How I Got Subscribers in Two Years:: Lessons From Zen Habits

How I Got 100,000
Subscribers in Two Years:

Lessons from Zen Habits
By Leo Babauta
http://alistbloggingbootcamps.com
How I Got 100, 000 Subscribers
in Two Years: Lessons from Zen Habits
Table of Contents
Intro: Anyone Can Do This ....................................................................................... 3

The Beginning: No Goals, No Money ...................................................................... 6
Early Success .......................................................................................................... 8
Enthusiastic Early Readers ......................................................................................10
My New Goal: Liberate Myself .................................................................................12
Branding...................................................................................................................13
Flooding the Market .................................................................................................15
Posting Frequently, Finding the Time.......................................................................17
Quick Growth and Digg ............................................................................................19
The Days of Success ...............................................................................................21
Ebooks and My Print Book.......................................................................................23
Uncopyright and the Spread of My Brand................................................................25
Going from Popular to Uber-Popular .......................................................................27
Lessons from Zen Habits .........................................................................................30
A-List Blogging Bootcamps ......................................................................................33
What now? ...............................................................................................................36
Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Intro: Anyone can do this

Intro
Do you dream of creating a massive blog?
But your blog isn’t getting off the ground. Your subscriber num-
bers grow at an alarmingly slow rate. And you just can’t imag-
ine how to get into the top league of A-list bloggers.
Frustrating, right?
Maybe you’re looking for that magic key that instantly sends your blog on the rise to
fame with millions of adoring readers instantly knocking on your virtual doorstep.
I’m sorry. There isn’t one.
There’s no magic key, but ...
You do need to have a coherent growth strategy in order to really get your blog off
the ground and then skyrocket your subscriber count. It took me a long time to really
understand what makes blogs grow. At first it was just trial and error. Then, after a
while, I started to develop a coherent set of strategies that really works.

http://alistbloggingbootcamps.com 3
Is it too late to create a massive blog?
Intro When you look at the big bogs like Zen Habits or 43 Folders, they’ve all been
around for at least a couple of years. There are millions of blogs out there and more
are created each day. Maybe you’ll be thinking, ‘If only I had started earlier!’
So, is it too late now?
The truth is: it’s even easier to create a massive blog now than it was two years ago
- if you know how to. If I had to start all over again, it might take me even less time
to get to 100,000 subscribers. It’s really a question of having a coherent set of
strategies for growth, and of leveraging every action.
But the question is, does it take special talent in order to create an A-list blog?
Maybe you think you haven’t got what it takes?
That’s what I thought when I first started Zen Habits. In fact, I started off without
goals, without money, and with no time. Now Zen Habits (http://zenhabits.net) has
more than 100,000 subscribers—and a thousand more are joining each week.
The good news is that you don’t have to be a genius to create an A-list blog.

If I can do it, anyone can.
Intro Of course, you’ll need to be a decent writer, and being knowledgeable about some-
thing, anything, is also good. You have to be willing to put your best writing out
there, and to be a bit self-promotional - unfortunately for most of us who don’t natu-
rally feel comfortable tooting our own horn, it’s just a part of the business.
That said, I always find inspiration in reading about how others have achieved suc-
cess, and in the telling of the story they often share more about themselves and
how they got to where they are than they realize. So in hopes of providing similar
inspiration for other bloggers out there, I’m going to share my story.
It’s a good story, I think, because I’m someone who succeeded without any hopes
of success, against overwhelming odds, with not much but a love for learning and
for words on his side. And it’s a story with a happy ending, and we all like that,
right?
So here’s the Zen Habits story - my meteoric rise to success in the wild world of
blogging. I hope you enjoy it. I certainly have enjoyed living it.

The Beginning: No goals, no money
1 When I started Zen Habits, I had a full-time job at the Guam Legislature and was
doing freelance writing for newspapers and magazines on the side. With six kids
and a wife, I certainly didn’t have time for another part-time job as a blogger. Blog-
ging as a job, let alone a career, was nowhere on my radar.
But I’d been reading blogs - favorites such as GetRichSlowly.org, Lifehacker.com,

and Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project - for almost a year, and after reading
a bunch of self-improvement posts on a slew of different blogs, I realized: I could
have written some of these posts. I can write, and I know a lot of the things these
blogs are talking about - I’d been making major changes in my life for over a year
at that point.
My self-improvement growth is really what sparked Zen Habits. I had changed a

number of habits in the past year, including quitting smoking, starting running (and
eventually running a marathon), waking early, eating healthier, losing weight, sim-
plifying my life, beginning to eliminate my debt, becoming more organized and pro-
ductive, achieving my goals, writing a novel, and much more. I wanted to share my
enthusiasm for changing habits and improving my life, and hoped to help others
learn some of the amazing things I’d been learning.

So I started Zen Habits in January 2007, with no time, no money (I was still deep in
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debt and living frugally), no office or staff, and no knowledge about blogging at all.
And what’s more, no expectations or goals. I just wanted to share my thoughts and
what I’ve been learning, but didn’t expect to reach a thousand readers, let alone
hundreds of thousands or millions.
Boy, was I ignorant back then!
It’s funny, because I can still remember my state of mind when I started the blog.
Blogging was a mystery to me, and every day was a learning experience. When I
discovered Google Adsense, and that it took nothing to be able to make money on a
blog - well, I have to admit that for a second or two, I had dreams of making it rich
just by inserting some Adsense code into my blog. That didn’t last for long, as I
couldn’t make 5 cents a day in the beginning... even though I was checking my Ad-
sense earnings every 20 minutes! Apparently, Adsense doesn’t reward you for
checking frequently - I thought for sure I should have gotten a few cents each time I
logged in!
Those days of innocence are long gone. But I kinda miss them, when I didn’t expect
any readers to find my blog and certainly wasn’t getting them in that first month.

Early Success
2 But actually, very quickly I started to get a handful of readers. By February—just a

month into it—hundreds had found me, and it was an eye-opener.
I found my early readers mostly by commenting on other blogs - just a few here and
there, though at such an early stage every reader counts. In addition to comment-
ing, the lure of riches from Google Adsense had me trying a bunch of other meth-
ods: submission of my best posts to sites that publish free articles, submission to
blog carnivals, emailing my best posts to bigger bloggers, and so on. None of them
worked very well - commenting was easily my top method for finding new readers.
At first, though I was getting a steady trickle of new visitors, my subscriber numbers
didn’t rise very rapidly, and I didn’t get a lot of comments. It looked like a ghost
town, and I’m embarrassed to admit this: I asked a few friends to leave some com-
ments, just so that the blog wouldn’t look so empty. But slowly, the conversation
began to pick up in the comments, and I responded to each comment with the fer-
vor of the host of a party that has only a couple of guests. I coddled them, I cher-
ished them; I loved my early commenters. We were fast friends.
And then something happened that changed Zen Habits forever: one of my posts

was linked to by a bigger blog. Not a huge blog, and I regrettably don’t even remem-
2
ber which blog it was. But it was a link nonetheless, and a good number of people
read my post. Then the post was linked to from Dumb Little Man, which had like 75K
subscribers at that time, and I got a flood of traffic.
I was in heaven. I remember checking my stats one morning, and my eyes shot out
of my head like a cartoon character when I saw the huge rise in traffic. I looked at
where the traffic was coming from, and saw the post from Dumb Little Man. I can’t
begin to describe the thrill.
The post was Top 20 Motivational Hacks, and with the incoming traffic it soon be-
came popular on delicious.com—which sent me crazy traffic. The Top 20 post was a
deliberate experiment in seeing whether or not I could get a popular post, after read-
ing dozens of Top 10 or Top 20 posts on other sites. I filled it with my best informa-
tion, and tried to make it insanely useful, and the title and format were catchy
enough to shoot it to popularity.
That kind of success with one post was a mixed blessing - it was great because of
the traffic and new readers I got, but it kind of made me addicted to popularity and
list posts. And while I still do list posts today, because I’ve found them to be incredi-
bly useful to most readers, on many days I try to break out of that format because I
don’t want to get stuck in a rut.

Enthusiastic Early Readers
3 The audience I had in those days, though it soon grew into the hundreds, was ex-
tremely warm, enthusiastic, encouraging. I loved that audience. There were readers
who wanted me, after just a month and a half of writing, to write a book. There were
readers who told me I’d be a huge success one day. They were so supportive, and I
loved, loved, loved writing for Zen Habits.
Today that hasn’t changed, though the nature of my audience has of course
changed with the size of my audience and my success. But those days... I miss
those days, when I could communicate almost intimately with a much smaller audi-
ence. I still tried to respond to every comment, and email, and prided myself in
being responsive to all my readers. There’s nothing like having a blog with an audi-
ence of a few hundred to perhaps a couple thousand readers at most.
The enthusiasm of these readers made it a joy to write for Zen Habits, and the more
fun I had, the more encouraging they became. I’d never done any writing, in 17
years of writing for various publications, that was such much fun.
I couldn’t believe how much I loved it, and soon I realized: I wished this could be my
full-time job. And soon I realized: maybe I was good enough to do this for a living.
Maybe this was my *calling*.

And so that became my dream. It wasn’t a solid dream yet, but it was a dream
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nonetheless.
And that dream was born because of a few hundred readers—a handful of people
who were so supportive, so enthusiastic, so wonderful that they made me want to
quit my day job and do this all the time.
I can’t thank you, my early readers, enough for what you did for me.

My New Goal: Liberate Myself
4 Once I had that thought in my head - that maybe I could blog full-time, that maybe I
could live this dream - it started to take root, to become more solid and more... ex-
citing.
And then one day I decided I was going to go for it - it was going to become my
One Goal for the rest of 2007. I was going to get serious about this blogging stuff.
I even had a mantra to help me stay focused... the mantra was only two words:
“Liberate Yourself”. I repeated that mantra every day, and it kept my eye on the
prize - of liberating myself from my day job.
And while that dream would come true, it’s not as easy as just saying it every day
and then it magically happens. It took some dedication and focus, and I made
some sacrifices of my free time. Other projects took a backseat. Instead of pursu-
ing my second marathon, for example, I decided to wait until 2008 to do some seri-
ous marathon training (I ran two marathons in 2008). I made a bunch of sacrifices
like this so I could stay focused on my One Goal.
What follows in the rest of this story are the things I did to go from early success to
being one of the top blogs in my niche.

Branding
5 The first thing I did was some research into branding - some reading and thinking
about how the big companies did it - guys like Coke and Pepsi and McDonald’s and
Nike and Apple.
And I found that they tied their brand - which consists not only of their name but
their logo and often a slogan - to an image that they tried to create in the potential
customer’s brain. If their branding efforts worked, every time you heard their name
or saw their logo, you’d have a certain image in your mind. This took a lot of repeti-
tion and a lot of consistency in their message - everything they did had to repeat
this same message, this same image.
And so I decided to try the same method with Zen Habits. I’d already put a lot of
thought into the name - it consisted of two words that each summed up one half of
the philosophy I was writing about on the blog. “Zen” conjures up images of peace-
fulness, calm, and living in the moment. “Habits” were the key to making the
changes I was writing about. Together, they formed an image that was consistent
with my philosophy and writings.

I also created a simple design, so that I was consistent with the message. And to
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make the message even clearer, I created a sub-title for the blog, or a slogan:
“Simple Productivity“. Together, all of these elements created my brand and the
image I wanted to create in people’s minds.
The key was to be consistent, not only in the design and title and slogan, but in
what I wrote, in my guest posts, in the comments, in my emails, in all communica-
tion. I had to send the same message all the time, or my branding efforts would be
less effective.
The second key was to repeat the brand and message as often as possible to my
potential audience. I did this through guest posts - which I’ll go into in the next sec-
tion.

Flooding the Market
6 The big companies mentioned above, of course, use millions of dollars in advertis-
ing to achieve their branding goals. I had an advertising budget of significantly less
($0), so I had to be more creative.
I used guest posts, frequently, far and wide, as my main means of branding. I tried
to reach as many blogs as possible, especially those that had decent audiences
that I was trying to reach. So if there was a productivity blog, or a personal develop-
ment blog, or a health and fitness blog, or a blog on frugality or parenting or simplic-
ity, I’d try to be on it with a guest post.
I started simply by networking with other bloggers, sending them friendly emails and
offering to collaborate somehow, perhaps with an exchange of guest posts. Some-
times I got lucky, lots of times I didn’t. Still, I persisted, and over time I was able to
get lots of guest posting slots on lots of blogs.

I added to these frequent guest posts by doing a lot of freelance writing for major
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blogs in my niche. One at a time, I got weekly writing gigs for four major blogs: Life-
hack.org, Dumb Little Man, Web Workers Daily and FreelanceSwitch. These blogs
represented audiences of hundreds of thousands of readers, in total.
So at my peak, I was writing four paid posts a week, plus anywhere from 1 to 3
guest posts for various blogs. People who read multiple blogs in this sphere saw my
name all the time, all over the place. At the end of each post, paid or unpaid, was
my name, my brand, and a link back to Zen Habits.
Slowly, this strategy paid off. I built up dozens of links back to Zen Habits, but more
importantly, my brand began to take hold in the minds of many of my potential read-
ers. Once that happened, I became *the* name in “simple productivity” and I be-
came an authority on the topic. That gave me lots of attention, incoming links, and
most importantly, readers.
I don’t think bloggers should use branding insincerely, as a cynical way to gain
fame. But there’s nothing wrong with some careful thinking about the image you’re
creating in people’s minds, with being consistent with your message, and with get-
ting your brand out there as much as possible (to the right audience). In fact, I’d
argue that it’s very important in this day when there’s so much competition for peo-
ple’s attention.

Posting Frequently, Finding the Time
7 With the above strategy of writing a ton of guest posts and doing lots of freelancing
(not to mention having a full-time job, a wife and six kids), you might wonder how I
was able to post with any frequency at all on Zen Habits.
And that’s an excellent question. It wasn’t easy. The answer is that I learned to
focus, better than I ever had before.
With a full-time job and a family and, you know, a life... I had limited time for writing.
But I blocked that time off, in the early morning, during lunch, and a little after work.
And I learned that I had to cut out all distractions during this time, and focus, and
just write.
I wrote (and still write) using just text files. I’m writing these words, for example,
using a great Mac program called WriteRoom, which turns your computer into an
old-fashioned word processor, making the entire screen blank and only showing the
text of whatever you’re writing. On the PC, there’s an identical program called Dark-
Room. Even if you just use your regular old text program (such as TextEdit or
Notepad), the key is to keep it simple and shut down your Internet browser.
I learned that, as a blogger, there are lots of things I could do - read and respond to
comments, answer email, check my stats, check my earnings, fiddle with the design
or blog widgets, mess around with different ad systems, chat with other bloggers,
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and so on and so on. But there was only one thing that really mattered for my
branding efforts and for the growth of my blog: writing great posts. I tried to post
quality articles on Zen Habits 3-5 times a week - I was doing daily posts early on,
but discovered that it overwhelmed my readers, so I learned that 4-5 was more
ideal, and 3 posts in a week was the minimum.
And so that became all that I focused on: writing the best posts I could - for Zen
Habits and for other blogs. These quality posts were the things that drew readers
and kept them coming back for more. A great post could get popular on
delicious.com, draw dozens of incoming links, and get me dozens of new readers.
I still did the other stuff, but not during writing time. Writing time was (and is) sa-
cred, because it was the most important thing I was doing at the time. Still is.
Everything else was just distraction.
Strip away everything that gets in the way of writing, and focus on the writing.

Quick Growth, and Digg
8 The branding efforts with frequent guest posts, as well as my focus on high-quality,
useful posts, paid off very quickly. I went from several hundred readers to several
thousand readers in a matter of a few months.
One thing that helped, once I got my readership into the thousands, was social
media. I’ve already mentioned my first success on delicious.com, and this soon be-
came a regular occurrence on Zen Habits. Every week or two, I’d get a popular post
on delicious.com, and after awhile it became more than once a week.
But after 6–8 months of regular growth, another phenomenon occurred: becoming
popular on Digg.com. I’d written this off as impossible for a small blog like mine,
based on some early attempts at submitting my own stuff (I don’t recommend it at
all). When a more popular Digg user submitted one of my posts, however, I hit the
front page of Digg, and it was a rush. Until my server crashed from all the traffic,
that is.
That was disappointing, but I soon switched hosts (I had moved from the free Blog-
ger.com to Bluehost.com, which cost like $8/month) and the Digg effect (of crashing
my server) never happened again. I’ve been on the front page of Digg more often
than any other blog my size, just about, and it was one of the most important factors

in the growth of Zen Habits. From the fall of 2007 to the spring/summer of 2008, I
8
had dozens of posts on the front page of Digg, and my traffic went through the roof.
It’s hard to explain the success of Zen Habits on Digg, other than I had a decent-
sized audience, catchy titles, what I hoped were really useful posts, and concise
posts often in list formats that readers seem to like. It also helped, later on, when
top Diggers were submitting my posts because I had so much success.
These days, I rarely make the Digg front page, because they changed their algo-
rithm for promoting articles to the front page and the change made it almost impos-
sible for my posts to become popular, even with 200 Diggs. Also, the popularity of
Zen Habits on Digg caused a lot of Diggers to think, incorrectly, that I was spam-
ming Digg with my posts, using a ring of voters or somehow “gaming” the site to
make my posts popular. I stay away from Digg these days, even though it’s still a
great site with lots of great articles, because it’s not the best use of my time as a
blogger.
These days, my success in social media comes from three sources: delicious.com,
StumbleUpon, and Twitter. I don’t measure the stats for each, but a snapshot of my
stats each day shows these to be regular sources of traffic. They’re also much eas-
ier to get popular on, as it only takes a handful of my readers to vote for my posts.

The Days of Success
9 Success in the blogosphere has a snowball effect. Once I started getting noticed
and getting some social media success, and hit a critical mass of popularity, it just
took off all on its own. I could do less promotion and focus more on content -
something that I prefer to do anyway.
Once I became established as an authority, other personal development and pro-

ductivity bloggers began linking to my posts, began commenting on my site every
day, and began asking to do guest posts. I was seen not only as a productivity ex-
pert, but a blogging expert, even if I didn’t promote myself as such.
And because of this new status as an authority, I gained a lot of links, and this
gained me a stronger status as an authority, and so on. Soon, people began seek-
ing me out to write posts for their blogs, to contribute to their books, and to inter-
view me.
Authority is an interesting phenomenon. You can claim to be an authority, and write

with authority, but it’s not until others start calling you an authority that you become
one. I never sought out this status, but I noticed it began to be thrust upon me after
a certain amount of popularity.

I didn’t shun this status, of course. I’d be an idiot if I did. While being an authority
9
and a blogging celebrity is something I’m not very comfortable with, I have to admit
I don’t mind the extra readership and especially opportunities that come with it.
One such opportunity was the chance to publish a book. Once I had 20K sub-
scribers or so, I began to be noticed by the publishing world - agents and small
publishers who wanted me to do a book. It’s always been a dream of mine, so I
jumped at the chance, even if I was a little nervous about the whole thing.
In late 2007, I signed with a book agent, and then soon thereafter I signed with a
publisher, Hyperion, to write a book (with a decent advance thrown in there).
I was super excited.

Ebooks and my Print Book
10 Around the time that I signed my book deal, I also published an ebook, called Zen
To Done - the Ultimate Simple Productivity System. It was based on a popular se-
ries of posts on Zen Habits, and a number of readers had requested the ebook.
Not only did I include the ZTD posts in the ebook, but I expanded upon them,
added some additional chapters and forms and resources, and hired a great de-
signer to make it look awesome. Then I published it, deciding to go with a low
price-point ($9.50) because I wanted volume - the more people who bought it, the
better.
When I released it, I also allowed people to sign up as affiliates through e-

junkie.com. To my amazement, not only did a lot of people buy the book from my
site directly, there were also a lot of affiliates that signed on immediately. They
made a lot of money off the sales of my ebooks, but so did I, and best yet, my
ebook, my ideas, and my brand were spread to a much wider audience.
Today, Zen To Done is the best-selling productivity ebook ever. It has sold tens of
thousands of copies, and continues to sell to this day. In fact, it’s my biggest in-
come stream.

But more than that, it has been an incredible tool to spread my brand. Lots of peo-
10
ple who had never heard of Zen Habits learned about it from ZTD, and that has
grown my blog even more.
In 2008, at the request of a bunch of readers, I released some of the best Zen
Habits posts on key topics in an ebook called the Zen Habits Handbook for Life.
While it hasn’t been quite the success of ZTD (which I think was more original and
more useful), it has also done very well and has helped spread my brand.
Then, at the end of 2008, my book came out: The Power of Less - The Fine Art of
Limiting Yourself to the Essential, in Business and in Life. It was an instant best-
seller on Amazon.com, and with it came a whole slew of publicity - I was inter-
viewed for print publications, on radio shows across the nation, and on blogs
everywhere, small and large. That was nice because I was reaching whole new
oceans of readers I hadn’t reached before.
The print book, and my eBooks, have been incredible promotional tools for Zen
Habits. I don’t recommend that most bloggers do them right away, though - it’s best
to have an audience and some influence in the blogging community before you re-
lease an ebook (or a print book), because then when you do, the ebook will really
take off.

Uncopyright and the Spread of My Brand
11 I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk a bit about my Uncopyright. In 2008 I decided to release
the copyright for Zen Habits and both of my ebooks. This had several effects:
1. It got a fair amount of attention, as this was something fairly new to bloggers,
and my blog was pretty popular. It was nice to get the attention, but better yet
that a lot of other bloggers followed suit, inspired by my move.
2. A lot of people used my content - no longer needing my permission - in a

variety of ways: in their blogs, in newsletters, in handouts for conferences, in
the classroom, in ebooks and print books. This was gratifying for me,
because I love to see my ideas being used in as many ways as possible, and
for people to benefit from them.
3. It helped spread my brand much more widely. As I talked about above, when
people buy my ebooks (for example), it helps me to reach new audiences.
The same happens when they reuse any of my content and link back to me.
And while some people use the content without crediting me, that’s OK - a lot
more will give credit where it’s due.

4. As a result of the brand spreading more widely, I’ve gained even more
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readers and sold even more ebooks. That’s right - even though people can
give away my ebook for free, as it is Uncopyrighted, many people still buy it.

Going from Popular to Uber-Popular
12 When I had 10K subscribers, or 20K, I was pretty proud of that accomplishment. I
was in awe of my success and the size of my readership. Not in my wildest dreams
did I think I’d ever achieve that kind of widespread success.
But over the course of 2008 and early 2009, my growth rate continued to snowball.
Soon 20K subscribers looked like peanuts, as I passed 50K and 80K subscribers.
It was unbelievable.
I’ve talked about the things that helped this snowball happen, but briefly:
1. Popularity on social media such as Digg, delicious and StumbleUpon, that

resulted from my post style and headlines and large number of readers who
vote on my posts.
2. A lot of incoming links and mentions on other sites because of my growing

status as an authority.
3. The spread of my brand through my ebooks and my print book.
4. The spread of my brand through my Uncopyright, and people reusing my

material in a large variety of ways.
Of course, none of the growth would have happened if I didn’t focus on producing
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top-notch content. I have always tried to challenge myself by continuing to produce
content that people find engaging and useful, with engaging headlines to match.
This has always been the core of my success - the content has to be interesting
and exceedingly useful, or none of the other things will happen.
But the growth did continue, and soon as I approached 90K subscribers it became
apparent that hitting 100K was inevitable. I did nothing different to reach that num-
ber but continue to produce as much content as possible.
While I’d hate to be seen as complaining about success, there are downsides to
having so many readers. I should mention them for anyone who is considering
shooting for such a large audience:
l I can’t be as intimate with my readers. When I only had a few hundred

readers, I knew most of them - or at least, the ones who commented
frequently. I felt close to them. These days, with such a large audience, it’s
impossible to have that kind of relationship with my readers, and that’s a loss
I feel greatly. I still love my readers, but I miss the old days too.
l I don’t have as much time for writing guest posts. Managing a blog with this
many readers takes up more time than Zen Habits did when it was much
smaller. This gives me less time for writing posts on other sites, which I miss
- it’s always great to connect to new audiences.

l I’m a little more self-conscious about what I write. I used to have a lot more
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freedom and carelessness about my writing - I didn’t much care if some
people didn’t like it. But these days, I am more careful, as I know my posts
are going out to 100K people. This is a natural thing, I think, and inevitable.
It’s also not all bad - it helps push me to write my best, all the time.
But on balance, I’m very happy with my success. Reaching 100K subscribers has
been a miracle, and I am thankful every day for having the opportunity to write for
this amazing audience. I’m in love with my job, and my readers.
Even more than that, my blogging success has changed my life. It has allowed me
to completely eliminate my debt and become financially secure. It has allowed me
to achieve a dream I never thought possible before: to quit my day job and become
my own boss. Now I own my own business, I work from home - or anywhere I feel
like working - I set my own hours, and I do work that I’m passionate about.
I never thought this possible, but blogging success has made it a reality. I’m hap-
pier than I’ve ever been before.

Lessons from Zen Habits
13 So, having plowed through my story, what lessons are there for you as an aspiring
blogger who wants similar success?
First of all, let’s take a look at what traits and talents you need in order to become a
top blogger.
I achieved blogging success because I have a coincidental blend of a number of

characteristics:
1) I love writing and am fairly good at it, having done it for almost 20 years;
2) I know my topic and am passionate about it, living it daily in real life;
3) I love technology and have a passion for learning this medium;
4) I love connecting with others and do it with enthusiasm;
5) I have a background in headline writing, at a daily newspaper;
6) I am a reflective person;
7) I have knowledge and interest in marketing, and have really studied a lot of
key principles and simplified them for my purposes.
It’s because of all of these traits that I have become the blogger I am.

That said, there are many more people out there with these and other great char-
13
acteristics, and those of you who are lacking in a few of them can, with enough
passion and drive, learn them. And you don’t need to have my exact blend of traits
to be successful—there is no one formula, of course. But these things have defi-
nitely helped me, and if you are lacking in most or all of them, you’ll have a much
tougher time than I did.
Here are three main things you need to focus upon:
First, as the saying goes, Content is King. All of the other stuff really helps, but
it starts and ends with great content. You have to write posts that are relevant to
your potential readers - teach her to do things she’s always wanted to do. You
have to write posts that are extremely useful and packed with info they need -
but at the same time, concise and not too wordy. You need to write posts that
are accessible, scannable, and have great headlines.
That’s the key to successful blogging. Focus on that. Each day should be spent
writing great posts, not on social media or networking or marketing or checking
stats or working on ads or your blog design or widgets or the latest apps or
email or RSS reading or anything else.
Write great posts. That should be your main occupation, and do this before any
thing else. If not, you’ll fail as a blogger.

Second, once you’ve got the content, learn some cheap but effective ways to
13
promote it. Networking, writing LOTS of guest posts, and when you get large
enough, promotion through social media and ebooks. That’s pretty simple, but
of course it takes a lot of hard work. Don’t forget to keep your focus on the
content, however.
Third, it’s all about the reader. When you start writing about things that are only
of interest to you, or putting things on your blog to make money but not benefit
the reader, or linking to things because you hope it’ll help with networking efforts
but forgetting to ask whether the reader cares about these links... you’ve
forgotten the reader. And then the reader will soon forget you.
Everything you do should be for the reader. And you’ll be rewarded with great
readers - and that’s what it’s all about. When you make a connection with your
readers, it’s a magical thing. It’s something that can change your life, and theirs.
It’s what blogging is all about, and it makes all the hard work more than worth it.
If you focus on these three aspects, your blog will grow for sure.

A-List Blogging Bootcamps
14 I’ll say it again…there has never been a better time to build a massive blog. If you
know how to do it.
More and more people are turning to blogs in order to be informed, inspired or en-
tertained. So there is a lot of opportunity out there.
OK, there’s lots of competition too. But you can learn to leverage the success of
others. This is the great thing about blogging - it’s not a culture of competition, but
a culture of cooperation.
To create an A-list blog, you need to create a community. Get that right, market it
successfully, and you’ll never worry about figuring out how to “make money online”
again. I can say from experience that blogging is one of the best ways to future-
proof your life!
Of course, trends change quickly on the Net. That’s why you need to know what’s
hot and what works, so that you can put in place coherent strategies for rapid
growth.

Here are 10 things you’ll need to know to succeed in this next wave of blogging:
14 1. The psychology of subscribing: know the secrets of what makes readers

subscribe.
2. Why usability is a key to keeping visitors on your blog
3. How to use design to hook readers
4. How create loyal followers with your About page
5. What kind of content creates subscribers and how to write it
6. How to craft headlines that lure readers to your blog
7. What kind of images attract readers
8. How to interpret and use stats for fast growth
9. How to promote your blog: strategies that rock
10. How to leverage social media for super success
Creating and writing for Zen Habits has been one of the most rewarding things in
my life. Not just because it makes me money and helps me to do a job I love doing.
Not just because it has made me successful. But because of the readers - wonder-
ful, encouraging, supportive, smart, funny, beautiful readers who make every day a
rewarding one. Don’t forget to be grateful to your readers. I am, every day.
In this Zen Habits report, I’ve shown you the foundational knowledge and the
mindset that enabled me to become an A-list blogger. And I’ll be providing you
with additional free articles that will help you to develop a better strategy for
growth.
15
But for those of you who want to get on the fast track, I have another option.
A-list Blogging Bootcamps is a training program that will show you, step-by-step,
how to create a viral blog. My business partner is Mary Jaksch, Chief Editor of
Write to Done, and we are knee deep in planning our first A-list Blogging Boot-
camp: “Skyrocket Your Subscriber Count”
I’ll be drilling down in one particular area of knowledge in every A-List Bootcamp.
And I’ll give you a paint-by-numbers guide on how to implement each strategy.
As I said before, I really miss the early days of Zen Habits when I had a personal
relationship with all my readers. That’s one of the reasons why I’m starting my A-
list Blogging Bootcamps. I want to create a mentoring community of keen blog-
gers. We can hang out together in the private forum and you can get some
answers to your pressing questions. Yes, I really want to see you skyrocket your
blog!
The other reason for creating the A-list Blogging Bootcamps is that I want to give
something back to the blogging community. I know that blogging can be a lonely
uphill struggle. Many fellow bloggers helped me on my journey, and now it’s my
turn to reach out a helping hand to those coming up after me. The A-list Blogging
Bootcamps will give you all the strategies that made me a top blogger - and I’ll
show you exactly how to implement them.

What Now?
16 We’ll keep you in the loop about out A-list Blogging Bootcamps. Our next one
should be ready very soon!
Thanks for reading. I hope to have a new and exciting relationship with you in the
near future.

This ebook was designed in partnership with the smokin' design and copywriting team, Men with Pens.
Click here to check out more of their handiwork.

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How I Got 100,000

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Intro: Anyone Can Do This ....................................................................................... 3

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Intro: Anyone can do this

I’m sorry. There isn’t one.

There’s no magic key, but ...

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Is it too late to create a massive blog?

So, is it too late now?

Maybe you think you haven’t got what it takes?

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

If I can do it, anyone can.

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

The Beginning: No goals, no money

But I’d been reading blogs - favorites such as GetRichSlowly.org, Lifehacker.com,

My self-improvement growth is really what sparked Zen Habits. I had changed a

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Boy, was I ignorant back then!

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

2 But actually, very quickly I started to get a handful of readers. By February—just a

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Enthusiastic Early Readers

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

My New Goal: Liberate Myself

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Flooding the Market

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Posting Frequently, Finding the Time

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Quick Growth, and Digg

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

The Days of Success

Once I became established as an authority, other personal development and pro-

Authority is an interesting phenomenon. You can claim to be an authority, and write

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

I was super excited.

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Ebooks and my Print Book

When I released it, I also allowed people to sign up as affiliates through e-

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Uncopyright and the Spread of My Brand

2. A lot of people used my content - no longer needing my permission - in a

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Going from Popular to Uber-Popular

1. Popularity on social media such as Digg, delicious and StumbleUpon, that

2. A lot of incoming links and mentions on other sites because of my growing

3. The spread of my brand through my ebooks and my print book.

4. The spread of my brand through my Uncopyright, and people reusing my

l I can’t be as intimate with my readers. When I only had a few hundred

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Table of Contents l Introduction l Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Lessons from Zen Habits

I achieved blogging success because I have a coincidental blend of a number of