Photo by Brett L.

1. The social media runaway train. Perhaps the most sought after (and least frequently attained) route to a popular blog is rapid ‘growth from above’ resulting from huge traffic spikes, most frequently originating from Digg. This route was traveled by blogs like Zen Habits (did you know Zen Habits has been on the Digg front page more than 80 times?) and The Art of Manliness.

Getting started on this path:
Why You’ve Got to Digg Digg to Get Dugg
The One True Cause of Rapid-fire Growth

2. Grassroots growth. The most common form of blog growth occurs at the grassroots, where blogs and bloggers at similar levels of development collaborate from the ground up. The central idea here is that a lot of little links are just as powerful as one big, top-down growth event. This is one of the most community-based approaches, though growth yielded through this route tends to be consistent and slow-burn.

Getting started on this path:
Hansel and Gretel Link-building

3. The networker’s model. This route captures the human element of collaboration and mutually beneficial relationships. This kind of collaboration can be used to encourage links, trade favors, advice, social media votes and make friends. Collaboration has been very important in the growth of Dosh Dosh, for example.

Getting started on this path:
On Getting Noticed
5 Habits of Highly Ineffective Networkers

4. The advertiser. This model involves kick-starting the path towards building a popular blog by investing in the future. Bloggers who favor the advertising model have keen eyes for ways to get maximum exposure at minimum cost.

Getting started on this path:
3 Surefire Ways to Advertise Your Blog on a Shoestring

5. The preview model. My favored strategies in the early days of Skelliewag’s growth, the preview model involves sharing your work with new audiences through guest-posting. It functions on the assumption that anyone who clicks through your byline probably liked your post, and will therefore probably like the rest of your stuff, too!

Getting started on this path:
How to Maximize the Benefits of Guest-posting

6. The leverager. A blogger following this route is an expert at using existing ventures to pour support into new ventures. The impressive thing about this model is that, when done well, it can propel a blog or website forward faster than even the biggest of social media spikes. A recent example of powerful leveraging was Leo Babauta’s launch of Write to Done, which seemed to reach 3,000+ subscribers almost immediately on the back of his support at Zen Habits and in the freelancing/web working community.

Getting started on this path:
Spinning Plates: How to Succeed With Multiple Projects
5 Hard Questions You Should Ask Before Starting a New Project

7. The inward model. This content-focused strategy centers around producing quality content and making it easy for your existing audience to propagate your content to new audiences. Your content becomes more important than ever before, and this model makes it essential that you write content designed to be easy to link to and vote for.

Getting started on this path:
The Web’s Best Content Has One Thing in Common
How to Value-add Everything (Even the Little Stuff)
How to Avoid Fool’s Gold and Create Value-packed Content
Who Are You Writing For?

8. The Matrix model. Blogs following this model become popular blogs because they seem like popular blogs — they’re value-packed with an active community, and they put care into professional-level presentation. Over time, the statistics beneath the surface begin to fall in line with perception.

Getting started on this path:
The Matrix Model: Why Perception is Everything

9. The scientific model. Bloggers who like to quantify things are often capable of following some complex formulas when it comes to blog growth: they work out exactly what kind of benefits are yielded by certain actions, keep detailed records and break down statistics to see what works and what doesn’t. While it seems geeky, these bloggers have an intimate understanding of where the real rewards lie, and how to best get at them. Tim Ferris is one blogger who tends to quantify everything, and it’s one of the factors behind his success.

Getting started on this path:
Dig Into Your Blog’s Statistics

10. The ‘in spite of’ model. Some bloggers are utter mavericks — they break every rule and do everything bloggers shouldn’t do, and still experience roaring success. They might insult their audience, go on an extended hiatus, stir up controversy for fun, or write for themselves rather than an audience — and still succeed in spite of all of that, usually because the strength of their ideas shine through regardless (whether you agree with them or not!).

11. Marching ever onwards. Some bloggers shepherd a blog towards popularity through sheer tenacity alone. They’ll continue to blog through hardship, through creative burn-out, through criticism, through plateaus, and through a lack of motivation. They aren’t always brilliant, but they never give up, and they never take their foot off the accelerator.

Getting started on this path:
What to Do When Your Blog Plateaus

12. The strategist model. Some bloggers spend more time with a whiteboard or notepad than they do actually writing content, and dedicate more words to outline a growth strategy than they do to actually writing content! Some of the world’s most popular blogs are the result of detailed planning and clever strategies. They mapped out a route towards popularity, and only had to put on foot in front of the other.

Getting started on this path:
A Guide to Breaking Into the Technorati 100
The Secret to Building a Popular Blog and Getting Tons of Readers

13. The learner model. Some of the world’s best bloggers, now teachers, were once voracious learners. They succeeded because of a depth of knowledge nobody else has, usually gleaned from extensive experience. ProBlogger.net is a fine example of this method: nobody in the world knows more about blog monetization than Darren Rowse, so it really wouldn’t matter if he didn’t have the other pieces of the puzzle in place (even though he does).

14. The experimenter model. Some blogs are propelled to great heights by fearlessness: the bravery required to experiment with content types, to throw out what doesn’t work and embrace what does, to admit when they’re wrong and be proud when they are right. Such blogs often re-invent themselves multiple times, but take a loyal audience with them all the way. One worthy example of popularity through fearless experimentation and soul-searching is Ars Technica.

15. The innovator model. An innovative concept that strikes a chord seems to turn a blog into something more than that — it becomes viral. A new, fresh and interesting idea can propel a blog into the stratosphere, even if the execution isn’t stellar. There are countless examples, but one making waves recently is Stuff White People Like.

Getting started on this path:
110+ Resources for Creative Minds

16. The audacious model. Audacious bloggers approach popularity as inevitable — they’re not afraid to reach out and claim it. They’ll ask for things, expect favors, and put themselves out there in order to get noticed. This route is fueled by confidence. Audacious bloggers try things other people assume to be impossible, and often succeed.

Getting started on this path:
Audacious Blogging

17. The cult of personality model. Some bloggers are propelled to popularity, in whole or in part, because people adore them. They’ll support anything they do, read anything they write, and look for opportunities to give something back. Readers who adore you will go out of their way to share your content with others. A prerequisite is usually a lot of hard work on behalf of the blogger: being insanely useful is the best way to get people to like you.

Getting started on this path:
Creating Passionate Readers

18. Who you are. Some bloggers seem to succeed wholly on the: “Whoa, that person has a blog?” factor. While there’s surely a reason Zach Braff averages 1,000+ comments on each post he writes, I suspect it’s not because of his value-packed content. That people like Robert Scoble and Seth Godin have followings is almost inevitable: who they are and where they’re positioned makes them worth watching. Unfortunately, this is a path most of us can’t hope to take.

19. The prolific model. Gawker blogs (you know — same theme in different colors, a new post every few minutes) will produce content that is mainly — but not all — irrelevant for individual readers. Of 24 Lifehacker posts, you might find one incredibly useful and throw out the rest — but you stay subscribed because of that occasional ability to strike gold. What is gold to you is another reader’s lump o’ coal, and vice versa. These blogs operate on the assumption that if you throw out enough content, some of it has to be good — and judging by their success, Gawker readers agree!

20. The outsourced model. The top 10 most popular blogs in the world (according to Technorati) are all outsourcing experts. Big media overlords pay good writers not very much money to produce an endless stream of fresh content and pocket up to a million dollars in advertising profit. This model is one of the fastest growing of them all. While I think some of the most popular blogs using this method don’t pay their writers enough, I can vouch from experience that Freelance Switch is an example of this model working really well (and fairly) for everyone involved. If your blog takes off, you could essentially sit back and let your blog run itself while you pocket the left-over revenue, minus the costs of hosting and paying writers.

Getting started with this model:
On Hiring People to Write for You

21. Being the first. Some blogs are propelled forwards at great speed simply by being the first to cater to the needs of an under-served niche. As time goes on, the number and size of under-searched niches decreases, but if you do manage to colonize one the rewards will be considerable.

Getting started with this model:
Surviving and Thriving in an Under-served Niche

22. Breaking news. Social media tends to reward the original source of news. If a story is broken on a particular blog, that’s the blog likely to go popular with the story, rather than those following in the footsteps of news-breakers. Having industry connections and a network of sources tends to be one of the reasons why news-breaking blogs tend to get popular and stay there. Gizmodo has at times been the most popular blogs in the world, and it also breaks news on a regular basis. Unfortunately, this model is another difficult route for the average blogger to take. Without established networks you’ll almost always be beaten to the punch.

23. The talkative model. Some bloggers are like the popular kids at school: they enchant people simply by paying attention to them. This is the favored strategy of prolific commenters and those who build their blog on the back of a well-respected forum profile. They use their words to rouse curiosity and encourage click-throughs to their blog. These bloggers tend to be voracious readers in a constant effort to bring their perspective to new audiences. Caroline Middlebrook does a lot to evangelize this model.

Getting started with this model:
How to: Leave Quality Comments
Find New Readers in Forums

24. The giving model. Some blogs march along the route to popularity by giving, giving, giving: free eBooks, free services, free advice, free goodies, free promotion, and so on. While it’s good karma, nothing is more popular online than free stuff people actually want.

Getting started with this model:
On Giving Yourself Away

25. The sculptor model. Some blogs are like works of art: every element, every word and every link is there for a reason. Each post seems as if it must have taken hours to create, that it must have been checked a dozen times for imperfections, and each one promptly ironed out. Engaging with something created with the utmost care and attention is a unique experience — one that’s difficult to avoid being captivated by. Coding Horror is an example of every element being carefully crafted to great effect.

Getting started with this model:
Crafting Your Content