Can I has blog fans?

In 2007, Business Week put out a slideshow about the most financially successful blogs at the time. These blogs cover a wide range of topics, from politics to entertainment to design to funny cat photos. Yes, I am talking about the well known and loved, I Can Has Cheezburger?, the grammatically incorrect and adorably goofy cat memes that have taken hold of the blog world.

So how can blogs so different in audiences all be so successful? They have activated their community. The most important factor when building any blog is to build your fan base. The beauty of blogs is the conversations and the engagement fans can have with the site, making them feel like they are contributing to the content.

Or contributing to basically all of the content, in the case of I Can Has Cheezburger? This blog has a what could be considered a perfect business model. Advertisers fund the site, and their dedicated fan base constantly submit new memes that they then post. According to Business Week, a week of ads on Cheezburger, via Blogads, starts at $500 and tops out at $5,400 for a premium position.

It is silly to imagine Eric Nakagawa, blog creator, and staff running around filming this video of cats and lasers. The fan's devotedness and engagement with the blog saves the staff more time to focus on building the site and expanding the fan base further, rather than creating the actual cat pictures. Cheezburger has provided the space where its fans can come play, all the while providing content. Nakagawa said, "If you hit a niche and you can build a community, you might not have a $1 million idea, but you might have a $10,000 or a $100,000 idea." 

Cheezburger's success is truly thanks to its loyal fans. With every successful blog, it is important to have a concrete group of followers that will check your blog daily. The next challenge is to convert those devoted fans into promoters and educators to potential new fans, expanding your page views and your name recognition on a larger level. And fans keep emerging because they feel invested in Cheezburger and important to the blog's progress.

And that is the common thread between all of the financially successful blogs Business Week highlighted in 2007. Whether the fans are producing the actual content, or engaged in discussion via comments, they are somehow involved in the process, in the discussion, about whatever subject is at hand. Depending on your interest, for some that involvement may be a lively debate about Romney's 47 percent video, for others it may be creating a silly cat picture that goes viral. Whatever it may be, its active and that's what counts.