In the fifth installment of the “Bloggers You Should Follow Series”, is the incomparable niche community master, Thom Chambers.  Thom has been building niche communities for more than four years.  His newest venture, InTreehouses, is a free online magazine that helps teach bloggers, entrepreneurs and start-ups how to build profitable niche communities.  Here’s Thom:

There’s this line, right, in the film Dan in Real Life where a teenage boy tells Dan (Steve Carell) that “love isn’t a feeling, it’s an ability”. It’s a trite line in a mostly excellent film, but despite being rather lame it’s a line that’s stuck with me. Why?

Because when you say that love is an ability, it means that you can get better at it and impact it and be the actor rather than the recipient. It’s not something that just happens to you.

And neither is success online.

I suck at blogging

Here’s the simple truth: I can’t blog. Considering I studied literature at university and read actual novels and write fairly constantly, it’s quite alarming just how bad a blogger I am. I’m crap. Really.

But, but, but. I love the idea of blogging. The communal nature of it, the freedom of expression it allows people, the constant flow of ideas and tips and tricks and inspiration. The idea of passive income.

You should really wear your own shoes

When I first started out online, therefore, the blogging ideal captivated me and persuaded me that I too could create a successful site. A pro blog.

The odds were in my favour – I could write well enough, I could design my own site, I used the Oxford comma, and so on. I presumed that this was a head start that would equal success.

It wasn’t. I tripped, I fell.

Blogging, to me, felt like I was wearing the wrong shoes. Not that they were bad shoes – they’d served someone else really well – they just didn’t fit me.

Putting yourself in the path of oncoming success

Here’s what I learned: just as love – to the teenage boy in Dan in Real Life – is an ability, something to practice and train at and learn about and get better at, so success has to be thought of as an ability to those of us making our way online.

What happened after I quit blogging

So, I quit blogging and started a free online magazine instead. With the magazine, I have more freedom than I ever had blogging, I can do things that blogs never could, and I can venture in new directions.

No, it’s not a huge overnight blockbuster, but it’s taken me far beyond my blogging efforts ever did in just a fraction of the time.

I’ve started putting myself in a place where I can succeed more often.

It’s a numbers game

What’s important isn’t your strike rate of ideas that catch on or posts that go viral or guest posts you nail or relationships you build. What’s important is that you give yourself that chance as often as possible. Michael Jordan put it best:

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot – and missed. I’ve failed over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed”.

Because he put himself in the position where it mattered, because he stepped up and put himself within touching distance of success so often, Jordan could afford miss thousands of shots and still be the greatest.

Is blogging right for you?

I’m not saying that blogging is bad or wrong; quite the contrary. It’s a fantastic model and a great way to succeed online.

But if only one out of twenty of your posts is getting any attention, or if you’re struggling to find the motivation to write another post, then you’re not getting treating success like an ability – you’re waiting and hoping for it to happen to you.

Maybe video blogging or micro-blogging or an online newsletter or a magazine or a forum or a series of reports or a myriad other options would suit you better. You have to work out what’s going to put you in the way of success the most often.

You have to make sure that the shoes fit.

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Thom Chambers is the creator and curator of In Treehouses, a free e-magazine that helps people to build valuable, profitable niche communities online. You can read the latest issue (starring Jade Craven and Everett Bogue) at www.intreehouses.com