One of the most successful blogs in the blogosphere owes its success to a great story. I’m referring to Steve Pavlina’s Personal Development Blog, which has grown over the past year from 86,000 visitors in February 2005 to a projected 715,000 this month. That’s almost 10 times. Google ads on the site, however, earn almost 100 times what they did last February: $53 compared to $4,700 this month.
What’s Steve’s secret? Well, he continues to tweak his site and its content, of course, but there’s more to it than that. There’s something in Steve’s blog that draws readers. Now, his is a personal development blog, and everyone wants to develop personally. Self-help is big business. But there are other self-help resources out there. What is Steve doing differently than all those others?
He’s telling a story. More than that, he’s being the story. What you read about on his blog is his own personal journey of self-development. There are no magic formulas. He doesn’t make wild promises. Just hard truth that he himself has lived and is living.
We can talk about theory all we want. We can talk about our own opinions. We can argue over theology and philosophy and morality and ethics. We can devise great plans. And all of this pales to one simple story: yours. When you tell your story, no one can argue with you. What are they going to do? Say that didn’t actually happen to you? And they usually won’t want to. Rather, they’ll thank you that you shared, and they’ll be happy to be your friend.
-TimK
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