The Top 10 Bloggers You Should Learn From
Creating a single-author blog is not a task for the faint of heart. Even just regularly contributing to a blog can be a huge undertaking. Thankfully, others have blazed a path before you, including the 10 bloggers profiled below. These bloggers include those who still write every post on their site themselves, and others who now accept guest posts or staff bloggers. However, each one started out the same way: just them and their blog.
We have selected some blogs with great content about writing, blogging, marketing, and online media. The list also includes a few blogs that are completely different, but are all created by individual bloggers with unique styles and voices. Let at least a few of these inspire you to find your true voice and blogging style.
Darren Rowse – Problogger
One of the quintessential blogs for bloggers, Problogger is also a great example of a single-author blog that added more bloggers while still retaining its identity. Though there are a number of internet marketing professionals who happily contradict the advice given by Darren Rowse, it is still worth reading to stay in the conversation and understand some of the assumptions made in the blogging industry.
James Chartrand – Men with Pens
James Chartrand is the pseudonym for the woman who founded Men with Pens. Though Men with Pens is now home to other bloggers, as well as a web design and writing team for clients, the blog still holds the heart of the business. Plus, the insights from individuals working on great websites every day will help you sharpen your design and writing skills.
Brian Clark – Copyblogger
Copyblogger is a blog focused on the nuts and bolts of writing great content that informs and persuades. Letting your website and blog speak for itself (and sell itself) takes a lot of work, but check out some of the advice in the Copyblogger archive to start using your words to create “online marketing that works.”
Chris Brogan – chrisbrogan.com
Chris Brogan’s favorite buzzword is “human business,” and that’s a concept he has built his own business on. Now, he uses his blog to discuss where marketing and social media is right now and how it helps or hinders businesses that are trying to operate as “human businesses.”
Seth Godin – Seth’s Blog
Seth Godin’s regular but unscheduled blog posts are generally much shorter than traditional blog posts. His thoughts on marketing, communication, and business are often framed as questions or simple allegories, encouraging marketers to take a second and think about their audience or their mission.
Chris Garrett – chrisg.com
Chris Garrett is the creator of a single-author blog focused almost primarily on internet marketing, blogging, and social media. At chrisg.com, Chris lives up to the standards of online relationships that he encourages in each of his blog posts.
Trent Hamm – The Simple Dollar
This financial-themed blog could be described as personal and charming. Trent is both very open with his thoughts and beliefs and relatively conservative with details about his family life. One of The Simple Dollar’s unique features is the Reader’s Mailbag column, in which Trent patiently advises huge numbers of people who email him financial questions.
Jason Kottke – kottke.org
“The structure of a kottke post is totally elemental,” wrote one guest blogger of what is different about Jason Kottke’s super-simple blog. Each of his (usually) short posts is made up of a bit of commentary and something interesting. A blogging style known as “aggregating,” this blog is mostly made up of links to other content, loosely connected by Jason Kottke’s tastes and hobbies.
Leo Babauta – Zen Habits
The place where many readers turn for a taste of simplicity and a direction for how to improve their own lives. This blog’s design, with a lot of white space and larger text than normal, speaks to how comforting and soothing the blog is meant to be. Most of the posts are at once soothing and compelling, and encourage readers to take action.
Larry Brooks – Storyfix.com
As an author and screenwriter, Larry Brooks has certainly seen some success. He created his blog in order to talk about preparing yourself and your manuscript for the publishing world, and since 2009 he has done just that. Though this site has a lot of writing tips, many of them are targeted at your fiction instead of your blog posts.
In case you haven’t noticed, there is no one, perfect recipe for a successful blogger. Instead, take what you like from each of these bloggers and all the others you read, and let those influences shape who you are as a writer!
surprisingly, none of them is a tech blogger
:O
Yes, i agree lol
Wow! You really love men bloggers. I love the zen habits blog. Other than that their isn’t one blog that you mentioned that I can identify with as a blogger. Nice way to segregate. I would have been more impressed by a list that included both men and women or even sites that have a couple. For instance Kevin and Amanda, or Lime crime, how about ehow? Unless you say that these are the top ten blogs of a specific type, you really should not say top 10 to learn from. There are a broad spectrum of blogs out there that a person could learn from. It is interesting that you find you can only learn from men who blog and that women bloggers have nothing of value to teach.
I was thinking the same thing. Only male bloggers? The ‘pseudonym of a woman’ is just weird to me! Two women I would recommend would be dooce.com (you mentioned below) and thepioneerwoman.com. In my opinion, anyone that can create a large following simply writing about their simple lives has something worth learning from. Thank you for the resources, there are 7 bloggers on this list I have never heard of and will be checking out.
The lack of women surprised me, too. Danielle Laporte’s White Hot Truth rocks. As far as The Pioneer Woman is concerned, the only thing I ever really learned from her is that if you give a lot of high-dollar things away, people will visit your site. =)
While I’ll admit some of these have great blogs, the fact that there are no women on here (whom I’ve gotten most of my inspiration and knowledge from) makes me think the author still has some learning to do!
What I noticed first is all of them are men. Then I noticed that I have never heard of nine of them, and I read a lot of blogs regularly. The one name I did recognize might be an entirely different Darren Rowse then the one I know of.
Yes, most of them are men – however, the second in the list, James Chartrand, is the pseudonym of a woman (if you click on the pseudonym link, it describes who she actually is). Also, some of the blogs are now multi-author blogs which regularly employ female bloggers.
Another female blogger to follow (with a pretty distinctive voice) would be Heather Armstrong of dooce.com.
Dang, what about me
Number 11 on your list should contain Joe Powell’s Cupofjoepowell.com . Mr. Powell is a consistant and creative writer, and his blog entries range from the political, personal, to entertainment… Always insightful and so enjoyable.
You could add Glen at viperchill.com to that list although I think he said he will be posting less from now on. Best thing to do when learning from those who talk about blogging is to do as they do not always as they say.
I have only heard of Darren Rowse and Brian Clark
I have heard about every but Larry Brooks is new to me . Thanks for introducing
None of them are travel bloggers either.
I’m a one-man travel blogger
But no worries if you haven’t heard about my blog just yet. It’s a ‘night project’ besides my day job (which fortunately includes knowing about blogs, too). I started marketing my blog on luxury destinations only recently but I’ve already got two print magazines interested in publishing my articles and photos!
They are all great bloggers I’m sure. But I’m mostly familiar with Darren from ProBlogger. But for the sake of a good argument, you didn’t even mention Steve Pavlina! This is still an admirable list, and maybe I’m just partial!
Darren Rowse rules!
Thanks for sharing, I like Brian Clark, mostly all of the above are great bloggers.
good list
great list
I had only heard of Darren Rowse and Brain Clark – but it’s nice to see an interesting “top” list that isn’t the usual “top earning bloggers” or something similar.
Yep really helpful
Thanks for this really helpful post. I appreciate your materials.
Jillian Madison should be on this list. She built the Pophangover network and Damn You Autocorrect from the ground up and runs everything by herself. I’m impressed.
Blogging is really hard. Writing articles that are interesting and time worthy for your readers is time consuming. In my blog (click on my name above) I blog about web development. Researching a topic, even when I’m already familiar with it is a pain because I want to keep articles accurate and trustworthy, with references.
My advice to other bloggers is to write content that will be interesting for years, also spend some time and review your articles and update them. Remember content is king.
GREAT REVIEW! I pretty much agree with all your thoughts you said in your post, especially at the end of your article. Thank you, your post is very valuable as always. Keep up the good work! You’ve got +1 more reader of your super blog:) Isabella S.
Just saw this on stumble and the title catches my attention. I am also a blogger but newbie. Anyway, this post helps me. thanks! keep it up!
Hey! I know this is somewhat off topic but I was wondering which blog platform are you using for this website? I’m getting sick and tired of WordPress because I’ve had problems with hackers and I’m looking at options for another platform. I would be awesome if you could point me in the direction of a good platform.