80/20 Rule, and How it Applies to Blogging

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Posted in » Articles, Blogging Tips - by Ades on February 8th, 2008

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You all have heard about the “80/20 Rule” right? Which states that, for many events, 80% of the effects comes from 20% of the causes.

Example: 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your clients. Or 80% of the total profits come from the efforts of 20% of your employees in the firm. Or the majority of the earth’s species are located in 17 countries, out of total 240+ countries..

While it’s a general rule, it does apply successfully to many circumstances. We can also apply it to blogging.80/20 rule So, for example, according to 80/20 rule, we can say that 80% of the traffic comes from the 20% regular readers (see pie chart to the left).

We can also say that 80% of your blogging income comes from 20% of your advertisers (these are regular advertisers too, keyword is “regular”).

Finally, many of you can agree on this, that 80% of the comments on your blog are done by the 20% (regular) readers.

Thus, once you have clearly grasped the 80/20 rule and its affects on your blog, you will be able to work more efficiently. Because now you can concentrate on that “20%” more. That means paying more attention to your regular readers and worrying less about those accidental visitors, even if they make up 80% of your total unique visitors (per day/month/year). Because at the end of the day, this 20% are the one who is delivering you 80% of the total traffic your blog gets.

Similarly, you can strengthen your partnership with your 20% advertisers that bring you 80% of the total income that your blog generates.

Conclusion

I think in this “time-scarce” era, this rule is a golden rule that many of us can benefit from. It can make us more efficient, and our efforts more effective. Because by identifying our “important 20%”, we won’t be wasting our energies on things that bring no result.

However, here we should note that, we should not totally ignore the other 80% - we just have to allocate our time and energy according to its importance.

Have you been applying 80/20 rule to your life? How about to your blog?

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14 Responses to “80/20 Rule, and How it Applies to Blogging”

  1. By InvestorBlogger on Feb 8, 2008

    While the principle may be in principle correct, ignoring the 80% of your readers may lead to erosion of your income. Why? Because when readers click away from your blog, it’s usually through an advertisement. Hence, to maximize your blog’s income, you need to encourage your readers to love it, enjoy it (briefly) then click away to a Google Ad, affiliate link or other advertising. It’s likely that if you just focus on the 20% of your readers, your expenses will rise as a result of increasing computing power, and your income will go down as regular readers become ad/affiliate link blind.

    my 2c.
    Kenneth

  2. By InvestorBlogger on Feb 8, 2008

    In fact, this article got me so motivated, I wrote a 500-word epigraph on how it might be seriously flawed if applied rigorously. The article is published Friday morning. Do check it out, Ade.

  3. By Chucks on Feb 8, 2008

    Hmmmmm

  4. By Dining Room Furniture on Feb 8, 2008

    Pareto’s law if followed must be followed right through. You do not ignore the 80%. You spend 20% of your time on them. That 20% should be sufficient to handle the 80% visitors. The 80% time that you spend on 20% of the visitors who generate the maximum revenue for you, will have its spill over effect on the quality of your site and be appreciated by the 80%.

  5. By matt on Feb 8, 2008

    It’s awesome.

  6. By alzack on Feb 9, 2008

    that’s one good insight and thus can make us focus on the 20%…I agree with you.

  7. By Dara on Feb 9, 2008

    I don’t think he meant to completely ignore the 80% casual readers of the site, just to focus mostly on your regular readers. Although I don’t necessarily agree statistically (how many regular readers will continue to click links or ads?)

  8. By Ades on Feb 10, 2008

    Dara, you got it right! ;) It’s a broad guideline anyway, not to be followed strictly.

  9. By C-Squared on Feb 10, 2008

    This is exactly why I hate the current blogosphere trend of contests. They’re practically everywhere. The problem with these contests, though, is that most of them only apply to the incidental visitors, and try to convert them into that 20% base. This ends up alienating the original 20% base of users because you’re not creating any new or useful content.

  10. By Honest Webhosts on Feb 10, 2008

    People’s streaming consciousness is difficult to predict. It remains a hit and miss race. We just don’t know why people and why they don’t buy.

  11. By Chucks on Feb 11, 2008

    Never heard of the 80/20 rule but I am still considering it to find out how effective it is.

  12. By Buy A Car on Feb 13, 2008

    The 80/20 rule is veeerrry effective if done correctly

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