These are the top quotes about blogging from many of the world’s most successful bloggers.
They range from motivational to humorous — covering everything from social media to monetization. Mostly they seek to define what blogging is, what makes it so important, and how to blog well.
Prepare to be inspired and informed.
Post Image Courtesy of Anonymous Collective
Top 40 Blogging Quotes
#1 Brian Clark
“Don’t focus on having a great blog. Focus on producing a blog that’s great for your readers.”
As a blogger, everything that you do flows from understanding your audience and seeking to help them as much as possible.
#2 Mike Butcher
“Blogging is a conversation, not a code.”
#3 Scott Adams
“Blogging is like work, but without coworkers thwarting you at every turn.”
Scott Adams gets to speak his mind every day with his syndicated comic strip, Dilbert. But he also loves the free, often goal-less nature of his regular blog. He has said about blogging, “All you get is the pleasure of a completed task.”
#4 Lee Odden
“A blog is only as interesting as the interest shown in others.”
#5 Simon Dumenco
“Blogging is just writing — writing using a particularly efficient type of publishing technology.”
#6 Andrew Sullivan
“Blogging is to writing what extreme sports are to athletics: more free-form, more accident-prone, less formal, more alive. It is, in many ways, writing out loud.”
For most of human history, all published writing had been carefully inspected, edited, and approved.
In the last decade, blogging has turned the publishing world on its head. A blog allows you to write and publish anything, from anywhere, and have it be immediately available to billions of people all around the world.
This means that blogging is uniquely “alive”, as Andrew Sullivan points out in The Atlantic. I, for one, am happy to embrace the chaos and vitality.
#7 Tom Foremski
“Blogging is a communications mechanism handed to us by the long tail of the Internet.”
#8 Michael Conniff
“Blogs are whatever we make them. Defining ‘Blog’ is a fool’s errand.”
#9 Ron Dawson
“The first thing you need to decide when you build your blog is what you want to accomplish with it, and what it can do if successful.”
#10 Neil Patel
“Don’t try to plan everything out to the very last detail. I’m a big believer in just getting it out there: create a minimal viable product or website, launch it, and get feedback.”
#11 Daniel B. Beaulieu
“The casual conversational tone of a blog is what makes it particularly dangerous”
#12 Seth Godin
“Not only are bloggers suckers for the remarkable, so are the people who read blogs.”
When you write remarkable content, you stay engaged and excited with your blog. Your readers follow suit.
Godin’s blog is a great example of remarkable content: it’s reliably snappy and insightful. Learn more Seth with our in-depth blogger profile.
#13 Jerry Schoemaker
“I think I am about 5 for 500 when it comes to successful ideas vs flops.”
#14 George Siemens
“Where the Internet is about availability of information, blogging is about making information creation available to anyone.”
#15 Joshua Micah Marshall
“I think of us as journalists; the medium we work in is blogging.”
#16 David Sinick
“There are tons of different factors that go into ranking well, but the biggest is high-quality content.”
Sinick knows every SEO “trick” in the book and he still recognizes that the easiest way to rank well for competitive search terms is simply to create high-quality content.
#17 Google’s SEO Starter Guide
“Your ultimate consumers are your users, not search engines.”
#18 Sufia Tippu
“Blogging is hard because of the grind required to stay interesting and relevant.”
#19 Neil Patel
“If you want to continually grow your blog, you need to learn to blog on a consistent basis.”
#20 Yaro Starak
“You can work quite hard, in particular online, and do quite well independently, but if you really want to grow you need points of leverage and most of them come from knowing people.”
#21 Seth Godin
“If you love writing or making music or blogging or any sort of performing art, then do it. Do it with everything you’ve got. Just don’t plan on using it as a shortcut to making a living.”
#22 Pat Flynn
“Selling to people through social media is like going to a party, meeting somebody for the first time, and then saying, ‘Hey, do you want to buy this Tupperware?’”
Pat Flynn makes over $40,000 per month online with his various websites, but he doesn’t make a dime off of social media – at least not directly.
When we interviewed Pat for Web Domination, he told us emphatically that social media is a terrible sales tool. Instead, Flynn sees social media as, “something that allows [him] to connect with [his] audience more.”
#23 Gary Vaynerchuk
“Social media is not a fad because it’s human.”
When blogging first became popular, many thought that it was just a passing trend. But it has stuck around – and more than that, only strengthened over time.
Social media is around for the long haul because we value our relationships with one another above just about everything else. A blog entry isn’t just a block of text, but a slice of humanity and an opportunity to begin a real conversation.
#24 David Aston
“Successful blogging is not about one time hits. It’s about building a loyal following over time.”
First-time bloggers often chase the big spikes in traffic that come with a viral post or a big media mention. Then lightning finally strikes… and they come to realize that those surges in traffic are made up mostly of people who aren’t very engaged and who don’t stick around for very long.
Instead, follow David’s advice and focus on building a loyal following of regular readers. That’s the strategy that David has used to make WhyAmIUnhealthy hugely popular in just over a year.
#25 Matt Wolfe
“There’s a lot of information out there for free, so you’ve got to figure out what makes your information different.”
Matt’s right: the Internet is absolutely bursting at the seams with valuable information, all available for free. Yet he and other bloggers like him are able to make six-figure incomes by creating information so specialized and valuable that people are more than willing to pony up the dough.
The bulk of Wolfe’s income comes from his membership site, The WordPress Classroom.
#26 Gary Vaynerchuk
“What you do after you create your content is what truly counts.”
#27 Luke Langford
“The term ‘Professional Blogger’ is no longer an oxymoron.”
#28 John Chow
“Making money from blogging requires you to do only two things: drive a lot traffic, then maximize the income from that traffic.”
#29 Darren Rowse
“I’ve long advised that bloggers seeking to make money from blogging spread their interests across multiple revenue streams so as not to put all their eggs in one basket.”
Darren Rowse practices what he preaches by earning revenue through Digital Photography School, FeelGooder, TwiTip, and Problogger.
#30 Jason Calacanis
“The currency of blogging is authenticity and trust.”
Most people think that the ‘currency’ of blogging is actual currency (money). They think, “I’ll give my readers authentic, valuable blog posts and they’ll give me money in return.”
Blogger Jason Calacanis has the real exchange: you write authentic, valuable blog posts and you’re readers give you back trust. Once you have an audience that trusts you, all sorts of things are possible (including making money).
#31 David Risley
“Blogging is not a business by itself. It is only a promotional platform.”
According to Risley, the key to a six-figure income as a blogger is “a blog with a business backend.”
#32 Steve Pavlina
“It should feel genuinely good to earn income from your blog – you should be driven by a healthy ambition to succeed. If your blog provides genuine value, you fully deserve to earn income from it.”
Never try to trick somebody into giving you their money. Even if it works, it’s a short-term way to make money online.
#34 Adrienne Smith
“Successful people don’t spam.”
#35 Penelope Trunk
“Blogging is good for your career. A well-executed blog sets you apart as an expert in your field.”
Increasingly, employers are interested in hiring people who’ve cultivated an influential online presence. So sometimes the best resume is a blog.
A well-maintained blog establishes your authority in a niche by showcasing your knowledge and dedication to the topic.
#36 Dick Costolo
“The Internet destroyed most of the barriers to publication. The cost of being a publisher dropped to almost zero with two interesting immediate results: anybody can publish, and more importantly, you can publish whatever you want.”
Of course, just because you can write anything you want while blogging, that doesn’t mean that you should…
#37 Liz Strauss
“The Internet has no eraser.”
Blogger Liz Strauss explained in an interview why it’s so important to be conscientious about everything that you publish online: “Your children, your grandchildren, your future spouse, your future boss, and your future enemy will see what you write eventually. Speak the truth with your head connected to your heart.”
Write with integrity and you never have to worry about your words coming back to haunt you.
#38 David Risley
“There are no lines in the sand in the blogosphere except for those who draw those lines in an effort to get attention.”
#39 Chris Brogan
“If you accept all the praise, you have to accept all the critics.”
#40 Brian Clark
“In truth, the real opportunities for building authority and buzz through social media have only just begun. You simply have to look and see where things are going instead of where they’ve been.”
From our perspective today, it may seem that the Internet is already so far advanced that it’s too late to make any significant traction.
The opposite is actually true: the Internet is still relatively new and it’s expanding in popularity and scope each year. Looking back in twenty years, we will be able to see that the opportunities to benefit from social media (blogging included) “have only just begun.
Which Blogging Quote is Your Favorite?
Let me know with a comment. If you’ve got a great blogging quote that I missed, tell me about it and I may add it.