What Are The Key Components Of A Successful Blog With Staying Power?

When you set out on the adventure of creating a new blog, there are a lot of things that go into making the site successful. If you fail at any one of these things it could stunt the growth of your blog, or in the worst case scenario – kill it all together.

Here’s a list of things that I believe you need in order to succeed.

Components To A Successful Blog

In order to create a  successful site, you need a person with..

• A passion for the subject matter:  Without it, you’ll end up burning out extremely fast, and your blog WILL die.
• Interest in and enjoyment of the process of blogging:  If you don’t enjoy the process of researching topics, writing a post and promoting it, you probably won’t last long.
• Plenty of free time:  Blogging, promotion, networking and all the rest of it takes a lot of time. It will become a hobby that consumes much of your free time.
• An interest in networking and working with others:  You need to be able to work well with others, accepting advice, selflessly promoting their content, and networking with them to promote yours.

To have staying power, you need to have…

• A strong will to succeed and a source of motivation:  You need to be a self starter who is able to get motivated to write a post on days when you don’t always want to.   You need to have a source of motivation whether it is educating others, having your voice heard and making a difference or making money.
• You need to make money:  As the linked post talks about, money is a big motivation to keep blogging, even when you may be going through a dry spell.  Without it, the bloggers who have “passion” just may not have staying power.
• An ability to multi-task and delegate when possible:  You will need to do several things at once – and when necessary – delegate tasks.  You may  even pay others to write for your site or to promote your content if it makes sense.
• The ability to step back and take a break:  Sometimes you just need to take a break – whether it means posting less one week, or taking a couple of weeks off.  If you don’t, you’ll burn out fast – and crash and burn.
• The ability to think strategically:  You need to be able to figure out what is working, what doesn’t, and what activities give you the best return for the money.
• A willingness to change things that aren’t working:  If what you’re doing isn’t working, be open to constructive criticism and making necessary changes.
• Goals: You need to constantly be trying to improve, and setting goals for yourself and your blog.  Without goals, how will you know when you’re succeeding?

Those are a few of the things I think are important to success in the blogging world.  While it isn’t an exhaustive list, it hits some of the major things.

What are some things that you think are important to creating a successful blog? Tell us in the comments!