General rules are enough for success
Sometimes it’s pretty irritating when newbie ask some questions in forums seeking for advice, and when they got some advices they said that it’s too general blah blah… waiting for spoon feeding.
Fact is, people give general advices because lots of the times it works. If you ask me how to build a successful blog, I’ll go with… find a good niche, get a domain, find a hosting, design, start writing, directory submission, link exchange, learn SEO, promotion, continuous update and optimization.
It isn’t as easy as it sounds, it needs lots of hard work, but these general rules do work. Most newbie who failed are starting with the wrong niche, but most of them simply gave up too easily, or just too arrogant and not following the basic rules.
I have some friends that complaint that their effort was useless but they never submitted their websites to any directories, their link exchange efforts are close to none, and they gave up just a couple of months after starting a website.
The key to a successful website lies on finding the right topic or niche, the rest are much simpler steps that require commitment and hard work. Just work on it, success is likely.