The blogosphere is definitely a community.  And like any other community that consists of people trying to fit in and find their niche, there is a hierarchy that exists.  At the top of the hierarchy, you have the leaders, the people who all of the other bloggers aspire to be like.  And at the bottom of the hierarchy, you have the followers, the people who, in essence, mimic what the leaders are doing.

Here are a few things that I’ve noticed about the followers:

They believe that their blog is going to make them rich

I would venture a guess that the number one reason why so many people start blogging is because of the success stories of the few individuals who were able to quit their jobs and live off of their blog.  There are stories of people making six figures a year from blogging, and that sounds pretty sweet, doesn’t it?

The truth is that while you can make good money from blogging, a lot of people won’t.  It’s that simple.  Building a successful and profitable blog requires a lot of things, such as the ability to adapt, to analyze and figure out what people need and want from the internet, hard work, and good old fashioned luck.  It’s not easy, and despite what the numerous blogs about “making easy money through blogging” would have you believe, it probably won’t happen without a lot of trial and error.

They offer very little that sets them apart

A common reason for hesitation that I hear from a lot of people when it comes to starting a blog is that “so much has already been covered”.  That is true, in this day and age, it is somewhat difficult to start an original blog that offers something truly unique from the rest of the blogosphere.  A lot of people are reluctant to start one because they see how a lot of niches have been completely over-saturated in the blogosphere, which is true.

What I have noticed though is that so many of the follower bloggers don’t seem to try very hard to be original.  It’s pretty common to see information regurgitated and retold throughout the blogosphere, and the source is almost always one of the bigger blogs.  Of course, the bigger blogs sometimes borrow information from the smaller blogs, which is okay, but once they do it, a whole new line of smaller blogs pick up on this information and spread it further.  Despite how overly crowded the blogosphere is, there isn’t anyone out there blogging with your unique perspective on things, so there’s always room for new bloggers.

They’ve discovered that they want to be vegetarian/vegan

Now, I’m not judging anyone here.  I happen to know a lot of good people who are vegan or vegetarian, and they do it for the right reasons.  Personally it’s not for me, and even though I want to experiment with reducing my meat intake, and what not, I am still very comfortable with my lifestyle choice of eating meat.

What I am mentioning though is how since some of the blogging leaders are such strong advocates for a vegan lifestyle, suddenly, a LOT of people have “discovered” that they want to be vegans as well.  Perhaps they want to be in the “cool” group?  Perhaps they idolize certain bloggers and want to follow in their footsteps as much as possible?  Or perhaps they simply agree with the reasoning behind a vegan lifestyle, presented in an eloquent way by bloggers that they respect?  I don’t know why it is, but a LOT of bloggers are newly converted vegans.

As a matter of fact, it’s not uncommon for rifts to occur, and vegan bloggers tend to clique together with other vegan bloggers, and sometimes shun the non-vegan bloggers.  I’ve seen some pretty nasty discussions online regarding the big topic of eating meat, and it never ceases to amaze me how much people treat their diet as a religion.  And this is all because they are following in the footsteps of the leaders.  Sometimes, I doubt that the leaders in the blogosphere truly comprehend the amount of influence that they have.

And speaking of the leaders, just for clarification purposes, I consider bloggers such as Leo Babauta, Darren Rowse, and Steve Pavlina to be leaders.

Here are a few things that I’ve noticed about the leaders:

They make a living off of their blog and don’t have to work to make ends meet.

I know plenty of who I would consider to be A+ bloggers.  They are at the top of their game, you can tell that they are passionate about what they write, and they have developed a great rapport with their readers.  However, it seems to me that the bloggers that truly have the influence over their readers all share one thing in common:  They make a living solely through their blog.

And what’s more that I notice?  Usually, when they taste success, they lose sight of their readership and become obsessed with finding out more and more ways of making money as opposed to using their new found independence to truly connect with their readers and to take the blog to the next level.  As much as they would have you believe otherwise, money and greed can change even the noblest of people and bloggers are no exception.

Now realize this, I don’t expect anyone to spend all of their free time answering emails and responding to readers like most of the top bloggers would have to do in order to keep in touch with ALL of their readers.  It’s understandable to become a little bit harder to get a hold of when you are busier.  However, most of the top bloggers that I know of have decided to do things such as stopping or drastically replying to comments less, shutting down their comment form altogether, spending the time that they used to be working out partying, or simply delegating most of their blogging duties to guest posters.

As a result, their blog posts usually become less and less interesting.  When someone starts a blog, they are usually full of ideas… some of them bad ideas, but they are idealistic.  Once they start to gain some momentum, they feed off of that and usually produce better and better posts.  Eventually though, they become complacent, and the thousands of followers that they have are usually more interested in a possible link to their site or other favor than they are in giving constructive criticism.  This often results in increasingly lame posts by the seasoned leaders.

They know that they influence their readers.

A good indicator of where a blogger falls on the indicator is the type of comments that they receive.  Check out one of a blogger’s recent articles, and if they contain numerous comments containing the words “excellent” “great” or any other kind of generic asskissery, then the blogger is probably pretty high in the spectrum.  (Of course, Steve Pavlina doesn’t have comments on his blog, but if he did, his comments would be FULL of asskissery.)  They’ll also get several comments stating that “This is exactly what they needed to hear today”.

Of course, this isn’t an either/or situation.  If you’re a blogger, you don’t have to be a leader or a follower.  You can easily fall in the middle and share qualities of both.

So gp ahead and take some qualities from the leaders.  Do your own thing.  Be original and groundbreaking.  Influence your readers, regardless of how many you have.  And take some qualities from the followers.  Follow the trends that have been set by the others.  Trends exist for a reason, and it means that the subject means something to many people.  Study what makes the successful blogs that way and try to duplicate their success.  I’m not saying that you should shun the successful blogs, I’m just saying there are ways of FOLLOWING them without being a FOLLOWER.