What Defines A Famous Blog?

As you may know, July is StandOutBloggers ‘Make Your Blog Famous’ month. Where we will be looking at ways to get your blog recognized, reach your goals, and of course make your blog famous. This is part 2 in our month long series (with the posts in no particular order). If you missed our first post about famous blogging, you missed out look at Stumble Upon and your five minutes of blogging fame.

Today I will be taking a look at the question:

What defines a famous blogger?

This is an interesting question and I put it out to all my readers asking them ‘What does famous mean to you?”

I got some great answers and thoughts, and I will try my best to refer to all of these throughout this post.

What Comes To Mind When You Think Of The Word Famous?

We will get to a definition later, I want to do a bit of a word association game and look at the words that I instantly think of when I hear the word famous.

Here is my list:

• Rich
• Popular
• Talked (Gossiped) About
• Influential

I am sure there are more, but these are the first 5 things that come into my head so I am going to take a closer look at each one and we will try to work out whether these common beliefs are truth or myth. But first lets take a look at what the dictionary and wikipedia define Fame as.

Dictionary.com defines fame as:

widespread reputation, esp. of a favorable character; renown; public eminence

Wikipedia.com defines fame as:

The condition of being a celebrity, whether by reputation or notoriety

Ok, got that? Now lets take a look at each of the common beliefs about what makes a famous blogger while constantly referring back to these definitions to determine the truth from the myths.

1. Famous Bloggers Are Rich
   I am sure you would agree that this would probably be the first thing that you would associate with someone famous - that they were rich. And a few of my commenters hit this point.Jason said:

   The only part of being famous I’d take is the income

   Nick said:

   I would, however, like to be famous enough to make a decent amount of money from my site

   We are always associating the famous with their wild parties and expensive purchases, but that is usually because we always associate fame with Hollywood. Being famous is so much more than being a movie star or international musician.
   
   A few famous people, of the top of my head that were not rich:

   • Mother Teresa (Humanitarian)
   • George Best (Football)
   • Cory Worthington - If you don’t live in Australia you won’t kno who cory is, but here is a quick rundown. He is an 16y/o kid who threw a party while his parents were away 500 people showed up, some cop cars got damaged, he suddenly becomes ‘famous’ and gets a guest spot on big brother. Watch this tv interview with him (as much as he is an idiot, he totally owns this reporter) -WATCH YOUTUBE VIDEO

   Aside from these examples taking a look at blogging and whether famous bloggers are making big money, all we have to do is look at the make money online niche to see that some of the most popular bloggers are only making $1000 a month? Is that rich?

   Taking a look back at the definitions of fame, it does not mention anywhere in either of them about money. So I think it is safe to say that you do not have to be rich to be famous - but the lesson to take from this is.

   If you are wise then you can use your fame and turn it into $$$’s

2. Famous Bloggers Are Popular
   This one is pretty much a given, how can you be famous unless people know about you. Right? But Popularity means that person is liked. The dictionary defines popular as meaning:

   Widely liked or appreciated

   Now think of many famous people in history, like:

   • Hilter
   • Stalin
   • Osama Bin Laden
   • Paris Hilton (Sorry had to add her)

   Now think of certain ‘famous bloggers’ and think of all the blog posts going around bagging them.

   If we go back to the Wikipedia definition of fame we see that it says ‘whether by reputation or notoriety’.

   So in other words, you can be famous for being popular or widely disliked.

3. Famous Bloggers Are Talked (or Gossiped) About Frequently
   A lot of you hit this point with your comments. Here is what a few of you said:

   Ganesh said:

   And fame is something that everybody loves. I mean a new blogger suddenly gets written about by someone else. Wouldn’t he feel great.

   David said:

   I guess you would class a famous blogger as being someone who is mentioned alot across the blogoshpere, Technorati would be a good way of judging this.

   Famous bloggers are usually the ones that teach people or guide people, as they are more likely to get links and feedback!

   I have often heard it said that celebrities have a love hate relationships with the paparazzi. On one hand they feel their privacy is constantly getting violated and also feel defamed from incorrect information, but without the newspapers, magazines and internet these celebrities would not be famous.

   Wikipedia says that a famous persons is a celebrity, and they define a celebrity as a:

   widely-recognized or famous person who commands a high degree of public and media attention.

   Famous bloggers are the bloggers that are talked about alot within blogging circles. They get theirs posts linked to, their monthly income report displayed all throughout the blogging niche, they are talked about behind their back - and they like it. Why? Because this is exactly what makes them famous!

4. Famous Bloggers Are Influential
   Diane said:

   And what I find really interesting is that while most have excellent content, some famous bloggers have very uninteresting content and still make $1000s each month.

   Some famous bloggers are help in such high regard and have such a cult like following that they could talk about what restaurants they went to and probably sell tickets to that restaurant. but I don’t think that influence is a key to becoming a famous blogger, I think it is vice versa. I believe that once you become famous you gain influence that although you probably had the right to, but now you are able to take advantage of it.

Conclusion

Well I finally got through it all. This would probably have to be my wordiest post ever, but before I start tackling a problem I like to define exactly what I am trying to do, and I think we can say that we have successfully done so. Plus it also gives you a lot to comment on and I would love to know what you think.

One thought we can take with us from this is:

You don’t have to be rich to be famous, but if you want to be rich then getting famous is a nice way of doing it!

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