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Sean “Deacon” Neprud presents 3 keys to success in professional blogging. You may have the passion… but which of these keys are you missing?

Sean is a long friend and Website In A Weekend reader. In fact, he was there when Website In A Weekend was born.

Since then, the blogging bug has bitten Sean very hard. So hard he even won a trip to Vegas for Blog World Expo!

Here’s Sean’s account in his own words.

Blog World Expo Recap: Blogging Success Requires Passion and a Lot of Writing

By Sean Neprud

I spent last weekend in Las Vegas for Blog World Expo 2009. Dr. WordPress has been kind enough to let me share some of the things I learned at the conference to you here on WIAW.

Richard Jalichandra made it clear in his keynote address Friday morning of Blog World Expo that the two keys to being a professional blogger are passion for your subject and pumping out ridiculous amounts of content.

Richard’s keynote address was “The State of the Blogosphere”, in which he presented the data that Technorati gathered for their annual State of the Blogosphere series. This info will be presented on Technorati throughout the week of October 19 – 23. I’ve got the upshot for you right here.

The data pointed out some interesting things about bloggers.

Pro versus hobby blogger

28% of bloggers are professional, which means they have made money from their blog. The other 72% are hobbyists. They write because they enjoy it, and don’t make money off of what they do.

Here’s some interesting tidbits about those 28% that are professional bloggers:

• Professionals write on an average of 4 blogs, [Key 1]
• 2 out of 3 professionals have been blogging for more than 2 years.

An interesting revelation is that the writing style of professional bloggers is different than hobbyists. The hobbyist blogger writes with a style of sincerity, writing about personal things, and mostly share information about themselves, their thoughts and experiences.

Professional bloggers write as an authority [Key 2]. They write as experts on their topic. They rarely share personal facts and experiences, except when those personal stories directly relate to the topic of their blog.

Furthermore, the top professional bloggers write A LOT [Key 3]. The top 500 authority bloggers generate 300 times more posts than the average amongst all bloggers. The top 5,000 bloggers generate 100 times more posts than average.

Passion rules

Last of all, the most important factor that leads to success for bloggers is passion. Most professional bloggers didn’t start out trying to be professionals. They started writing because they were passionate about something. Eventually, they realized that they might be able to make some money off of their blog. Eventually, they reached the point that they were able to make their blog a full time job.

That opportunity to be a professional, full time blogger would never been presented without that initial passion that got them started in the first place.

Blogging success requires a lot of writing. This seems to be the most fundamental key to blogging success, and one that was reinforced throughout the weekend at Blog World. Passion about your subject is what will keep you writing those posts that are required for success.

The upshot to this:

Write about something you are passionate about. Write about it often. Write over and over, and then write some more. Your success will flow from this.

Sean Neprud operates Bad Deacon Design under the moniker Deacon (surprise!), where he works in a range of mediums from wood block to web design.