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What's the secret of a successful blog?
Why not ask, um....me? That's what Seth Roberts did:
When I visited George Mason University recently, I asked Tyler Cowen, “What’s the secret of a successful blog?” Cowen and Tabarrok’s Marginal Revolution is the most successful blog I know of.
His answer: “Three elements: 1. Expertise. 2. Regularity. 3. Recurring characters, like a TV show.” By regularity he meant at least 5 times/week.
Here is my previous post on Seth Roberts. Here Seth makes a cameo appearance with Alex.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on December 3, 2006 at 07:38 AM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
A couple of other things I think makes this blog good: It has a mix of short and longer posts, with none too long (if I wanted to read something longer I would read a book or something). It also mixes more intellectual posts about economics with links to interesting stories and websites. Lastly, although it has a libertarian bent it is not pushing that all of the time like Cafe Hayek or something.
Posted by: catquas at Dec 3, 2006 11:13:43 AM
Also what's great is the reader interaction. E.g., replying to emails and follow-ups based on the community.
Posted by: Macneil at Dec 3, 2006 12:13:01 PM
I might also say, at the risk of sounding like a kiss-up, that there's a very virtuous self-reinforcing cycle with this blog. The quality of the blog and Tyler and Alex's comment and follow-up policies makes this the best blog to find good comments, too.
Posted by: Keith at Dec 3, 2006 12:53:07 PM
I love this blog because you can tell that the posters actually know what they're talking about, whether it be Economics or some more mundane (though really, what's more mundane than economics? In a good way, of course :>)
Many blogs are run by people who may be very good at collating information, filtering through data to bring you the insights. That's all nice and good, but I prefer to get fresh content, and that's exactly what this blog brings.
I know of only one blog of the same consistent quality, and that's Language Log, a Linguistics blog. They deal with language issues at least as rigorously as economists :> The statistics and data collection issues are similar to some that are talked about here. So if you haven't read it before, it might be interesting to go through it, there's definitely overlap (particularly in the posts by Mark Liberman).
Posted by: Mike K at Dec 3, 2006 2:43:13 PM
I read ME because it's linky, meaty, seldom ranting, and it answers yes to the question that keeps me coming back to anything, whether we're talking about a blog, a tv show, a store, a musuem or a person : Can you tell me about something / someone / some place interesting while entertaining me in the process?
Posted by: jon o at Dec 3, 2006 4:56:00 PM
Pointing out the obvious:
Good writing is quite important. The three elements above won't mean much without it.
Posted by: Trieu Truong at Dec 3, 2006 5:31:53 PM
I would say the #1 secret to the success of Tyler's blog is Tyler. Not very many people can do what he does.
Is this the most successful high-IQ blog around? I get about half the number of daily visits of MR at my iSteve.com blog, although I don't have comments, and comments inflate the visitorship statistics as the same individuals check back many times per day. But, clearly, MR is doing very well for a far right edge of the Bell Curve blog.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Dec 3, 2006 5:36:40 PM
Regularity is the key. That and shorter posts. I'd say 15-20 a week is probably better, but who has the time for that?
Posted by: PoliticalCritic at Dec 3, 2006 5:41:21 PM
Part of your problem, Sailer, is that you're Johnny One Note: the dumb Mexicans are coming to ruin America. For those of us who aren't terrified of brown people, your fearmongering and racism grow tiresome quickly.
One point that hasn't been brought up yet: Marginal Revolution has short blog posts, so it's very accessible, even when the material is deep.
- Josh
Posted by: Wild Pegasus at Dec 3, 2006 10:37:53 PM
I think this is a successful blog because none of the posts are too long, yet the material they cover is very deep. The material is also often fun to read since it uses interesting stories and websites.
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