At 10:08 AM on a Monday night I am writing this blog post.
I read a few posts within the last 10 minutes and commented on each post. Both comments were genuine, personalized comments. I pay attention to details.
Even if both comments wind up in spam because some bloggers have strict filters, I still published the comments because I let go the fear of wasting my time with blogging many years ago. I do seemingly insignificant, plain things for hours daily. Non-sexy things. Things many bloggers ignore. Things I may have fun doing sometimes, but other times, at 10 PM on a Monday night, after a full work day, maybe I am not having quite as much fun doing these things. But I do them. Because I learned from highly successful bloggers that top bloggers do simple, seemingly unimportant things day after day for years while failing bloggers skip these simple, seemingly unimportant actions regularly.
The Big Breakthrough
In the movie classic Wall Street, young trader Bud Fox notes how life comes down to a few moments, and how meeting tycoon billionaire Gordon Gekko is one of those moments. He saw the meeting as his one chance, his one breakthrough, and in his desperation and greed, broke a law to impress GG, paying the ultimate price by the end of the movie.
Bud Fox could not have been more wrong. Success is not about some breakthrough moment, nor is it about meeting a single person who will change your life.
Nope.
Successes in any niche know the appearance of any seeming breakthrough happens after years of sometimes enjoyable and sometimes non-sexy, even boring, work. Success is just fundamental actions taken hour after hour, day after day, in a quiet room, for bloggers.
Success is staying up a few minutes later to write and publish a guest post on Blogging Tips when failing bloggers go to bed. Even though I am nearing 600 guest posts on this blog, my intuition nudges me to write the post so I can help new and struggling bloggers understand that simply creating helpful content and building meaningful connections breeds blogging success.
Spending 4 minutes to read a post and publish a genuine, personalized comment, 20,000 times, helped land me on a billionaire’s blog. Each commenting act seemed tiny but built something spectacular for me. Failing bloggers may foolishly believe I pitched Richard Branson 40 million times over my first 7 years as a blogger, desperately seeing him as the end all, be all, a difference maker, the breakthrough creator, ignoring any other activity other than trying to impress this billionaire high roller.
Failures would do that.
I however learned that simply commenting genuinely on blogs and creating helpful content, along with promoting other bloggers on social media, for years, laid the foundation for me being featured on:
- Virgin
- Forbes
- Fox News
- Entrepreneur
I spoke at NYU because I retweeted other bloggers every day for years and formed a friendship with a blogger over many months who happened to be an adjunct professor. Not because I desperately pitched a staff member.
Successful bloggers do simple things with abundant, generous, loving every for years, often every single day. Sometimes these actions are boring or outright uncomfortable, but doing these things separates successful bloggers from failing bloggers.
If You Are Failing
You probably try to hit home runs every time out versus trying to hit a single. You’re striking out far more often than you’re landing on base. Meanwhile, successful bloggers are hitting single after single, doing simple things daily, eventually driving more runs than you and winning, all while you knock one out of the park every once in a while but strike out way too frequently.
Mimic successful bloggers.
Stop striving for breakthroughs.
Stop attaching to certain bloggers you believe will be your end all, be all.
Do simple, helpful things daily.
Lay the foundation for a successful blogging career.