I’ve been wondering this recently. What makes a blog successful? Do you count the number of subscribers and measure that against other blog giants in the industry? Do you count the amount of money your blog makes? To answer this question, we first need to determine your blog’s purpose.

Why do you blog? Take a minute to think about it. I’ll wait.

Many may blog to vent, provide information, sell a product, advertise an idea, or simply to expound on hot topics in their particular niche. Now tell me – what does a succesful blog look like? Does it have high subscriber numbers? Does it have a sleek appearance? Does it nail down content on a regular basis? (What?)

 A blog’s success depends on our own definition of our blog. One blogger may be comfortable with a blog’s few readers, while the next blogger wants a thousand and one people to open their RSS feed daily. The difference is in perspective.

Do you look at your blog as a business?
If you do, for a moment consider it a brick and mortar store. The more customers that walk through the door, then the more potential sales you’ll make. Stores do things for a rhyme and a reason too. Don’t think the 80’s music softly pedaling you through the store aisles isn’t by design. It is. Grocery stores have an entire science behind placement of products on shelves, location, and all. They want you to find this, so you then realize you need something else across the store.

The same principles apply to a good blog. A person may come in looking for SEO tips, and realize they’ve found a goldmine and explore further into the store. The repeat customer is the RSS subscriber, so the RSS feed count does make a difference, when considering the success of a blog as a business. It doesn’t mean as much as constant traffic, but you need folks coming through the doors, right?

A blog as a personal outlet
This type of blog derives success from far different metrics. The personal outlet blog frees a person up to spout political rants, to editorialize on current events, to gossip, mudsling, parlay, and otherwise vent in a secure place. These blogs do become vastly popular. They sometimes even morph into blogs as a business. Once the traffic comes into the site, their ad space revenue starts to add up. These blogs take a liking to it, and often times the blogger will kick down cubicle walls to be at home. They have a pioneer spirit.  As soon as that happens, they rely on the business aspect, and the walls of a personal blog’s success crumble away as well.

In the beginning though, a personal blog’s metrics lies with the quality of writing. Like me, many of you have probably experienced the exuberance over RSS numbers, but the real challenge, and the real joy comes from the writing and the process. Blogging becomes a lifestyle. It’s success everyday when we interact, engage, and entertain strangers through an online medium. We are writers, poets, pranksters, and socialites. That’s the success of the personal blog. It’s a unifier and a societal lens.

So to gauge your blog’s success you should first consider your blog’s purpose. If you want to make money, then success may have to wait for dollars and readers to sign up. A personal blog finds success when it reaches a true voice, when the author finds themselves laying in bed with an idea too good to lose to sleep. They stretch, find a pad or laptop and jot it down for its birth on the web the next day.