The Importance of the First 500

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This is a guest post by JD Bentley of Wage Slave Rebel.  He has just recently launched his new blog coaching course, which you can check out at Idea Anarchy.

In July of 2009 I decided to take a risk. I registered a domain name, bought some hosting and wrote two weeks worth of posts for Wage Slave Rebel, a blog I wanted to create as a way to document my entrepreneurial aspirations and to help inspire other people to start moving toward doing what they love. I’d tried to start a blog many times before this but had only mustered up enough effort to earn myself a series of outright failures.

Wage Slave Rebel was going to be different, though. I just knew it. Why? Because from the beginning I’d planned the content for the benefit of the reader rather than myself and had become resolute about maintaining a strict posting schedule. This turned out to be two of the best decisions of my life.

I’d created enough failed blogs that I had started to suspect that anyone who claimed to be making money with them was an absolute bullshitter, but that was before I hit the magic number. That was before I figured out how to hook an audience.

Influence and Authority

The blog started out like any of the others I created, but before long I could tell something was up. Something was definitely different. It was as if one day I woke up and people cared. They were actually invested in me and in my journey. They were actually waiting for my posts.

Within a few months, I’d wake up to find my inbox speckled with contact form submissions from my site. Visitors started writing me asking for clarification or advice or recommendations or wanting me to do a post about this thing or that thing. They wanted help and all of a sudden I was the guy to ask.

Once I realized that my consistency with the blog and my particular voice had not only captured the attention of an ever-growing audience, but also gave me a certain amount of influence over them, I started to explore the extent of my newfound authority by introducing a handful of affiliate links. To my surprise they got clicked and for the first time ever I actually made some money from a blog.

I was a bit shocked. I wondered what exactly the difference was. Why, all of a sudden, had this become so easy?

The Importance of the First 500

Sean here at Location180 has been a leading advocate of the importance of starting a blog and I definitely agree with that, but I’d like to also take it a step further by emphasizing the importance of those first 500 subscribers. When I analyzed my numbers at Wage Slave Rebel, what I found was that the first significant opportunities and contacts that started coming my way correlated directly with my approach to 500 subscribers.

When I started nearing 500, lots of doors opened and I found that I had built a substantial amount of authority on the subjects of online business and, to a certain extent, lifestyle design. Beyond the affiliate links, I had also found that my readers were actually interested in buying products I created myself (like this blogging course) or services I offered.

You Won’t “Get” It Until 500

If you are planning on starting a blog or have only just recently started, lots of things are probably still unclear to you. It may seem like you just don’t have the same luck as everyone else with blogging and that you’ll never be able to turn it into anything more than a hobby.

Those feelings are definitely common, but what you have to realize is that you won’t really “get” how it works until your subscriber numbers begin nearing 500. At that point, things will start to snowball. You’ll start growing faster, getting more contacts, owning more authority and exerting more influence.

Whatever you do, don’t give up. When it comes to blogging, there’s a dip right before an explosion. If you can stick with it through the dip, the payoff is huge!

If you enjoyed this post check out JD’s new coaching course at Idea Anarchy.

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