When we talk about personal blog, we don’t talk about search engine optimization, we don’t talk about niche and we don’t talk about search engine traffic. Most of the blogging guides will somehow be useless as the topics on a personal blog are random, on one day, it might be a review of a restaurant but on the other day, it can be on a cheque received from an ad network!
You don’t find this often on the blogosphere. After I have started Wayne Liew Dot Com and studied a few blogging skills that I have applied, I try to link those that can be used on a personal blog and viola, two parts which consists of 20 tips to build a successful personal blog is out.
Be Yourself
A personal blog is about you, your life, your thoughts and any other thing about you. What your readers want to see is the true side of you, be honest and present them with the real you. If you fake all the activities you posted and false thoughts, you will not only push your offline friends away from reading, you will not even enjoy personal blogging because you start to think hard on how to fake your contents!
Photos
You don’t need to care whether you are ugly, handsome, pretty, fat or short, just take photos, lots of them, and post it onto your personal blog. Be a poser, who cares? 
A photo means a thousand words. When I visit a personal blog, I want a break, I am tired of reading and blogs with lots of photos can make me understand everything without spending tones of time reading. You will find yourself with much more comments if you post photos.
Commenting On Other Blogs
This is the best way to market your blog for every niches but I find personal blogs has an added advantage. Commenting on other personal blogs can be made as two way, commenting on a post or chat through a chat box which is normally available on personal blogs. A simple “Hi there!” can get you at least a visit from the blog owner itself. Don’t think that commenting will work? Check out Proof That Commenting Still Works To Build Traffic by Yaro Starak.
Sense of Humor
This is very important. If your posts can make people laugh, you have the sense of humor. It can be in a way of words or an edited image. Some are born with the ability but some like me just don’t. Blogger with a sense of humor can attract many visitors to their blog as a day is always better with a laugh or a smile.
Nice Blog Design
Use Google Search, Yahoo or even MSN to find out themes that are funky, nice, colorful, with big headers or even animations that represent your personality. You are not targeting webmasters like Wayne Liew Dot Com, you are targeting people who might sometimes don’t even have a blog and when they see such designs, they will go WOW! You won your first impression!
Don’t Ramble All the Time
People love cheerful blogs. Once in a while you rant about something that you are angry of or you are sad with, they might stand behind you, giving you moral support and you might get a lot of comments. The table will be turned around if your posts are always swearing, crying, ranting and sometimes even worse that all of it is on the same issue! I don’t think people will want to read that, you will make their day bad!
Blogger Activities
Offline networking between personal bloggers through café gatherings like the Catscity Clique @ Starbucks held by Advertlets can increase your number of visitors and linkbacks. When the bloggers who attended the gathering blogged about it, visitors will click through and visit the blogs of all the bloggers who attended it and eventually, this will help them realize good personal blogs and the readership base of these blogs will increase. Meeting new blogger friends through these activities will help as well.
Write For People
Don’t tell me you want to get onto the first page of Google search result for a certain keyword with a personal blog. You must be crazy! Write with feelings and write from your readers’ point of view. Even with an informational blog, I am advised to write for people instead of focusing on things like keyword density.
Join Blog Carnival
Do you know that there is an event which is going on in the personal blog niche that is called Photo Hunt? Every week, a new theme will be set and participating bloggers will snap a photo relating to the theme and blogged about it. What amazes me is that some blogs which does not have a lot of comments in their posts might sometimes have up to 20-40 comments with a photo hunt post. Isn’t that fantastic? Such blog carnivals will not just give you traffic spikes. It might bring in future loyal readers as well if these first time visitors find your posts interesting!
Don’t Monetize the Blog Early
If you are new to the personal blog niche, don’t brand yourself as a “I Blog For Money” bloke. People tend to think that you are trying to fake things out to earn money. Trust me, if you got hooked with checking your earnings frequently when you just started blogging, you will lose your first time visitors and might give up blogging as well!
Part 2 Coming Up
This is the first ten for you. I don’t like to break things up but maybe you can try implementing these first before I move on as I thing giving 20 all in once will cause you brain diarrhoea. What do you think about these tips and do you find it useful? Tell your friends about this if they have a personal blog! Remember to subscribe to my Full RSS Feed if you want to be one of the first few to get 20 Tips For A Personal Blog Success [Part 2].
