Do Not Share: For Your Eyes Only
Written by Glen, this post has 48 Comments
This is one of the most important blog posts I’m ever going to write. It’s also a blog post I won’t share and recommend you don’t either – you can think of this post as my Christmas gift and thanks for subscribing to the site. If you’re someone who normally skims articles to get the ‘meat’ of them then please, allow yourself to make an exception just this once. You’re going to want to read what I have to say. As a quick note to save your time, if you’re reading this after December 2009, it will no longer be relevant to you. The people who are going to benefit from what I have to say will need to act quickly.
The reason this blog post is so important is because the people who take action based on what I say here literally have the potential to become the hottest blogger in their niche within 30 days. In fact, if I’m wrong about what I’m saying here, I will pay each of you individually. Anyone who fully takes in and executes what I’m about to share with you and does not notice a dramatic improvement in their blog stats can come to me for an easy $10 via Paypal (I’m not being tight, we have a lot of readers).
Overnight Success = Big Wave
There’s an insider cliche online that whenever people talk about how to achieve overnight success, they’re really talking about how to achieve success over a long period of time. What these people should be saying however, is Big Wave. A Big Wave is simply what it takes to be someone online, and what it has taken for everyone who is someone online.
Chris Guillebeau, Twitter, myself and Zen Habits (and quite a few of you reading this) all have something in common. We had our big wave which helped us to be where we are today. Chris is someone I consider a friend and an absolutely awesome blogger. He had been producing great content for months when he was featured on the blog of Seth Godin (who has over 320,000 subscribers). Then he was featured again. And Chris exploded. Within a few days it seriously seemed that every single site was talking about him – PluginID included. Chris wasn’t lucky – he provides massive value – but the ‘wave’ that Seth Godin helped him build was enough to put Chris on the radar of every influencer online.
Leo from Zen Habits had his big wave when, back in 2007, his weekly list posts were being featured on the Digg homepage. In his first year, the site hit the Digg homepage over 40 times. If you realise that a Digg front page can drive between 3,000 and 30,000 visitors to an article (usually) then you can begin to imagine how many eyeballs Leo was getting on his content.
There are two types of Big Waves:
- The first is getting a lot of press over a short period of time and exploding onto the scene
- The second is getting attention on a good resource and growing slowly over time
My Big Wave was an example of the first. When my guest posts just happened to be featured on 4 of the biggest blogs in my industry on the same day, people began to notice me. Comments were up, subscribers were up in the 700-800 range for the month and traffic was in the hundreds of thousands of visitors. Being featured on all of these blogs at once was my Big Wave.
Twitter were featured on a few tech blogs at launch, but never seemed to get further than a core audience. A few years of slowly building their audience, however, and the wave was now big enough for Twitter to get some serious attention. You don’t need me to tell you how popular the site is today.
Making Your Big Wave, In January
Now you know there are two types of Big Waves, it’s up to me to tell you which one you want to aim for is completely up to you. If you believe that slow and steady wins the race and you want to go down that path, feel free. If, however, you want to get yourself and your site out there in your niche with a bang at the beginning of 2010, then keep reading.
Please don’t see what I am about to share as some quick fix or magic tactic. It’s simply a strategy that will allow you to get your whole industry talking if you do things right. The reason this is possible is because we’re coming into the holiday season where people relax, spend time with family and do as little work as possible. If you want to make the big splash you have the potential to make, then you need to take advantage of everyone’s lack of activity and start putting in the hours.
Here’s how…
The Strategy
I’m going to give you an outline of exactly what you need to do to make a massive impact on your audience in the new year. To pull this off, you should aim to write 12 blog posts to go live on your site in January. That’s 3 per week and more than enough for you to generate some serious attention.
Try to keep a regular date for a posting schedule when you do this. For example, you could write for your site every Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Now, of course, writing 12 blog posts on these dates over January is not going to have much of an impact. However, if what you are saying in these posts is remarkable, you’re going to shine. To write remarkable posts you need time — something you can find plenty of over this holiday period if you’re willing.
Most people won’t be willing to do put in the hours over this holiday season. If you are someone who is, then there will be nothing but benefits coming your way for the start of a new year. To make things clearer, here’s an example strategy of posting for the actual month of January:
The reason this method can work so well is because most people are going to be coming out of the starting blocks in January with some slow news and typical new year resolution style content; it’s going to be everywhere. In order to stand out from the crowd, all you need to do is what the A-list bloggers have been doing all year for this one month.
Your advantage here is to realise that in January 2010 you can really shine in your industry by writing amazing content that nobody else is putting out onto the scene and marketing it in your niche. As far as what type of content you’re going to want to produce, let me share some more details.
Remarkable, In-Depth Content
Remarkable content is simply content that people talk about. To do this you need time to get ideas together and you’re probably going to need a lot of time to produce the piece. Instead of regurgitating all of the usual tips you can find on the web about writing excellent content, I’m going to link to a few of my favourite resources:
- Killer Flagship Content (a free eBook by Chris Garrett)
- 10 Secrets to More Magnetic Copy (by Copyblogger)
- The 4 Pillars of Writing Exceptional Posts (by Problogger)
The aim with the remarkable content you’re going to share is to create an unbelievable resource or articles for your readers. If you’re an entertainment blogger, it could be some hilarious comics or infographics that you’ve been working on. If you write on personal development then it could be some life lessons learned from an experience or similar.
If you know your industry, it should be easy to know what your readers want — you just have to work on giving it to them. Two examples of blog posts that I believe are remarkable here on ViperChill include:
The content above took me at least 6 hours to write and if you want to “Wow” your readers then your timescale is probably going to be similar. Remember: it’s not about how much you are posting, but what you’re putting out there. January is your chance to shine, so take it.
Collaborate With People Who Care
Initially I called this ‘collaborate with people who matter’ but the people who matter don’t always care (or matter, actually). By this I simply mean that you need to make it clear you are someone who is active in your niche and have connections with other influencers. There are a number of ideas I have that can allow you to do this:
- Interview the biggest players in your industry (example)
- Start a Face-off series (example)
- Ask the same question to 20 people in your niche and post the results (example)
- Link out to awesome content that people are producing (example)
If you can get this collaboration right, you might be able to ignore all other forms of marketing for the month. People love themselves, so if you’re talking about them, they’ll share it. I don’t really care how that sounds — it’s true.
In Summary
I’m very excited about the potential that this post has to help people make a massive impact at the start of 2010. There are few opportunities as good as the winter season when everyone is taking a break for you to keep grafting and take your industry by storm.
You can write 12 posts in one month. You can write 3 posts per week. You can make two of those posts remarkable. You can make one of those posts a social collaboration. If you can really put in the effort over the next 37 days, write the best content you’ve ever written and market it harder than ever, you have a real chance of making big things happen.
If you have any questions, now is the time to ask.
Finally, all I have to say is thank you for the support over the last two months with the relaunch of ViperChill and I’m sure we’re all going to have a lot of success together in 2010. If you want this post to stay valuable, keep it to yourself. Consider this post my Christmas gift to you and, if you feel like giving one back, follow the steps in this post and let me use you as proof of my ideas next year.
Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! I love you guys.
Awesome post once again, Glen. You keep churning out the good stuff. Thanks for reminding me to stay on track. I’m already posting 3 posts a week and doing my absolute best to make it high quality content. I’m not a big fan of the new years stuff so I avoid that anyway.
Interviews is something I love listening to and it would be awesome to get that going. I have no clue how hard it would be to get some more successful bloggers to take me up on that, but it’s certainly worth a try!
Glen!
Over the last few weeks you made ViperChill one of my favourite blogs from its niche, I guess it’s no wonder it’s growing so quickly!
I really like the idea, and while reading your article you inspired me to a few great ideas
I have one question though, if I publish a pillar article on Monday and another one the next day, won’t it affect the results of the first article, as the time that the pillar post will be on the top of my front page will be reduced?
Thanks for the great post and I hope you have a great Christmas and an awesome New Year’s party this year
Zoli
Thanks for the kind words, buddy!
Good question. A few months ago I used to think the same thing: that you should give posts a day or two to ‘marinate’ and get the most attention. Then for a few weeks in a row I tried posting on consecutive days and traffic was higher than ever.
I think it gives you a ‘boost’ for the beginning of the week in terms of eyeballs.
That’s really interesting. I had the same question as Zoli. Well, I’m going to follow your advice of posting on consecutive days.
I’d love to follow your 37 days strategy but I have my final exams both on January and February. But I will use your idea when I finish them.
Great article Glen,
Merry Christmas and happy new year to you buddy
Haha I just noticed “interview with the biggest players in your industry” points to….
:D Interview with Glen Allsopp 
What a modest gentleman lol 
JK
I actually just wanted to link to Oscar, because I haven’t done so yet
Great tips, Glen… and quite specific. Feel free to use me next year.
This is so true. I had already planned on getting my next site up and running at the beginning of the new year but it is cool to now have a strategy going in. I also think the new year point is big because many of the top blogs, particularly in personal finance, have started in that January to February timeframe.
Those were some great tips. I need to write more indepth articles. Thanks Greg Ellison
Great post, and very empowering. Way to go.
As for me, yes, the endorsement from Seth definitely helped a lot. I’m extremely grateful.
However, it wasn’t only that endorsement – around the same time, I was fortunate to get a number of other endorsements and press mentions (New York Times, CNN, etc.). The collective impact was more significant than any one source (even an amazing source like Seth). I should also mention that my readers were tremendously helpful in spreading the word as well.
And of course, before that time, there was a lot of work that went into creating a sustainable structure for the site, including a number of behind-the-scenes things that many people new to the business don’t realize.
But yes, overall I completely agree with this strategy. You’ll certainly be way ahead of 95% of bloggers by adopting it in full.
Good luck to you and everyone!
cg
Hi Glen,
This is the exact motivation I need to write some quality posts over the holidays and schedule them for publication during January. You’re right – everyone and their dog is going to be writing about New Years resolutions soon and how they think this time will be different. Hopefully, the topics I (have yet to) choose will stand out from the crowd and help my readers more.
Karen
Awesome article. I am ecstatic for the new year now that I have a plan and vision in place. Thanks! My only concern is that my niche is very small (women in religion). Do I have a chance at cranking out even decent numbers with this formula? Or should I adjust my expectations based on my niche? Thanks again. I love following ViperChill!
Thanks for this. I’ll certainly give it a try. I’ve got ideas bubbling up already.
Glen, Thanks for the stellar information. It seems to be a very valid strategy and I will definitely put it to the test, but if I come back in a month and have put forth the effort and achieved no results, I am afraid your gonna be out $10.00.
Cheers and thanks for the early Christmas present.
Excellent Glen, it’s always nice when someone can write it down in simple terms. Btw my wish list includes you becoming my link juice daddy for 2010
Happy holiday, and once again thanks for the brilliant, thought provoking copy!
Thanks Glen
I was having a slow and tired morning after finding out my stats are down and this post gave me inspiration to write one or two killer posts on my new blog
Andy
Time to get to work…and create. It’s actually a great opportunity to come up with some really cool stuff but that takes creativity
Nice post Glen. I decided to get in early this year and create content for December-January earlier in the year so I didn’t have to work as much. Im sure ill still be hustling on Twitter though
I’ve made the effort to contact bloggers and influential people in certain areas, but the people have either not responded or they never followed through. I made follow up emails and had to give up after months. It’s actually sad but I learned a few things from that experience.
I’ve been working on content and I am dying to make the time to finalize certain things. I need someone to convince my financee that if I could work on this full time, I would succeed. I battle from depression and get in horrible spaces of negative thinking – 2 steps forward 3 steps back. yet I had a month off work and it was the most amazing month of my life. Yet back at work, so bills are paid and I am in a depressed space again. I often think to do things that would make me get fired so that I now have an excuse! and she can’t blame me. I guess I could quit and say I was fired.
I am meant to be doing this work and I feel I could help people like me. I just can’t do anything while in it. I can’t say to follow your dreams while still be stuck in a cubicle doing what I hate. I don’t even know if this comment is related to the blog post anymore.
Great post either way!
Scott
Scott,
Getting fired isn’t the answer. You’ll just be poor along with being depressed. Finding out what would make you happy and concentrating on that, will.
I can appreciate what you are going through. I started blogging back in 2005 and had to stop after 2 years since I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to blog about motivation and inspiration, especially as you say you can’t walk the talk. My advice is to keep at it for few more months and see if the action of writing down your thoughts and reading inspiring articles helps you and your depression. If they don’t after a few months, then you may want to take a break from your public persona and concentrate more on your mental health. The internet will always be here
I hope 2010 is a great year for you.
Karen
Hey Karen,
I agree with getting fired isn’t the answer. I want to walk away on my own terms and it gives me a story for the backup plan of applying for jobs if things don’t go as planned. I took the initiative and risk to see where it goes and may need help with some income in the future. I have done so much for my depression and everything leads back to my worklife in the office – I’ve got pros and cons and I feel I am making a decisions thats been on my mind for 2 years.
I took a step back for a month – off work – and I didn’t veg out – It was some of the most amazing time to produce ideas and decompress form the cubicle mindset. I felt myself coming alive again, and having the time to then meetup with people.
Hope to see you around here more. Thanks!
Scott, there is certainly no reason why you can’t finalising things on your blog now. Why wait? You don’t really need anyone at this point in time.
Get your content together and show the ‘contacts’ what you can do. Maybe they’re waiting to see an example of your endeavours and results of what you can actually acheive on your own steam. One can’t say ‘Here’s my portfolio’ without something to actually show. You also need to convince them that you’ve got initiative, knowledge they’re after, and staying power. (Which I’m convinced you have, after visiting your site).
I’m not one in the position of the people here. By that I mean I don’t earn from my blog. I don’t quite know how to start. However, I’ve got years of fantastic material I’ve put together just because I want to help and motivate people. I’ve got columns of thousands of pounds worth in advice I’ve given out for free.
If I contacted someone for help, I’d have these to show them an example of not only what I can do, but what I have done. You’ve got amazing content and a professional looking blog.
You can do the same. Then you’ll have a story to tell your readers of how you started and managed to inch out from behind your desk bit by bit. That alone will give you 20 blog posts. People will take notice of this.
When you get back to your hated cubicle, at least you’ll have peace of mind knowing that as soon as your foot leaves the pedal, you’ll be doing what you’re really meant to do. This will make all your days go faster.
Happy holidays, and happy blogging.
Thanks Anne! I totally see what you’re saying. I really want to tell my story and I feel I can’t fully because of work at the same time. I couldn’t sleep last night at all and I’ve devised a back up plan incase things don’t work out as optimistic as first desired.
It’s one of those things that will never happen unless I take the bull by the horns. I appreciate your reply and advice!
Happy New Year and Happy Blogging
I can’t add anything better than the two ladies before me, so I just want to share my thanks for having such an awesome discussion here.
You guys rock!
A post full of actionable content that will most likely deliver amazing value to those who followthrough on it.
Let’s see if I can be one of them.
Thanks Glen.
You’re very welcome Carl.
If you want to, you can make things happen.
Great post Glen! What’s funny is that I let my blog go by the wayside, however, what my handful of readers didn’t know was that I actually had more than 20 well-written and information posts in draft mode just waiting to be published.
I decided to cease all private client work a few weeks ago in order to work on my blog because I believe its really a tool that aligns with my overall passive income and one-stop resource goals. Thanks to this post, it further motivates me to do a few things differently in the new year.
Hey FC,
Great to see you over here again. That’s definitely an interesting strategy and one I hope pays off for you.
Glen,
I found this site by accident but this article is GOLD. I’m glad to have found this site and will keep it on my radar. You have excellent content and I’ll definitely implement these strategies. Also, the resources in this post are awesome. There are so many blogs out there, it’s hard to discern what is the quality content. I can see why you have a great following and I’ve added myself to your list. Take care and Merry Christmas and happy holidays. Patrick
Hey Glen, thanks for this awesome guide! I’ve reflected on how I fared with blogging this past year. It’s disappointing really. But I’ve learned the lessons. I’m working on a project right now, which I plan to launch in January. I can certainly use the strategy you put here in making sure this new project takes off!
Looking forward to more awesome stuff from you.
Mighty
Hi Glen,
As always – super stuff! Going into year two and have a plan tucked in under the keyboard and will do another review to include your points.
Question: What would a successful blogger look at before accepting to be interviewed and/or participate in a face-off (love that idea) on a blog?
best………….valentina
This post is what convinced me to start my blog, before it was ‘perfect’, before I had money to spend on a host or a domain. And I’m happy I started it, I hope to get a great start in 2010 and I’ll definitely be using what you say in this post.
Thank you so much for giving me that push forward. I needed it.
Wow Glen,
You are truly an amazing human being! I am just starting my blog so your timing for this post couldn’t have been better for me! Thanks again for sharing your value to those of us that are interested in this sort of thing! I wish you a wonderful, safe, and prosperous new year!
Glen, your passion’s in full swing here! I’ve always believed it’s your genuine desire to help people and your simple, direct no BS approach that wins everyone over — as it should.
Happy Holidays!
To a fantastic 2010!
Great post Glen. And to think I was thinking of relaxing a bit over the holiday. I was thinking about how to market my site over the next year, so this was timely. Thank you and Happy Holidays.
[...] frequency is desired but a posting strategy is a whole new level to the [...]
Glen, what’s so great about you is you know how to dumb youself down to my level. So many “techies” don’t understand how to teach. You are without a doubt the best blogging teacher on the web. “Cloud Living” was amazing and gave me the hands on info I needed to get my blog off the ground, and you continue to pump out content that makes my head spin. 2010 will be a great one indeed!
Hey Glen!
I got to this post a little late, though I’ve been writing my great content on this break because I forced myself to by resigning my job earlier this month.
I love the plan, I’m working out my great content now, editing and revising a lot of items!
Thanks for this plan!
Thanks Glen for the wonderful, inspiring article! This really said it for me: “Your advantage here is to realise that in January 2010 you can really shine in your industry by writing amazing content that nobody else is putting out onto the scene and marketing it in your niche.” Brilliant.
I’m a bit late for the party. I was thinking about how everyone is doing nothing in this period of the year and I’m glad I’ve found your article. I’ll be following this plan and see what happens. Thanks a lot also for the link
If I wasn’t a subscriber already, I’d definitely subscribe after this great post!
I’ve sent a link to the students that took part in the last A-List Blogging Bootcamp that Leo Babauta and I ran. Thanks for a great resource!
Hi Glen. I’m throwing my hat in the ring for this one. There’s a new blog I’ve been planning to launch and since reading this a few days ago I’ve been focused on preparing my first 12 posts. The more I get done the more excited I am to take them live. Thanks so much for the great content you keep churning out and Happy New Year!
I learned three new things I can do to improve my blogness. Great content!
Excellent post! Definitely a must read for any blogger out there. Too bad we can’t share this
I just found your blog today and immediately added it to my A-list. Indeed, a good read is hard to find at this time of the year.
A great post and gives me a bit of a lift knowing that it can be quite simple to have a really successful blog… of course that all depends on content.
Thanks
Great article. I guess what it all comes down to is two things: producing great content AND collaboration. You really can’t have one without the other. Great content without promotion doesn’t get you far. Great promotion without great content… same deal.Thanks for the concrete examples on collaboration (really helps). There is one more thing, consistency (which you refer to in many other posts). This post isn’t just about what to do in January, but in each and every month. Am I right?
Hey Stephen,
Awesome to see you here!
The people who go hardcore at this (i.e. 6-8 hours per awesome article) could make a huge change in January. If you can keep it going, then even more power to you.
That’s pretty much the reason I’m only focusing on a couple of websites now: provide the most value and keep it consistent.
Thanks for sharing the success tips to improve site subscribers and popularity.