talented of a blogger you are, getting a blog started can be a very difficult thing to do.  This is primarily because there is still the problem with trying to get people to discover your blog.    Some people turn to social networking websites to try to drive that traffic (such as Digg, StumbleUpon, Twitter, etc.).   Unfortunately the flaw with that method is that the traffic received from these sources typically isn’t targeted to your niche and turn into loyal readers.

So, how you get good traffic to your website?   One of our authors, Jean-Baptiste Jung, recently shared how he got over 1,000 subscribers in under 2 months when he recently launched WP Recipes.   In his post, Jean explains that the secret is guest blogging:

As most of you may know, I’m an author on the popular WordPress related blog WpHacks. So, I wrote a short post introducing WpRecipes to WpHacks readers. My feedburner counter jumped from 150 to 400 in 3 days, providing a loyal and qualified readership. Having blogging friends is very important, because they can help you as you help them.

Because Jean’s new website covered WordPress, he submitted guest posts on a WordPress-related website to show off his talents.  After building a solid reputation with our readership, he then went to a blog with a much larger readership, Smashing Magazine:

I thought that if a super popular blog talk about my site, it will for sure bring a lot of new readers. So, I asked Smashing Magazine if I should write a guest post for them. They accepted, and two weeks later, they published my article entitled “10 Useful RSS-Tricks and Hacks For WordPress“. This post wasn’t an announcement about WpRecipes, but I cited my blog as a source for some hacks, and added a small “About me” paragraph at the end of the article.

As of today, roughly two months after his blog launched, it looks like he already has over 1250 subscribers using this method!  I do think it is important to note, however, that a big reason for Jean’s success is that his content is really good.   As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, guest blogging is a great way to find potential subscribers.   From there, it is up to the author to actually keep the subscribers by providing quality content.

Blogging has been pretty mainstream for over five years now, but ever since Technorati released their recent State of the Blogosphere address, there has been a strong buzz around the blogosphere and the impending death of blogging.   This is primarily because of figures showing that about 200 million blogs have been created, but only 7.4 million have published a post in the past 4 months.   As this site loosely focuses on blogging, I wanted to share my thoughts and hear what some of your opinions are.

In my personal opinion, I don’t think that blogging is dying at all.  My belief is that to many people start a blog for the wrong reasons, or misunderstand the work and commitment associated with blogging.   I would say there are currently two primary reasons why most people start blogging:

1. Get Rich Quick – I’m not sure why this idea is out there, but there are a ton of people that believe that blogging will make your rich quick.   There are of course a number of people that have made a lot of money blogging, but most people who starting blogging now will need time to develop their blogging skills and develop readership before there are any monetary possibilities.
2. Personal Blog – This is closer in line with the original intention of blogging.   People launch a personal blog where they can talk about whatever they want.   Here are family pictures, these are my political opinions, and my favorite sports team won last night!   These types of blogs don’t have any focus that would appeal to a large group of people, so they lack readership, which in turn discourages the blogger from putting time into their hobby.

I also think the emergence of microblogging has had a strong influence on people leaving their blogs dormant.   Things like tumblelogs, Twitter and Facebook status updates have become very popular, negating what blogging offered to some people.   It’s much quicker and serves the same purpose for them.

What is the Future of Blogging?

This is always tough to gauge, so you kind of need to look at trends.

1. More User Interaction – The appeal of blogging has always been the interaction that is possible with the author and other readers, making the site a conversation station.   As bloggers continue to narrow their focus on smaller niches, the interaction seems to get better.  If you look at what WordPress is doing with their acquisitions, you can see how user interaction (improved comments, polls, BBPress, etc.) seems to be their focus for the future of their platform.
2. Rise in Video Blogging – What this method lacks with SEO (search engines can’t index what is said in a video), it makes up for in personalization.   Video posts can be created very quickly with mini-rants and I think readers enjoy video blog posts because they can actually see the author and hear the emotion in their voices.  These types of sites can develop a strong following very quickly and don’t rely much on search engines to bring them traffic.    Video blogging can also be integrated into a standard blog, giving people the best of both worlds.

I also believe we will continue to see fewer blogs in the traditional sense, meaning a standard website where the homepage displays a loop of the most recent posts.  More than likely some sort of hybrid will emerge over the next couple years, which is a cross between a Content Management System (CMS) and a blog.

What do you think?  What is the future of blogging?