Darren,

I couldn’t agree more! I started a blog a few years ago – just to learn about blogging. I started with an assumption of who my target audience was. But I wasn’t sure. Nonetheless, I decided to JUST START and to see who showed up to read it. I wrote “essays,” which were simply my opinions and observations about a particular topic (Business Process Management). Nobody cared. Not even my Mom. I got very little traffic.

But I paid attention to my stats. My stats told me what pages and file downloads were popular. Once in awhile, one of my site visitors would E-mail me or call me with a question. Those people weren’t from my assumed target audience. After a few E-mails and calls, I began to suspect that those people were my TRUE target audience. So, I started another blog (http://www.bpaacademy.com) to test my assumption.

But first, I created a couple of information products: an eBook and an assessment spreadsheet. Then, I started transferring some popular posts from the old blog to the new blog. Right away, a few sales trickled in. That made me suspect that I might be on the right track.

Then I crashed my site and now I’m working to rebuild it – into something better. That incident was certainly tragic, but I learned how not to make those mistakes again.

I have lots to do on the second blog. It’s crude and needs many more posts. But, because I had that first, experimental blog, I KNOW what to do. Yes, the first blog was not a “success” from a monetization perspective. But it was an overwhelming success from a learning perspective.

“Just start” is some of the best advice we can give fellow prospective bloggers. Results prove this is a very practical approach.

Good Blogging!

Jim Reardan