How I Turned a No-Hope-in-Hell Blog into a Magnet for Readers

A Case Study by Anastasiya Goers of Balance In Me

If you are reading this case study then you must be thinking about joining the bootcamp by Leo Babauta and Mary Jaksch. Before you make your decision please look through this report that will show you what this bootcamp has done for me.

First of all let me introduce myself. My name is Anastasiya Goers (I am a Ukrainian by nationality that is why my name is spelled so weird) and I write a blog at Balance In Me.

I started my blog about two years ago and for the first year I didn’t do anything to it at all. I read a few articles by Darren Rowse from Problogger and Steve Pavlina that made me really excited about  blogging (I didn’t know a thing about Leo back then. I guess it is almost impossible to not know about him today – if you are interested in blogging.)

I’ve always been interested in a healthy lifestyle and in balanced living. That is why I came up with the idea of my blog. I’ve been a fitness and Pilates instructor for 7 years. But I could convey everything I knew about health only to my clients, whereas with a blog the opportunities seemed endless.

I was all fired up and ready to go.  But then I just wasn’t sure that I was good enough as a writer. I wasn’t sure if anybody would ever read my blog.

Do these self-doubts seem familiar?

Also, I didn’t know if pursuing my passion was a good idea because my passion wouldn’t pay any bills. And eventually I lost that spark that was inside of me the first day that I started my blog. Well, this is the sad bit of how my blog got completely neglected and forgotten.

But it’s not the end of the story.

A year ago I decided that it was time to bring my blog back to life. I’d been writing articles every now and then. I joined a few social media sites and I got to the proud number of 15 subscribers. LOL!

Well, after 10 months of struggling with Balance In Me I found Leo’s report How I got over 150,000 Subscribers and I decided to give his A-List Blogging Bootcamp a try. I was very hesitant about joining the program because I wasn’t sure whether it would do anything for me. It cost a decent amount of money (it was more expensive than the next, shorter Bootcamp will be). $395 can buy you 10 boxes of diapers and when you are a mom to two 18-months old girls you have to consider this.

Anyway, I made up my mind to try it and because Leo and Mary offered a money-back guarantee I felt safe because I could quit at any time.

I didn’t quit.

Actually it was money very well spent! Let me tell you now what this Bootcamp has done for me.

Subscribers

I know that you would like to see some numbers. My blog growth wasn’t huge but I’m thrilled with the results. Here is my Feedburner statistics for the entire life of my blog. You can see that the subscriber number started growing significantly in late August – September (the time of the Bootcamp) and it is still moving up.  In three months my subscriber number has grown from 15 subscribers to 245. My readership is 16 times larger than it was before the Bootcamp! Isn’t that amazing?

I didn’t have guest posts on Zen Habits or Write to Done like some other bootcampers did,  that’s why you can’t see huge subscriber spikes on my graphs. The bootcamp encouraged me to do a few changes to my blog and these changes are responsible for all the new subscribers that I’ve got.

Leo and Mary did a terrific job at writing great articles and providing us with all the necessary resources that helped us bootcampers to look at our blogs from a different perspective – from the perspective of a reader. The reader is the most important person on your blog and no matter how much you want to be in control of everything, the reader is the one who makes the rules for this game.

When I looked at my blog through the eyes of a reader I didn’t like what I saw. Here are a few improvements that I have done to my blog based on the information that I’ve got from the bootcamp. Judging from the stats, those improvements were vitally important for the health of Balance In Me.

• Design. Okay, my original design was not the best. It was not until I heard,“That’s a horrible design,” from Leo that I realized how badly I needed a redesign. Here are a few screenshots of my blog before the redesign (click on the images to see the enlarged picture).

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And here is the current design (click on the picture below for a bigger image). I can’t believe myself how horrible my old design was. Yuck!
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• Headlines and images.
  Everybody knows that you have only a few seconds to grab the reader’s attention with your header, with your image and the first paragraph of your post. I believe that Leo did a great job at explaining how to write catchy headlines and how to use great images to lure readers into reading your post You can learn his secrets if you join the next bootcamp.

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• Content. If you do not have great content to go with your headline and image then you are doomed. I know that all of us start blogs because we have something to say to the world, but is the world always interested in what you are saying? This is the biggest dilemma in blogging – finding topics that you are knowledgeable and passionate about and that your readers are interested in.The reader is the one who dictates rules for your posts: they must be scannable, easy to read, solve reader’s problems, exciting, remarkable, plain and concise. I believe that my content has improved greatly due to the bootcamp and here are a few of my best articles that I have written after the bootcamp (based on reader comments and exposure in social media. I have installed a new twitter button just a couple of weeks ago and that is why the retweet count is inaccurate): 101 Healthy Habits that Anyone Can Follow A Simple Guide to Frugal Organic Eating

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• Monetization and ads. Before the bootcamp I had a few Adsense blocks at the beginning and at the end of every article. You can guess that I didn’t succeed at becoming a millionaire with those ads and after the bootcamp I was convinced that it was time to let them go. I am sure that readers like a blog without ads much better than the one with them. You cannot make “real” money with 200 subscribers (and you definitely can’t make money with 15 subscribers, he-he-he), so right now I am focusing on producing great content that will attract more readers to my blog.

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• Guest posts. Guest posting is one of the best ways to increase your traffic. Writing a guest post and writing a pitch to the blogger to get that guest post is a real art. Mary gave some priceless advice of how to write great pitches and how to get those guest post slots. I must confess that I was very lazy with guest posting because I have too much going on in my life right now. I did get one guest post on Good Life Zen and it gave me a decent amount of new subscribers (here is the guest post itself Stop Being Your Best and Enjoy Life). I am looking forward to writing more guest posts and to growing my blog even more.

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• Social Media. That was the most difficult part for me but thanks to Leo I have discovered the true value of Twitter and a few other Social Media sites. I am still working on my social media presence but I think that I am doing much better than I did before. I mainly focus on Stumbleupon and Twitter now because I find these social media websites most helpful for blogs.

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• Blogging community. This is not an improvement that I’ve done to my blog but this is the part of the bootcamp that I value the most. We’ve had a great team of exciting, extraordinary, fascinating, interesting and highly creative people who participated in the bootcamp. We have supported and helped each other and I continue communicating with many of them now. I believe that the success of all changes that I have done to my blog greatly depends on the support and assistance that I have received from those guys. My “blogging friends” are great guys and I am extremely happy that I can keep in touch with them even after the bootcamp is over.

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Will this bootcamp help YOU ?

I can’t guarantee your success, but I know that if you’re ready to learn and ready to put some work into your blog, then you’ll definitely see amazing results.

I’m very grateful to Leo and Mary for organizing this bootcamp and for giving me such tremendous blogging inspiration. I look forward to their future bootcamps and I am definitely planning to participate, learn and have fun. And I wish you the same!

Keep your life balanced and follow your dreams!

You can read more by Anastasiya Goers on her blog Balance In Me Follow her at @balanceinme