Having an Opinion: The Secret Sauce for a Popular Blog

Daily Blog Tips: Let’s put this straight: having an opinion can be the secret sauce for a popular blog.
I am not saying that this is an essential factor. There are several styles that work online. Some of them are more neutral, where the author drops his personal views only occasionally, and overall he keeps a balanced tone and asks the perspective of other people often. That is more or less what Darren uses on Problogger, and the one I aim to as well.

Having a clear and strong opinion about things, and expressing it on your blog, however, can be equally (if not more) effective for generating traffic and buzz. Yet very few people use this style. I wonder why.
Here are two examples that illustrate my point: Loren Feldman and Victor Franqui.
Loren Feldman is the guy behind 1938media, a video blog that cover all sorts of Web 2.0 topics, often in a satirical manner. Loren does not have a problem if he needs to kick things (to avoid saying something else) around. If he does not like something or someone, he will spill it out as raw as he can. Through out his videos he generates a great deal of controversy, and he might also gain some haters along the way, but as a result he is becoming one of the most popular video bloggers around the web.
You probably remember the discussion about the A-list sometime ago right? Check out what Loren thinks about it:

Victor…