Before I start I just want to say to my regular readers that I love ya, really I do! I appreciate your comments, love to see my RSS numbers increasing, I get a warm fuzzy feeling as my number of visitors slowly climbs and I generally just love writing and feeling as though people appreciate it.
But… I’m afraid your commitment doesn’t pay my bills.
It’s the drive-by, wham bam thank you ma’am traffic that I’m after. Not for this blog, but for my other sites. Things rarely change on most of my sites and therefore people don’t tend to return. They type something into Google, my page comes up, they click on the link, have a look around, and then leave me feeling used and abused.
But… they often leave in ways that pad my bank account.
To make any money I need to attract people who are looking for something other than my daily post; the ones who find my site through a click of Google and then head off in search of more information, possibly never to be seen again. People who find my sites through search engines are, funnily enough, usually searching for something. If they find it on my site that’s great and if the thing they’re searching for results in an affiliate sale then that’s even better! If they can’t find the information they’re after then off they’ll go to another site and this could lead to an Adsense click.
That’s not to say that blogs don’t get search engine traffic because they do, but blogs generally rely on repeat visits and networking to pad out their daily stats. Because of this, a high number of daily visitors doesn’t equate to a high level of earnings the way it does on a standard website.
If you’re hoping to make money with your blog then optimising your site for the search engines and targeting search traffic is key. Spending time on MyBlogLog, commenting on other blogs, posting on forums with your link in the signature and all that time consuming stuff is good for getting people to visit your site, but these people tend to be curious folks with time to kill, not people who are in the frame of mind to buy something or click on an ad.
So in other words, money wise, I would rather have 100 visitors a day to my websites then 1000 visitors a day to this blog, even if it was monetised. But then again, 1000 readers a day would be nice…
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