posted by Mcbias
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Recently, the fine writers at You Been Blinded and Five Tool Tool (sorry I don't have exact links) have posted about how to increase traffic to your blog. I think that their ideas are very useful for bloggers, and I thank them for sharing. I wanted to push the topic a little further. For me, getting a lot of traffic for your blog is similar to wanting to have a lot of people visit your store if you're a small business owner. It's a worthy goal, especially when you're starting out your blog. But after you've been around for a little while, hits by themselves can be less rewarding. If your customers at, say, a bookstore are just sitting there reading books and not buying anything, who cares if you have 100 or 500 customers a day? Here's some other things to consider in your blogging. (Of course, if you just blog to have fun, ignore uptight, stuffy folk like myself and stop reading pronto).
* Goal of increasing comments. Without funny or insightful comments, my posts are not the same. I don't want one-time visitors; I want traffic that returns again and again. This is why Deadspin links may not actually be that great; Deadspin links to some 20? blogs a day, and if people are coming to you from deadspin, chances are they already are reading a ton of sports blogs. How are they going to fit you into that schedule? Ínstead, find people who will be loyal to your blog and comment again and again. Talk to your commenters, reward them (Best comment of the week contests, ala WL?), etc. I also wonder, on the really odd side of things; what if, once you write about Kobe, you go drop a post into the lakers forums and let fans know you're talking about their guy? Yes, it's playing with fire, but hey, if you want comments, you have to get a reaction out of people.
* Goal of increasing revenue. Many bloggers have some kind of "If you want to advertise, send me an e-mail" section. But I wonder; what if you would actually go after advertisers yourself? For example, if you post on geographic topics (i.e. Chicago sports), why not give a local sports bar or two a call? They might give you a try, if it costs 1/10th or 1/100th the price it would for a local paper. And what about other forms of revenue? If you take an interesting video of a sporting event and post it on revver.com, you get paid through revenue sharing. That's what the guys who did the Kobe video are doing (once they realized people wouldn't cough up $1.99), and they have 100,000 views.
* Goal of better blog content. There are people out there who are too busy to write their own blog. But they have interesting news facts and tidbits, or they are good at writing themselves and know how to improve your blog. If you can find some way to reward those people or let it be known that you want content from readers, you can tap into their skills. Also, a lot of times us writers are so busy trying to get EVERY LAST DETAIL AND JOKE out of a story because I MUST PROVE THAT I AM SO FUNNY OR SMART, that we don't give the reader anything to do. Like what I'm doing on this post, for example (hypocrite alert!). Leave some questions open on your blog for people to answer, don't tell all the jokes yourself, or just take the "Yes" side of an issue and invite commenters to write the "No" side for you. Deadspin does this nicely, and that's part of why it's so popular, in my opinion.
OK, I'll probably make this my Friday post on my blog, but I did want to play with the Ballhype Original option. Do you think I'm right in saying we overemphasize traffic; or does traffic lead to these goals anyway?
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Jason It's a good question, and the answer would probably depend on my reason for blogging. If I'm doing it as a hobby, I agree that the quality of readership is more important than the quantity. Building a strong community, with insightful/funny comments and emails, would be more rewarding than traffic numbers.
If the goal is monetization, traffic becomes a lot more important, although even then (as suggested), a small but highly targeted audience can sometimes be more valuable than a larger, more generic audience.
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Erin Interesting post and some valid points about the different types of visitors your site is going to get.
Here's how I look at it - site traffic from casual visitors is equivalent to brand advertising. You make an impression and they may not stick around for more than a single page. But over time if you keep getting links and increasing traffic, people will land on your site again and eventually, some of them will remember it independently and/or become more engaged, while most will not. So if you care about the three goals you list, you also need to care about traffic in order to increase the size of the funnel.
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Mcbias Good points, both of you, thanks so much for adding your thoughts.
Erin, my concern about traffic not leading to those points has been in watching YouTube artists that eventually become very popular (100000 hits or more per video) but haven't been cashing in at all. For example, the guys from Nobody's Watching make some really funny videos, get tons of hits, had a TV pilot...but just a month ago they were saying that they weren't getting any ad money and would have to stop making the videos soon. Or, Brookers was supposed to get some sort of TV deal...and that too fell through, I believe. I'm also thinking of a blogger I know who gets lots of big blog links, but doesn't have many comments.
Certainly, adding traffic will take you a lot closer to those other 3 goals than not adding traffic. But I did want to point out that a gap may exist between increasing traffic and increasing money/fans/help, just as we know a gap exists between doing good work and getting traffic.
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Mcbias Oh, and I felt bad for not listing the YBB and FTT links, so here are the links to the original increase traffic posts:
http://youbeenblinded.com/2007/06/30/increasing-sports-blog-traffic-links-etc/
http://fivetooltool.blogspot.com/2007/07/top-5-tips-for-inspiring-sports-blog.html
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theoriginaljd This is a pretty interesting question that I've never really stopped to think about before. Personally I think my goal isn't necessarily to get more hits per se, but more along the lines of getting people to comment and just create a discourse. I think of it like a point of purchase stand in a grocery store - you might not need that gum, but once it's there you might get it anyways. What I'm trying to say is - my blog is like gum. -
extrapolater You've been thinking again, MC. You're a dangerous man.
Seriously, though. I started my blog as a way to get myself to write every day and try to prove to myself and others that I could write for a living (or at least get a side gig out of the deal). Getting linked by other bloggers, whether it results in 5 hits or 5,000, is an indication that others got something out of what I wrote. It really means something to me that other writers will bookmark my site and link me from time to time.
I think the corridor for making money directly from blogging is pretty narrow, but the work has value. Sometimes I just get a laugh out of something I read (which is good on a rough day), and sometimes I really learn something. Reading The Starting Five challenges my perceptions daily. I often find myself disagreeing with what the writers there say, but I cannot deny that their writing makes me think about things in a different light, or look at things I never would have even thought about.
But yeah, basically, my ego gets a healthy glow going when I get a link from one of the big boys. It's short-lived, but then again, so is just about everything in life.
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bohchris I have a Underpants Gnomes-esque outlook on traffic. I figure:
Stage 1: TrafficStage 2: ?
Stage 3: Profit
In reality though, I'd like people to be reading and commenting (because even if you have a lot of people reading and no one comments, you look like no one's reading), but if they're just reading me...that's my goal. I just want many people to care about what I have to say. Anything else is gravy.
Bloggolalia: Should Increasing Traffic be Our #1 Goal?
Moderately Cerebral Bias —
... Do you think I'm right in saying we overemphasize traffic; or does traffic lead to these goals anyway? Note: see original post and comments at BallHype. ...
