How to start a successful site
How many times have you seen this post on a new blog?
“Here is where I’ll write whatever is on my mind. I’m real excited. I plan to post here often. Join me for the ride.”
Following that, there is another post the next day. Then one a week later. Then there isn’t anything since 2012.
I don’t want to write one of those, but what else do you write?
I decided to look at some of the blogs I’ve been reading for years (and in some cases over a decade) and see what the first post was about when they started their site.
Mark Cuban used his new platform to blast the media, of course. From March 2004:
Their grab for glory is my continuous nuisance. It gets really old getting pestered about transactional items. Its amazing how many emailsI get … are you going to make a trade, did you make a trade, who are you going to trade? Who are you going to sign? Questions they all knowI won’t answer because the minute we do something, we are going to release it to the world in a press release.
John Gruber decided to post his reaction to a big Apple announcement in August 2002. It’s safe to say that set a precedent since John’s take on Apple announcements is still among the first ones I seek out.
You might think that if you were about to debut a Macintosh-oriented weblog, it would be quite a stroke of good fortune for some Really Big News to break on the very day you plan to start writing. Like, say, a brand new line of PowerMac G4’s.
I like that John referred to himself/his site as “The Daring Fireball” in the next paragraph. A love for the definite article “The” which still carries on today.
Mike Davidson posted a couple links early on but his first writing was in April 2004 and, true to nature, was a post of SEO tests on links.
This is just a page to get the following links added to the search engine indexes. I’m running a quick test:
That is a very long “quick test.”
Seth Godin, who has inspired me with his writing as much as anybody, wrote about his bordeom in shopping at a mall in January 2002.
The only store I saw that didn’t bore me was the new Apple store. If you haven’t been, it’s worth a visit. Sure, it will be boring soon too. That’s because our tastes evolve faster than retailers allow their stores to.
(Sidenote: Apple retail stores are still pretty great.)
Jason Kottke, the marathon runner of blog writing, made his first post back in March 1998
I decided I needed to start writing things down. Because I forget. Because I think better and feel better when I write. I used to write often but got away from it. So here it is again. But you ask: “Jason, why not keep a private diary?” Because I’d never keep up a private diary…I need to force myself to write this. So, I made it into content. Since it’s content, I feel obligated to keep it up-to-date.
Wow. I’d say he’s won the game that he was playing with himself.
Jason Fried, in his true fashion, gave credit to a good product from from a good friend and marketer Jim Coudal in October 2006. (This was the first written post I could find. In my searching, I was reminded that SVN mainly started out as a link list blog. The earliest I could find was August of 2000.)
New from Coudal: The Sixteen Straight Tee. It’s a shirt (+ marker/pin) that lets you check off Bears’ victories: “Show your faith while we run the table. The Sixteen Straight Tee is created and printed in Chicago for Chicago.”
Coudal still has the great PR ability, but looks like he lost the domain at some point. (Probably dropped it when the Bears went 13–3 that year.)
For me,
Brian Stucki, I started in May 2004 with a story about buying my first motorcycle.
As I glanced over to my early morning road mates, I noticed two things. First, those girls were better viewed at 50 mph. And second, all four of them were staring at the motorcycle and it’s occupant. That taught me something. Every guy wants a bike, and every girl wants a guy with a bike.
The motorcycle proved to be a good investment for college. Not for grades per se, but for a great time.
What have we learned?
The topic of your first post doesn’t really matter. No one reads that one anyway.