80/20 Rule for Blogging Success – 4 Rules from My Experience

Did you know about the formula – 80/20 rule for blogging success? The most effective and efficient blogging blueprint.

In this article, we will discuss the 80/20 rule for blogging success. As you all know, blogging is the most rewarding business available for all people.

Many people are entering into this online business with a view of earning a passive income. And to all people who have just started blogging, I want to tell you one thing— blogging is successful only if you put in the real effort.

No matter what you do. If you wish to grow your blog— you need to have a strategy in place and implement the 80-20 rule to make a significant difference.

It is also known as the Pareto principle (or) the Pareto law (or) the principle of imbalance.

Once you get a good hold of this law, you can achieve sustainable growth in your blogging career. You can reach great heights even.

Is that true–can I achieve magnificent success in blogging by applying this rule?

Indeed yes, you can reach great heights and achieve innumerable success in blogging.

Make things work right by applying this principle, and you will see the difference.

This article is suitable for bloggers who want to reach success. Before entering into the actual topic, let us refresh some basics and the history of the Pareto principle.

Pareto Principle – Brief History

Vilfredo Pareto (1848 – 1923) was an Italian Economist who found that 80% of the wealth is with 20% of the population.

This 20% of people retain the larger portion of the Global wealth produced and control it.

The invention was actually started in his garden, where he found that 80% of the peas are produced by 20% of the pods.

Later it grew as a theory, and he presented it at the university. It states that– 20% of the Italian people owned 80% of its land.

After his invention– Mr. Joseph M. Juran (a management consultant) replicated the theory in his business. He found that 80% of the sales typically come from 20% of his customers.

The theory slowly gained importance and was applied across different business and marketing sectors.

The Pareto Principle states that— Roughly 80% of the results come from 20% of the efforts made. In other terms, a small percentage of the cause has a large effect.

As you all know, blogging is a professional business, and you should follow proper strategies to grow.

To those who are into full-time blogging, this 80/20 rule for blogging business will work better. You just need to maintain the balance between your several blogging activities.

80/20 Rule for Blogging Success

In simple terms– 80 20 rule says that 80% of your traffic or income comes from 20% of your blog posts or blogging efforts.

As we are already busy with different blogging activities, it is a must to know the true outcomes of blogging.

Everyone has started blogging in recent days, only to make money and create a passive income (sustainable source of revenue).

Even though blogging is a slow-growing business, it doesn’t mean that we have to wait for years to generate revenue.

You create a plan and a strategy to understand which blogging action brings you money in a while.

This 80/20 rule for blogging success will not make you a millionaire overnight, but implementing the principle will help you understand what works and what not works.

1. Focus on creating high-quality blog posts that solve your audience problem. Use tools like Google Analytics to track the post’s traffic and performance.
2. Use Google Search Console or Ahrefs to find posts that are ranking well. Focus on optimizing those 20% of posts that bring in 80% of your traffic.
3. Concentrate on optimizing the 20% of those monetization strategies that generate the majority of your blogging income.

Sometimes, blogging makes you feel tired, bored, and exhausted. We are taught to produce more content often in the beginning.

Hence, we keep on writing more and become drained after some days. But these 80-20 rules tell you how to make more money from blogging by working smartly.

Which means working less (don’t take it wrong), but effectively.

By following this principle, I witness over a 28% increase in organic traffic to my blog. You can save time, optimize your workflow, and grow faster by following this principle.

Let’s Relate the 80/20 Rule of Blogging Success

Now, take some deep breaths and calm your mind. Even take a small walk to refresh your mind and body.

Because now we are going to see some blogging reality. Also, we will see how it is going to create a spark.

Who knows– it might be a new start as well.

Let me crack some common blogging pattern that applies to every blogger.

• 80% of the traffic to your blog comes from 20% of your blog posts.
• 80% of your blogging revenue comes from 20% of the monetization sources.
• More than 80% of the content you produce comes from 20% of your real-life experience.
• 80% of your blogging growth is defined by the 20% of your actions.
• 80% of your haters come from 20% of your reviews.

Though several blog monetization methods are available– not all income sources contribute equal income share.

If you integrate Google Adsense and Affiliate Marketing into your blog, either of the two will bring more revenue.

In my own blogging journey, I found only a few blog posts bring more traffic. I kept optimizing these blog posts to maintain their ranking position.

I witness an increase in my blog traffic by 12% in just three months. I regularly monitor my Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track my progress.

The key is to recognize the high-impact activities and focus your time and energy on them.

The concept is– a tiny, valuable input can bring large, invaluable output.

How Can I Ascertain the Top 20% of my Blogging Activity?

Now, I believe you had a clear vision of the 80/20 Rule for Blogging Success. It does not need to be the same among every blogger and may vary from blogger to blogger.

You will understand which part of blogging requires more attention after reading this whole article.

In general, every blogger spins around keyword research, content writing, SEO, social promotion, networking, link building, etc. But, the most crucial activity constitutes around 20% of the time.

The goal is to identify which blogging activity requires focus and effort that brings great rewards. It might be hard at first, but once you stick to the principle, you will learn how to utilize the time effectively.

A typical blogger spends most of his/her time on unimportant tasks (or) tasks that yield small rewards. Say, for example, social media promotion and networking are core blogging activities.

After talking to many bloggers, I found that– most bloggers spend more than 8 hours daily on social media. Despite many other core activities like keyword research, content writing, and SEO that need more attention.

These tasks will consume only 20% of the time (you invest) in your blogging. Blogging tasks that take less time are often seen as a difficult part of blogging.

Hence, most bloggers keep procrastinating these activities– finally end up giving up their blogging business. Let’s not make the same blogging mistake again.

How to Identify the Vital 20% of my Blogging Task?

It is the important section of this article, and it will open your mind to see the blogging reality. To begin with, create a list consisting of your blogging activities.

You can use Microsoft Excel (or) any similar application. Be serious, as you are going to make some life-changing decisions now.

Here’s the sample;

1. Keyword research
2. Creating an article outline
3. Preparing the table of contents
4. Writing meta titles and descriptions
5. Collecting information from the Internet
6. Content writing and drafting
7. Formatting and proofreading

I have shared some of my routine blogging activity above, and definitely you can relate.

Do not forget to break down promotional activities like blog commenting, social media promotion, email marketing, etc. Add the link-building process like identifying the sites, collecting the contact information, preparing the pitch email, etc.

Now, define your Blogging Goal. It might be a daily, weekly, and/or monthly goal. If you do not have a blogging goal, you are missing the actual part of success.

After that, observe the list of blogging activities and compare it with your blogging goal. Now, talk to yourself and question which tasks consume more of your time.

See what you can do the improve the list by removing unnecessary tasks. Give yourself applause now, as you are grown as a 50% professional blogger.

Now, you have a list of tasks defined by the strategies and execution plan.

1. 80/20 Rule for Blogging Success – Rule 1: Content Writing

Content is king. Do you have any doubts? I always insist every blogger write at least 1000 words a day.

Use it for your next blog post, social media promotion, guest blogging, or even publishing on Medium, quora, etc.

The daily blogging goal is to write 1000 words. And more often, publishing more content leads to a quick victory. Though it’s right, it will not work all the time.

You want to focus on creating quality long-form articles instead of publishing mediocre dull posts.

Take enough time to write valuable articles by doing proper and deep keyword research and analyzing the market trend.

Even if you drive more traffic to your blog, and if it’s not worth reading, people will never come back. Learn the tips on how to grow your blog audience and keep them coming back.

1.1. Now, let’s apply the 80/20 rule in your content writing part of blogging

80% Content Writing + 20% Keyword Research

80% of the viral blog posts are the result of 20% efficient keyword research.

Keyword research is the only factor that determines your blogging success.

Do not spend long hours preparing a list of Keywords for your next blog article. Use SEO tools and a little common sense in this task.

The key is understanding your target audience, their needs, and their problems. Then spend the rest of your time writing a long-form article that describes the real-time problems.

1. Based on your experience and knowledge gained, provide a practical solution to the problem in your content.
2. Even, you can add visual data like graphics, images, videos, and statistics to make the content more interesting to read.
3. Break the articles into small paragraphs and add headings at appropriate places (don’t forget keyword placements).
4. Bullet points, listicles, comparison tables, and text emphasis like bold words, italics, etc., draw more attention from your readers.

You can spend 80% of your time formatting the blog post.

2. 80/20 Rules for Blogging Success – Rule 2: SEO

SEO is necessary, but it is not everything.

Most bloggers spend more time implementing various SEO methods daily. It is not a healthy blogging task.

One common problem among newbies is often getting obsessed after seeing someone else succeed.

They usually compare their day one with someone else day hundred. But newbie bloggers don’t look at the hard work, sleepless nights, frustrations, and sacrifices done by those successful bloggers.

Growing bloggers learn new SEO strategies daily and implement them on their blogs.

Result— they confuse Google and other search engines. Finally, they end up with their blog posts not getting indexed or penalized.

Spend 80% of your time implementing the best SEO strategies by spending 20% of your time smartly learning them.

80% SEO Implementation + 20% Learning (Knowledge session).

Yes, you should not modify your SEO often. Any on-page SEO takes time to show results.

Gain enough maturity to implement the best SEO strategies.

• Learn the fundamentals (basics) of SEO.
• Study what is meant by SEO and how it works.
• Apply one strategy and give enough time to nurture.
• Keep learning and grow your knowledge, but, don’t feel sick with analysis paralysis.

Do not follow all successful bloggers and apply their strategies. Instead, follow one and observe their best practices to add to your SEO campaign.

Never implement any SEO blindly without knowing the actual purpose and the results it will drive.
Question yourself several times to make a clear decision before doing SEO.

3. 80/20 Rules for Blogging Success – Rule 3: LINK BUILDING

Link building is the process of getting links from other websites or blog sites to your blog. The main purpose of this process is to grow your blog authority in the eyes of Google.

It is an important ranking factor framed by Google in its ranking algorithm.

Google (and other search engines) look at these links as recommendations, and more recommendations boost your ranking position.

Every blogger in their busy blogging schedule must have allocated time to this link-building process.

Let’s see how to implement the 80/20 rule for blogging success in the link-building process.

Build 80% of the quality links from 20% of the high-authority blogs in your relevant niches.

Often a common mistake that most bloggers make is– they focus more on building a mass quantity of backlinks.

I feel so sad for them as they don’t even have a basic understanding of how backlinks work.

Building links can improve the organic position of your blog in the search result pages.

And Google considers only quality backlinks. You can create backlinks through blog commenting, profile creation, writing answers in Quora, etc.

However, there are certain conditions to meet in order to count the link as a qualified backlink.

1. The site from where you get the link should be in your niche. Links from inside the article (contextual links) have more power than the links from the sidebar, footer, or ads.
2. Text links have more value than banner links.
3. Build relationships with top bloggers and influencers in your niche through social media.
4. Get help through them by asking for a link back to your site in return for a guest post, testimonial, or review.

Guest posting is the most successful method in building links for your blog. Find the relevant high-authority niche blogs and establish contact with the responsible person.

Start professional communication with the person to publish your guest article and ask for a backlink in return.

Read this article to get different ideas on how to earn quality backlinks to your blog. Don’t forget to read this, huh?

Set a goal of building one high-quality do-follow backlink once every -10- days.

4. 80/20 Rules for Blogging Success – Rule 4: SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is another great topic to discuss when it comes to successful blogging.

Today, after the deep Internet penetration, more than 70% of the world’s population spends time on social media.

They spend more than 7 hours daily on Facebook, TikTok, Twitter, etc. If you are a blogger with no social media presence, you will lose 70% of the visitors.

Creating the right social media strategy and applying it to different social media platforms will drive huge traffic to your blog.

Drive 80% traffic from social media with 20% efficient and optimized social media promotion.

It is not sharing your blog post on Twitter every hour.

Most bloggers think that social media promotion is just about sharing blog posts frequently.

They are not ready to learn the professional part of optimizing their social media accounts to attract more followers.

• If you are creating a Facebook group, instead of sharing your blog posts repeatedly, talk about your blogging niche.
• Share with your friends and invite them to follow for regular updates.
• Keep adding value to showcase your expertise and knowledge to attract more followers.

Now, start promoting (sharing) your blog articles, and now people will visit your blog.

4.1. The Right Way to Apply the 80/20 Rule for Social Media

As you have a keyword research report in hand, utilize it to repurpose the blog content for social media. You can save time in content creation and use it for promotion.

1. Spend more time engaging with your audience and followers. Spend little time on content promotion (blog post sharing).
2. Create more posts that create value for your followers and help them solve a problem. It increases your brand value and credibility.
3. The core purpose of the 80/20 rule for blogging success in social media is to use time productively.
4. Identifying the core tasks and getting them completed on priority towards contributing to the larger growth.

Again, if you have no added value in your blog posts, people will not come back.

So, apply Rule 1 of the 80/20 rule for blogging success– that is, create helpful content by doing a proper keyword search. Spend enough time writing valuable content and publishing them often.

Application of the 80/20 rule in Other Blogging Tasks

The entire blogging activity does not end with writing content, doing SEO, building links, and promoting it on social media.

There are several other tasks like email marketing, networking with successful bloggers and influencers, creating a team to delegate non-core blogging tasks, etc.

Often, you can read a few success stories in the blogging industry by applying these 80/20 rules for blogging success.

In fact, I am also the one who follows this proactively in my blogging journey.

Time Management is the Key

This 80-20 rule (or) Pareto principle is all about how efficiently you manage time on various blogging activities.

It is a professional business, and you should have created a proper strategy in place and executed on time.

If you cannot manage the time to write quality content, you can delegate the task by hiring an expert writer.

Your blogging revenue depends on the volume of traffic that you drive from different online platforms. It means you have to spend time on marketing activities.

Use Google Analytics to identify which part of blogging needs attention and focus. It also gives you a clear breakup of which blog is bringing more traffic and ranking on the top.

You can spend more time on further optimizing the post or the part of blogging.

Finally, on the 80/20 Rule for Blogging Success

Nowadays, most bloggers don’t find time for their blogging part-time. This article is especially suitable for part-time bloggers who struggle to manage their time.

You can come up with many excuses, but if the blogging task is not done on time, you will not see success.

It is super easy to lose focus on blogging as there are many distractions ahead. But I advocate bloggers to stick to the 80/20 rule for blogging success.

Every blogger should adopt this 80-20 principle to derive maximum efficiency in their blogging tasks.

Create a habit of tracking the daily blogging tasks and record them in a note (or) on a Google sheet. It can help you stay intact with blogging tasks and make more productive hours.

Self-monitoring can help you manage time by doing more in less time in an effective way.

Blogging is all about adding value to your community with your content (text/videos).

All the best for your blogging success.