If you're hoping for a "Blog it and they will come" field of
dreams, you can forget that. Recent statistics from blog
search engine Technorati show that a new blog hits the
Internet every 7.8 seconds! Sheesh, talk about having to
rise above the noise level to be heard, how in the world are
you going to get eyeballs glued to your blog when there is
so much competition out there?
Unlike e-zine subscriptions or autoresponder mailings, it's
not the quantity of visitors that counts, it's the quality
of the visitors as well as how often they return to continue
reading your blog.
Quality, in this case, refers to how often they click on
revenue-generating links in your blog and how often they buy
something that you're blogging about. Of course, if you're
operating an altruistic blog that has no revenue-generating
features, then you are only concerned about how often the
readers return to bask in the illumination of your
knowledge, expertise, biting sarcasm or humor.
Either way, those are the two measurements of a successful
blog. Now don't get me wrong, the number of readers is
important, of course, but it's better to have 1,000 faithful
readers who return regularly than it is to have 5,000
readers who come once and you never see them again after
that.
There is no free traffic!
I love when bloggers say "I won't pay for traffic. I can get
it for free". Nothing is "free" my friend. You will either
pay for traffic with money or you will pay for traffic with
your time. Neither way is "free".
So what you have to do is decide which of these situations
describe you best:
A) You have more money than time.
If you are so blessed, then you need to develop an
advertising plan to help you spend your money wisely. An
advertising plan requires you to research the different
advertising programs that are available, study the
demographics of the traffic that you'll be receiving, make a
budget, set up test purchases and analyze the final results.
Well, you don't HAVE to develop an advertising plan. You can
always just throw money at different potential solutions and
hope for the best. If you do that enough times then you will
automatically end up in the "B" category of "more time than
money" because all of your money will be gone and you still
won't have any traffic.
B) You have more time than money.
You've got a great blog going, the few people who show up
already absolutely love it, but you're in a financial
crunch. Is there any hope for you?
Yep, there's plenty of hope. What you'll need though is a
lot on ingenuity and the time to turn your smarts into
traffic. Believe it or not, you should still develop an
advertising plan because even though you're not spending
cash, you are spending time. Time IS money and if you waste
time then you're wasting opportunities to get traffic to
your site.
No matter which way you end up paying for your traffic, time
or money, you should first make an investment in buying some
"knowledge" from people who have already been there, done
that and got the T-shirt. That way you can spend less and
get more bang for your buck or your time.
About the Author
John Taylor is a prolific writer, he is the author of several
Internet Marketing related eBooks, for example... http://Test-and-Track.com