How Long Does It Take to Get Blog Readers?

How to Blog a Book by Nina Amir

The following advice is excerpted from How to Blog a Book by Nina Amir, recently released from Writer’s Digest Books. Aside from describing in detail how to launch and maintain a blog to ultimately land a book deal, Amir’s book offers a range of valuable interviews with successful bloggers who succeeded in doing just that. Here are their insights into how long it took them to get readers, and what seemed to be a turning point in the life of their blog.


Pamela Slim, Cubicle Nation blog

“It took about a year to develop a steady group of readers. It was very slow at first, but I found great joy in writing so I kept producing posts. One big tipping point for me was getting featured on venture capitalist and author Guy Kawasaki’s blog in May 2006. He was extremely influential in my target market. When he featured my post An Open Letter to CEOs Across the Corporate World on his blog, traffic and subscribers exploded. After that exposure, my growth was quicker and supported by influencers like Seth Godin, Kathy Sierra, and Hugh Macleod.”

Reggie Solomon, UrbanGardenCasual.com

“It took me about two years to build an audience. … Engaging social networks definitely helped. I opened groups on Flickr for people to share photos of their urban gardening and tomato adventures and honestly forgot about the group I’d set up. I was utterly surprised in checking my Flickr page a year later to find hundreds of people were submitting photos to my groups regularly. A similar occurrence happened after setting up my Facebook and Twitter pages as well. … We may all wish for a silver bullet to bolster readership, but it’s less a case of scoring a home run and more a case of getting singles on the board.”

Brett McKay, The Art of Manliness

“The site took off fairly quickly after I started it. The very first post I wrote, How to Shave Like Your Grandpa, got picked up on Digg and Reddit, which brought in a ton of traffic. (This was back when getting on the front page of Digg was a huge deal).”

Martha Alderson, The Plot Whisperer

“As soon as other writers started blogging about the help I provided them through my first book, Blockbuster Plots Pure & Simple, plot consultations, conferences, workshops, and retreats, my readership began growing. Writer’s blogs and websites bigger than mine, like The Daily Coyote, The Writers Store, and NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), started linking to my website and continue to send writers to the Plot Whisperer blog today. Writer’s Digest magazine awarded the Plot Whisperer blog the honor of a spot as one of the 101 Best Websites for Writers for three years running and directs new visitors to the blog each year.”

Christian Lander, Stuff White People Like

“It took about three weeks to go from 100 hits a day to 30,000 hits a day. From there it blew up to hundreds of thousands of hits. The day it exploded was the day it was featured on Comedy Central’s Insider. Truthfully, the traffic from major media outlets was nice, but sites like StumbleUpon always added more traffic than any traditional media source. So while big media can start the spark, it’s people sharing the posts over social media that causes a blog to really grow.”

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Turndog Millionaire

Some great examples of success. Always good to hear other people hitting the big time. makes you think: it can happen to me too 🙂

Matthew (Turndog Millionaire)

Turndog Millionaire

oh, and just to let you know, the How to Blog a Book link at the top of the page is broken

heads up

Jane Friedman

Thanks, Matthew! All fixed.

Nina Amir

Matthew,

Thanks for the comment. Just so you know, it can happen to you. My platform (readership) was not as big as theirs, and I landed a deal with a smaller (Writer’s Digest Books) publisher. They looked at the fact that I had several blogs with consistent readership and my blog (www.howtoblogabook.com) was growing and had #1 Google search engine results page status–among other things. I just ran into two Wiley editors who said they are always looking for bloggers and blogs… Yes, your blog could be next!

Here’s that link: http://amzn.to/howtoblogabook

Nina

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khaalidah

Thanks.  This does give me hope.  That said, like Ms. Slim, I’m mostly having fun, although the pressure to create lively content can often challenge me.  Its the fun part and also the community I build with other authors that keeps me interested.

Nina Amir

Don’t try so hard to be “lively.” Just be authentic. Write about the thing you feel most passionate about and most inspired by. You might feel less pressured. That said, if you are blogging a book, you’ll want to have a content plan and that can impose a different type of pressure. You can, of course, stray from it if necessary or create a blogging plan that allows you to pursue your passions on different days.

khaalidah

Thanks Nina.
This is awesome advice.  You’d think it’d be easy, right?
I think I’m building the bravery to show my authentic self, which can be a very mixed bag.  I guess that’s not much different than most people though, right?

Nina Amir

Nope. It’s a mixed bag for all of us, but that doesn’t mean you have to show all your warts. :~)

Ed_Cyzewski

I like the analogy about hitting singles and not always going for home runs. Sounds  like the MoneyBall of book publishing! That may be the biggest mistake rookie bloggers and authors make. I know it was mine!

Nina Amir

Yes, we can’t all hit home runs. But if we hit enough singles, someone will notice our ability. Thanks for your comment.

Lena

Success doesn’t come easy, that is what these experiences tell us. It took me less than 6 months to get steady readers to my blog. However, I realizes building traffic for my website  is going to take oodles of time. 

Nina Amir

 Lena,

It didn’t take me that long to get a fairly steady flow of readers to my blog(s) either, but building that up has taken much longer. There does seem to be critical mass type of thing that happens. Now my Unique Readers grow by larger amounts each month.

I blogged my book in just 5 months; that wasn’t enough to gain a large readership. I believe it takes more posts over a longer time period or a lot of posts over a shorter period. Some say 1,000 posts is the tipping point.

San0670

Thanks for sharing the encouraging news; I think it is about consistency, dedication and loving what you do as a writer irrespective of the monetary gains. I just landed a contract for my first work of fiction and I remember being told unless my name is “Clinton” or “Trump,” it is impossible to get a book deal but despite the negativity I pressed on and eventually, I realized my goal.

Nina Amir

 Congratulations! You are so right. You must be very persistent, dedicated and refuse to fail. Today I was at BEA and had the chance to pitch to the very first publisher — the actual person — to whom I first sent a proposal for my very first book idea. At the time he had told me “he’d been waiting forever” for that particular book, but he turned it down anyway and never told me why. After bringing up the topic two or three times, he told me to send him the original proposal again! At the time I had no platform. No I have one and I have a book published in another category. I kept on going determined to get published no matter what. I’m so excited what you have succeeded. So much of become an author is about attitude.

Live2Dive

Very Inspiring.  Having just returned to the blogging world, I have reserved my copy of the book at my local book seller and will be reading through it this weekend!  Now, I just need to find where my platform went…

Nina Amir

 It’s right where you left of building it…possibly missing a few nails, but you can put them back in. Good luck, and thanks for purchasing my book. Hopefully it will help you strengthen your platform by blogging a book.

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[…] part of your marketing strategy is likely a blog of some kind. Nina Amir answers the question: How long does it take to get blog readers?, while Edie Melson explains how fast your blog should grow. And no matter what you are doing online […]