NOWSOURCING

I’ve been asked before how you know when your blog is successful. That question means different things to different people.

Here are my thoughts on how you can measure the success of your blog:

Others appreciate your posts. For me, the fact that someone found my blog and asked to think that means that my blog is successful.

Ability to share expertise in life / business experiences. Writing about something that you believe in and sticking with it may be enough for some. But to give that knowledge over to someone else is another level of success.

It makes you money. Making money online is a great thing, and making money writing about what you love in a blog can be incredibly satisfying. Unfortunately, the majority of blogs don’t make much money.

Pronet does a good job detailing out a study by the University of Texas and Chikita in showing that the top 50,000 blogs generate $500 million (according to 2006 data).

Popularity. Blogging doesn’t usually make you a celebrity, but it has before in certain cases. The Queen of Sky, Ellen Simonetti was thrown into the spotlight after her blog got her fired from Delta Airlines.

Stats. You could also measure popularity using several different metrics:

• How many hits you have. This number can come from the stats that are part of the blogging platform you are using, or a third party such as Sitemeter.
• Your blog authority rank in Technorati:
  View blog authority
• Number of subscribers you have on your Feedburner feed:
• Your Alexa ranking (note: widget won’t show if your rank is not among the top 100,000):