Differences Between Blogging in 2008 and Blogging in 2014

As Well as a Few Critiques

I admit I wasn't blogging in 2008. I considered the idea as a junior in college, and a friend even recommended that I call the blog, "Frog Blog." I didn't start blogging (for myself and for other sites) until 2010 and I've been blogging just about every day ever since.. Even with nearly four years of blogging experience, I learned a few great tips from "Blogging Heroes." But, there are a few changes between then and now, changes that weren't applicable even between 2008 and 2010. Here are X of the major differences between 2008 and 2014, as analyzed from "Blogging Heroes."

Monetization Through Advertising is On Its Way Out

Many of the blogs featured in the book made money through advertising, using programs such as Google Adsense. In 2008, advertising using Google Adsense was the primary and profitable way to make money with your blog. In 2014, it's simply not the case anymore. Adsense and other advertising networks pay by the click, and quite frankly, people don't click on advertising anymore. Readers find display advertising intrusive and distracting, and often don't find any benefit in the advertising. Today, to generate the number of clicks that you need to make your Adsense revenue worthwhile, you either have to publish tons and tons of posts each day (essentially becoming a slave to your blog) or write about things that salacious and juicy (or slap on such a headline for click bait). Neither tactic makes a blogger great or profitable in blogging.

Adsense and other advertising networks can still bring in some money, yes, but many bloggers today are monetizing their blogs by using a variety of methods. These methods include affiliate marketing programs like Amazon Associates, selling products directly on the site, creating a membership program, hosting paid online and in-person events, offering consulting services, and many more. Bloggers today often use more than one method since using only one method (like advertising} makes it incredibly difficult for a blogger to make enough money to live solely through blogging.

Networking Through the Blog Comments is Also Out

The spammers ruined this one. In 2008, the comment section was still a great place to start conversations, to add to conversations, and to share a link back to your blog. However, spammers have ruined the comment section by using it as a way to stuff keywords and to place links to sites that are irrelevant to the website. In 2014, major blogs and publications like Popular Science and Six Pixels of Separation are shutting down their comment sections because of the spam and the trolls. Also consider that when sites like Huffington Post and Salon post something controversial, it's nearly impossible to get your comment noticed because everyone has a comment to make. Besides, a comment section that's devolved into ad hominem and vitriolic nonsense isn't the place you want to be to network your blog.

Those blogging today shouldn't emphasize comments as a sign of popularity or as a way to build backlinks either. Only one percent of blog readers take the time to comment on posts, while many sites mark comment links as "no follow", so they don't add any SEO benefit.

Instead, bloggers today are networking through social media and in-person events. Conferences like New Media Expo and The Blog Workshop are two of the biggest national events, but smaller events such as local meetups or professional networking events can also be great ways to promote the blog. Only a few well established blogs such as Problogger and Inbound Hub manage to keep their comment sections accessible without getting overwhelmed by the spammers and trolls.

Is Technorati As Powerful as It Once Was?

I used to write for Technorati, and still can if I really want to. I started writing for Technorati in 2010, and back then writing for the site was a great thing to do. There were plenty of good writers contributing good content, and the section editors would work with you personally to ensure that you made edits to the articles when requested and to give you article ideas. Technorati's listings were used several times throughout the book as a way to demonstrate how popular or well-known a blog is, such as the Top 100 Favorited Blogs and the Top 100 Linked To Blogs (do either of those lists still exist, and if so, who is one them?)

Technorati may have been great several years ago, but is it still great now? I wonder if bloggers today care about their Technorati rankings or authority numbers. It could be that bloggers don't care anymore, as those listings have been saturated by the same 150 or 200 blogs that just switch spots among themselves. It's unlikely any of the blogs currently listed on the Top 100 are going to fall of the wagon so horribly that they won't be able to recover, making room for someone new to make the list.

Plenty of Emphasis on Tech Blogs

I understand that the 30 bloggers interviewed in the book weren't the author's first 30 choices, or were necessarily the bloggers that reflected the 30 most popular bloggers of the time. But, I would have liked to see a little more variety in the blogs that were featured. Over one-third of the blogs featured had something to do with business or tech. There weren't any political, fashion, green, celebrity, entertainment, sports, or current events blogs featured. Only one parenting blog (ParentDish) made the list and only one DIY blog (DIY Life) made the list. It would have been great to see one more blog from both of those categories since they are crowded categories like tech and business.

Granted, I don't know if there were many people blogging in those categories in 2008. Since blogging was still very new in 2008, it could easily have been that many bloggers were technology and business experts since they are the most likely people to be an early adopter of a new technology platform like blogging. It's possible that great bloggers in those other categories got a later start because they needed to get acclimated with the technology first before they would have felt comfortable in using it to communicate their hobby or passion.

LOVED Seeing the Pics of the Blogs in 2007

While reading the book, it was actually pretty awesome to go through each chapter and see a screenshot of the blog in 2007. It's baby Lifehacker and baby Gizmodo! How cute! It was also pretty swell to see what qualified as slick web design and cutting edge fonts back in 2007 too. If some of these designs and layouts existed as they were in 2014, then many of them would be too busy and not very user-friendly.

Does Anyone Else Follow 200+ Blogs?

Many of the bloggers featured in the book kept up with other blogs through RSS feed. Although Google Reader doesn't exist anymore, keeping up with other great blogs is an excellent thing to do as a blogger. But, to keep up with more than 200 blogs? How is that possible, whether or not you use an RSS feed? If you don't use an RSS feed, then what do you use to keep up without everything, since all those updates would clog your email or take too much time to do manually? I would be surprised if anyone follows this many blogs. I think most bloggers only follow fewer than 100 blogs, or only keep up with their subject areas through tools like Google Alerts.

Well, that's all I have to say about Blogging Heroes: Interview with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers. Overall, the book is an excellent read for any blogger, whether you do it professionally or as a hobby. I wouldn't classify it as a must-read since some of the information is outdated and that a few of the blogs featured don't even exist anymore. But, blogging has changed quite a bit since 2008 as well as the top players in the field. It would be neat to try to to find today's top 30 bloggers (or even the 30 bloggers in each category). It would be pretty cool to hear their stories.

3 Timeless Tips from 30 Blogging Heroes

Typically, I'm not interested in how-to books regarding blogging, social media, search engine optimization, and all the different Google tools. Those books become obsolete so quickly since those platforms and how to use them change so much. For example, there's a book about Google Buzz on the shelf at my local library, a Google service that only lasted about a year. I always chuckle when I see because I wonder who would borrow it. But, I did find a book about blogging on my local library shelf called, Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers. It was published in 2008, and the premise of interviewing the top 30 bloggers in 2008 and publishing the conversations sounded intriguing and evergreen. It seemed like Blogging Heroes would be one of those few how-to books that wouldn't be too outdated, and would still have a few awesome blogging tips to offer that would still apply in 2014.

I was right.

These Are Some Great Blogs

Of the 30 blogs/bloggers featured, 18 are still going in their current form. By "current form", I mean the same domain name and pretty much the same topic. Another seven still exist, but either have a new domain name, or the content is now found with another site (DIY Life is now part of Style Me Pretty, while Luxist is now part of Stylelist.com). The main reason why that number is high, in my opinion, is that the book featured Weblogs Inc. and several Weblogs properties. AOL acquired Weblogs Inc. in 2005, so some of their properties were added to the Huffington Post or to other AOL sites.

Only five of the 30 blogs featured have stopped entirely, where either the domain name listed doesn't lead to anything, or the blog hasn't posted anything new in several years. I mention this before sharing the tips because the sources of these tips come from the other 25 that are still going in some way, illustrating the timelessness of blogging as an art form and how to do it right.

Great Content Beats SEO

Robert Scoble of Scobleizer made this point best, and I was so glad to hear it because even in 2007/2008, when SEO was still new, the top bloggers of the time still understood the importance of great content. Others echoed the sentiment by emphasizing how quality content is what ultimately builds and keeps an audience, but I loved that the awareness existed back then that gaming the system was a short-term strategy at best.

Of course, many bloggers in the book acknowledged SEO's importance in getting found online, and paid attention to it to some extent. But, none of them obsessed over it to the point that is was more important than the content being written or offering value to the reader. No one even considered SEO more important than actively promoting the blog and its content on your own, either through networking or working with other great bloggers to highlight what they're doing.

Remember: Google doesn't buy from you! Google doesn't read your blog, subscribe to your blog, or comment on your posts. Therefore, worry more about offering something awesome and beneficial to customers, versus trying to please Google for higher search engine rankings.

Write about What You Are Interested In or Passionate About

"Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” - Howard Thurman

"Finding your passion" is harder than it sounds, and Marie Forleo does a great explanation of how to find your passion and where you shouldn't look for it. But, a great point made by Scott McNulty from the Unofficial Apple Weblog, and many others in the book, is that successful blogs have a topic or several topics that they want to share with others and simply do that. Successful bloggers write about what they found interesting, or when they have something to add to the conversation. Many people may write about something because it's trending, or because they think people like X or Y so they ought to cover X or Y. But, McNulty and Howard Thurman point out that a blog really comes alive when the blogger is passionate about the subject and has his/her heart in it.

"I Don't Decide to Blog and then Look for Something. I Find Something, and Then I Blog It."

Rebecca Lieb of ClickZ gave life-changing (it changed my perspective on blogging for the rest of my life, that's for sure) advice on how to find blog post topics and how to remain relevant as a blog. I loved this quote because it takes the weight off about creating an editorial calendar and sticking to it. I've created a calendar and filled it in with blog post ideas many times, only to look at it a week later and not feel any excitement for these topics that I spent so much time to think about. I like Lieb's advice because it harnesses the initial creativity and spark of when you see something, and immediately come up with thoughts, ideas and responses to that something. From there, you can write a blog post. The energy is there when you write the blog post, versus scheduling to write about something in three weeks when you saw it and thought about it today.

Overall, Blogging Heroes: Interviews with 30 of the World's Top Bloggers is an excellent book with plenty of relevance to blogging in today's world. I would highly recommend the book as it is a chance to learn from some of the original pioneers in the industry and practice. I do have a few criticisms and differences to point out, of which I will cover in a future post.