Success Story Explained: Henri Junttila from Wake Up Cloud

From this success story you can learn several very important things. It’s about blogging success and the way people (far not all of them) achieve it with a hard work.

Henri Junttila is a young man, a blogger. His passion is writing helpful stuff for people to inspire them.. well, at least, that’s what he’s doing in his last blog, called Wake Up Cloud.

His success story isn’t about a sudden success, it’s not about some kind of an overnight success neither. It’s about well-thought-out tactics. I love this kind of a success, because it’s about the real truth, that most of you, bloggers and website masters, are looking for.

You will never buy your website’s success. That’s another simple truth. Forget about SEO companies, which guarantee you high rankings for only 39,95$ :D Today most of these companies are more like jokers and comedians, rather than those, who can help you.

There is only one top ten results for a special keyword phrase in Google and other search engines. And if you wish to get there.. follow the example story of Henri Junttila. Learn something new for yourself or revive your memory of what matters.

Life of Henri Junttila

I’m not going to retell it word by word. He’s done it before on his “About page” at Wake Up Cloud. And I don’t have rights to do it, except quoting several key points.

1. My life really started when I got out of school at 18. I had worked a few lousy-paying jobs during the summers, which made me realize that I was not on the right track.

   - Very similar to my own story, and I bet that to some of yours.

2. I do not claim to have all the answers, because I am still learning and trying to figure things out, just like you.

   - And he’s doing it very well. But something still differs his view of how things should be done. Let’s find it out in a moment!

3. Something is not right with how things are done right now, so let’s change it!

   - I think, that each of you can feel, that something’s really wrong in this world. But it’s not just it, when you understand it and do nothing with it.

Have you felt Henri’s strength of will? That’s what helps him and moves him. And this is only one thing, that explains his success. Let’s find the others..

From Pagerank «0» to «4» in 21 days

This is how he’s managed to kick-start his blog “Wake Up Cloud”. It took him only ~4 weeks to jump from PR «0» to «4». His Alexa ranking is already ~113k and “Wake Up Cloud” has 2,500+ external links by Yahoo.

Actually, this is also the reason, why he recieved so much attention.

But let’s take a look at the tactics. This achievement isn’t sudden and unexpected at all. And there’s nothing impossible for you to make the same result on your blog or website.

The tactics Henri uses

Guest posts

I hope you guys know the meaning of guest posting. But do you know the strength of it, when it comes to writing guest posts more than your posts for your own blog? Especially, when you write guest posts for “big” blogs…

This way Henri has written 25 guest posts and 20 posts for his own blog in December.

This is one of the reasons of Henri’s fast success. But that’s not just it. There’s one more important thing. Will speak about it in a few moments. Now let’s take a look at his way of keeping beginning blog.

No annoying ads

Absolutely no ads. This guy perfectly understands, that ads would deter some of his first readers.

It’s very important to try to stay away from putting ads on your blog while your blog is still young and you have no strong and tight audience.

Single-style-design

“Wake Up Cloud” blog’s theme is Thesis, which is rather popular today and it has lots of myths about SEO features. But the only thing, that is true for sure, is that this theme’s code is very simple. And the theme itself looks simple and neutral.

Besides, Henri’s made his blog main color – blue, which is also neutral and calm. And it relates to his niche – self improvement.

Very strong «About Page»

By “very strong” I mean that Henri, probably, knows the importance of “about” blog pages. You can learn about this, I’d say, science from Skelliwag’s post about writing the perfect “about” page. Problogger has also a similar post, but Skelliwag wrote it with more details.

Almost absense of links in the text

This factor makes reading Wake Up Cloud a little bit more pleasant. I’m not sure, if it has some SEO strength, but I think it has the stregnth of keeping a sense of reading a book.

What was Henri’s the most crucial promotional step?

I have to warn you. This will not work unless you have something worthy to show, which is about to attract tons of website traffic.

Achieve what others want, and show how you did it

When Henri’s blog got PR 4 in 21 days, it was the perfect thing to speak about. And he did that, but as a guest post at Blogussion: «Leaping from PR 0 to 4 in 21 days without any connections».

Now think for a second of why he’s writing so many guest posts?

The answer is… If you’re sure, that your content is valuable and helpful, show it to people. Guest posting is the most efficient way, because at the early stage of your blog, search engines are not your friend.

As you’ll start to get unreal traffic from other blogs, where you’ve left guest posts, people naturally would like to know you… “How the hell he did that? Why he’s so special? What’s his secret?” This is what you want. This means, that your tactics did a good promotional job.

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Sometimes, it’s very useful to analyze tactics of successful people and understand that the deal is not about the success. It’s about a real hard work, which sooner or later supposed to be rewarded.

Thanks to Henri for showing all of us the power of guest posting!

PS. I’ve forgotten to mention, that Henri also comments a lot. He’s got about 100 subscriptions in his Google reader. But.. I hope that this way of promotion isn’t new for you.

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Video Dessert: «Jeremy Lynch on Britain’s Got Talent 2008»

Jeremy Lynch with his football freestyle audition on Britain’s Got Talent 2008, week 4.