In the first “Learning to Blog” post, I was really, really new to the blogosphere. I had little-to-no idea what I wanted with karmarogue.com. I had read several blogging-tips sites that said: “Above all else, your blog should have a focus.” Here I am, on day 50 of my blog’s lifespan, and I still have very little direction.

I believe in the naked approaching to blogging. I have no problem exposing to all of my readers how much traffic I get, what my thought processes are, and other web development stuff that other web site’s would rather keep private. A little shy of two months worth of blogging all by myself and I get around 1,500 unique visitors every day.

I now have an Alexa ranking of 258,467, which is not at all terrible but neither is it amazing. It is also definitely reflective of how Alexa works. Alexa assigns websites a traffic ranking based on the amount of visitors that visit a website that have the Alexa-bar installed. I repeat: Alexa is a measure of how many visitors go to a site that have the Alexa-bar installed. I have a stake in other sites more focused on web development that have better Alexa rankings but get less traffic. The reason is simple: They attract more tech-savvy visitors with the Alexa-bar installed. Regardless of how Alexa is determined, I fully anticipate that my Alexa will drop below 100,000 within the next two months. Why am I so confident?

The bottom line is that Karma Rogue is not simply a site for my family and friends. I have created Karma Rogue to entertain a large amount of people. True, Karma Rogue has seemingly no direction whatsoever. Contradictory to what certain web sites would tell you (hint hint Lorelle on Wordpress) there is very little reason to make a site with a simple, niche, acute focus. Site’s with such a focus are much easier to make, will catch on much faster, will experience much greater repeat traffic, and will attract a far more loyal readership. Blogs that focus on very particular things – like Fishing Lures, for example – are more likely to be successful than blogs with no focus. They are able to corner a certain market that otherwise has nowhere else to turn to. But – so the fuck what?

Blogging is about one thing: Entertainment. That is it. Bloggers like me do not have the attention-span for creating and maintaining web sites about things like Fishing Lures. We are naturally mentally all-over-the-place. And do you know why that does not matter? Because bloggers like me attract readers that are likewise guilty of lacking focus. We ADHD folk are not alone. We should not be afraid to create blogs that let loose. But if you choose such a chaotic route, there is something you must keep in mind. The key to pulling this random-style off is providing users with a highly usable index. If you are going to focus on just about anything, make sure people can scan your homepage for exactly what interests them in a short amount of time.

I have had far greater success with my blog than most other bloggers and there is a reason why. Although usability and SEO are important to me, they have nothing to do with what I’ve learned about successfully blogging and are not reasons why my blog is viewed by thousands daily. The reason for Karma Rogue’s success is simple. Karma Rogue is a success because I have determined that Karma Rogue is a success. Karma Rogue is a success because I am happy with what it is and what it has become. And, perhaps most important of all, it is a success because it does not try to be something that it is not.

Readers are able to pick up on the passion of writers. You simply cannot be a successful blogger if blogging does not make you happy and you have no passion for it. In this regard, it is very similar to almost any profession. If you really want to know how to be successful, I will tell you: Do what makes you happy and do not expect to find any secrets that make what you do any easier. I have learned that blogging carries with it the same exact same requirement necessary for success at anything — Passion.