In their November wrap-up, WordPress.com announced that 198,000 new blogs were created on their site alone. This makes one wonder what kind of voice a blogger needs to have in order to be noticed, in this sea of content and opinions. As more and more blogs are launched (and abandoned), I think that the marketing skills of bloggers will become increasingly important. It’s no longer enough to write unique content of high quality. Knowing how to market your articles, promote them and network with other bloggers will make the difference between the occasional visitor and the blazing success that many of us dream of. Things that combined make the difference between 10 subscribers and 2,000 subscribers after a month: Quality over quantity when it comes to content. True in most cases. In news type blogs like those announcing new gadgets or car news, quantity is important as the number of daily news is very high. In most cases though, 3 high quality posts per week will bring much more benefits then 15 of them, but of lesser quality. Networking skills. If you can network with other bloggers, links and subscribers will come much easier. Each new blogger you talk to from your field can mean a new subscriber. So why not take the time to send a courtesy email to other bloggers in your niche and get to meet them. Marketing your articles. Mastering social media and bookmarking sites, sending emails to other when you have very high quality articles, creating buzz about your blog, are all traits that can make the difference between a regular blog and a rock star. Search Engine Optimization. When it comes to getting search engine visitors, you have to make sure that your site is ready to receive them. Make the content easy to read by spiders and extremely valuable to people. Keep the size of the pages small, so both spiders and humans are able to read your pages easily. All things considered, hard work is probably the biggest obstacle for most bloggers. Those that succeed have many hours of writing and promotion behind them. What about you?