The strategy and steps to achieve success in blogging 4.0?

Blogging 4.0 Defined
Blogging 4.0 basically means an online business centered around a blog since 2014. This is not a new concept but a new strategy and new perspective to look at the world of blogging and online business in general.


Creating and Curating The Best Content
Yes, how many hundred and thousands of people create and curate the best content on Internet but eventually give up and FAIL because there were no eyes looking at their blog. There were no readers and no money coming in.

The Truth Behind the Expenses
I am listing the minimum that you would be spending if your blog is going to be a an online business.

You need to attract visitors, you need them to sign up for your mailing list, you want to offer them something of value in return, you want your website to load on mobile and computer, be fast and responsive to devise site and browsers.

Okay, okay. But, wait.

You also need to spend enormous time (= opportunity cost) to develop your product, market your product, engage with your customers or fans and handle customer support.

Let's take a look at the dollar-and-time investment.

Domain name/renewal: $15/year
Website hosting: $300-$500/year
Website upgrades: $100/year
eBook creations: $500/year
Equipments (lights, camera, mike, recorder, et al.): $1000 - $2000
Podcast hosting: $120/year
Social Media promotion: $500/year
Time: between 40-100 hours/week
and a bunch of other things...

The 4.0 Strategy
What can you do? First, you know that you are a serious blogger. You are committed to take your blog as a mini online business.

Your first goal should be to break-even. Here is the 6 phases of it:

1. Spend the minimum that you can afford and sustain.
2. Then work your best to recoup your investment.
3. Invest in upgrades and expansion.
4. Invest and building a brand that attracts readerships on its own.
5. Offer products and/or services to recoup your additional investment.
6. Break even on quarterly basis and achieve a state of financial balance
7. Grow your blog-business like a rockstar.

The caveat here?

The CAVEAT Rule
Caveat stands for:

• Consistency
• Authenticity
• Value
• Enthusiasm
• Attitude
• Theme

Consistency
Consistency is the most important rule for blogging to succeed.

Authenticity
You have to be authentic. You have to present your true self before your audience. Your voice should sound genuine. No mimicking, no imitation, but your voice, unfiltered, afraid, naked yet true.

Value
Provide value. Provide Quality. Look how can you improve the quality of an information, service or product out there. For example, read this Quora question and then the two answers that came before mine. Now, look at this answer. It took me time to write this answer and then organize the content in such a way that is easy to read. But did I increase the quality by 10 times? Was more value added by me (1 hour of my time) to the Quora community of bloggers?

If the answer is Yes and Yes, then I have to do the same on my:

1. Blog
2. Podcast
3. Social Media
4. Weekly emails (newsletters)
5. Books that offer for free
6. Books that I write to sell
7. The products that I am building to market
8. The services that I provide

Two cents on Quality
Quality content is integral part of providing value.

Make sure, in terms of Quality, your videos and pictures are high-resolution, clean and clear. Make sure your podcast is noise-free. Make sure the background of your videos are neat and organized.

Likewise, your blog posts should be clean, neat and organized. Add pictures. Edit the post before you publish. If you notice an error after publishing, edit and fix immediately.

Treat your blog as Apple treats its product packaging.

Enthusiasm
Energy is the raw material for enthusiasm. You have to stay fit, exercise and be healthy.

Apply the 80/20 here to get your base covered.

Now you have the energy it takes to be a real-life blogger who actually makes a living or decent passive income from her/his blog. Great! You must feel good to have all this energy to work so hard. Not 4 hours a week but 100 hours.

How do you use this raw energy to create a positive, uplifting enthusiasm that motivates your community and wants them to come to your content again and again?

Simple.

Follow this 3 simple rule:

1. Do not engage with haters, spammers and negative people, comments, or content out there on Internet. Save your energy, every ounce of it and use it for your blog. If someone makes you angry or frustrated, instead of fighting, turn that emotion into a blog post. (Remember, everything is a material for a writer).
2. Present a positive solution, scenario and interpretation to a negative problem, scenario and story. Go deep. Go long content. When you are trying to cover a topic or an issue, get to the heart of it. Again, look at this Quora answer as an example. It is pain to type such long answer... my back is hurting; I want to drink coffee; it's Saturday and sunny, I rather go out... but damn! my answer is not complete yet! But I am going to write until the question is completely answered.
3. Engage with your fans, readers, customers, whatsoever you call them as if your life depends on it. And it does. They pay for your services or books. They use your products. They send you thank you emails and talk good about you. These all makes your life more meaningful and makes you feel fulfilled. Do whatever it takes to make sure you are replying to all comments, even if they in hundreds. Reply to as many emails as you can. Again provide value. Be energetic. Be a lion. Be a cheetah. Be a deer. Be a rabbit. Be whatever it takes.

Attitude
Attitude is your mentality, your personality. How do you interact with failures? How do you take losses? Attitude is very important.

Even if you do everything right as I ask you to do in this post, there are chances that you will fail ten times. May be you wont see readership or visitor growth for 6 months or a year.

May be you are having hard time coming up with new ideas. Perhaps, it will be hard for you to allocate this much time to build a great blog.

What will do? Because, I can tell you, this will happen.

And if you are mentally not prepared, you will quit or settle for a mediocre blog which no one reads and then you will ask a question on Quora, how to get more traffic to my blog in hope of as if some magic answer will you fix your attitude problem.

Are you a sheep? Or are you a lion? Are you a giver, quitter and loser? Or are you made for hard battles and fighting until you win or die? Ask these questions before you wet your feet in the murky waters of online blogging-businesses.

Successful blogging business is not for the faint of heart. But if you think, this is You, then welcome. Start today. Hit me an email or comment. Create a network of other successful bloggers.

Share ideas, exchange tips. Help one another. Create a mastermind group (online or in your city). Create a Facebook group and share your daily wins and fails. Have fun. You have to make this process fun because it is incredibly time consuming and difficult. But can it be done with laughter while having a good time? Oh yeah, that's what I am having.

I am sure, thousands of other bloggers can say the same.

Welcome to the club! Bloggers 4.0.

Theme
Stick to a theme (a topic). If you want to cover a slightly bigger niche, break down your blog posts into various topics or categories.

On the other hand, another popular blogger Maria Popova (Brain Pickings) focuses on books, art and life advice. James Altucher focuses on writing, books, and online business building.

On social media too, you would notice the biggest accounts or pages are those who stick to one theme or context such as fitness, bodybuilding, jokes, poetry, etc.

Start with a sub-niche. Then cover your niche to which your sub-niche belongs. If you are successful up until here, go broader.

That said, it is always better and more effective to cover a single theme or semi-related, overlapping ideas. Both Tim Ferriss and I, for example are doing the later.

We cover more than one topic on our blog and social but all of them are overlapping with a single goal of improving our self.

Hope this helps!

Update 1: If there are some aspects of this question that you would want me to cover in-depth or an area you think I should have touched, please let me know in the comment and I'll update the answer with new information.

Update 2: Why "speaking with people" 1.0 will not work?
Any simplistic advice presented by people without providing the right context, examples, timeframe, or sharing their own story/case-study is basically being dishonest or lazy.

There are millions of people speaking with people and no body listens. No one takes this kind of speaking seriously enough to turn your podium into an online blogging-business. The internet is mature and crowded. You need to differentiate yourself.