The excellent (and prolific) blogger Felix Salmon at Market Movers writes:

But when people tell me that it’s much harder to break in to the blogging world now than it was a couple of years ago, I’m not convinced.

He was commenting on the quick uptake newish blogger Andrew Clavell at Financial Crookery found for a post on the Citigroup-ADIA investment.*

In a certain respect Salmon is absolutely correct. Today a blogger can get their posts out to a wide audience in a hurry. To that end we have always encouraged bloggers to contact us with new and notable blogs and blog posts. However to break into the A-list of investment bloggers one needs more than a handful of good posts.

We have seen many bloggers jump out of the gate quickly with a series of excellent posts only to fade away. There are many reasons why a blog may go dark: a loss of interest, professional reasons, time constraints etc. Sometimes a blogger only has a few things to say and those get quickly exhausted in a blog format. This probably should not be all that surprising. In a previous post we discussed the requirements of successful investment blogging and the difficulties therein.

In short, what does it take to become an A-list investment blogger? A-list bloggers are nothing if not persistent. They post on a regular schedule touching on the topics of the day. It also helps if they have developed a distinctive voice and have acquired some professional expertise in a related field. They also read voraciously to keep up on both the facts and other bloggers’ opinions. In short, becoming (and staying) an A-list blogger** is a great deal of work.

*Andrew Clavell is off to a good start. He already has a follow-up post up on his earlier Citigroup-ADIA post.

**Speaking of A-list bloggers Barry Ritholtz at the Big Picture has funny post up with seven suggestions for Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) to get him blogging again.