Marketing Your Blog To Advertisers
Many of us are home business owners. Many of us are bloggers. Many of us are blog business owners. Many are wannabes in one or all of the above categories.
Few of us are immune to the thrilling seduction of the possibility of being a pro blogger.
Why blogging? Why not writing or tutoring or, hell, marketing consulting? What is the big damn deal about blogging?
It’s totally independent.
You get to write (essentially) what you want, (essentially) when you want to write it. Nobody is telling you to write 500 words on the rebirth of the Volkswagon Beetle. I write about my tattoos and my almost emergency room visits and I can still get paid.
(Killjoy disclaimer: It’s not as independent as you think it is when you start. You actually lay in bed some nights wondering if you should make your titles more search engine friendly or create more powerful linkbait, but I’m assuming you’re a beginner and you don’t want to know about that right now.)
If you want to be a pro blogger, you need to make money blogging.
There are two ways to do this. One is to have actual people pay you to write blogs. This can work if your need for cash is low and you have a lot of time on your hands. You find five or ten people to pay you five or ten bucks a post, you write for them, you get paid. If you’re good and fast and don’t burn out, you can probably make two grand a month doing this, although it’s unreliable and fluctuating and will not feed three kids in a first world country.
The (better) way is to secure advertising income.
Advertisers need to look at metrics. As awesome as your blog may be, if you have an Alexa rank in the millions and a page view average in the dozens and nobody but your mother visits your site, ain’t nobody going to pay you. Here are the main metrics that they look at, and how to make your numbers more favorable.
1. Alexa
Alexa ranks are ridiculous but necessary. When readers visit your site and they have the Alexa toolbar installed, Alexa counts them. They do some funky calculations, and you get a rank. Like golf, with Alexa, the lower the better.
Many people think Alexa is a stupid metric. This is because it has a very high usage quotient among tech savvy readers, meaning a shitty tech blog will have a better Alexa rank than an awesome Mommy blog. When IttyBiz made the front page of Digg, my Alexa rank improved dramatically. My site didn’t improve, but the percentage of readers with the toolbar installed was substantially higher than it was before. This sucks, but advertisers take it into account.
Get the Alexa toolbar by going here and signing up. It’s not scary and it doesn’t clutter up your screen too much. It can’t hurt, and it will likely help not only your own blog, but also the blogs of your homies. You go to their site with your toolbar installed and the number of digital pebbles in their Alexa pile increases. (Edited to add: Tzaddi informs me that adding the Alexa toolbar can make Firefox go ugly in the short-term, so if you`re a Firefox user, back up before you install. She also says you should probably be backing up regularly anyway.)
Short version on increasing your Alexa rank: Install the toolbar. Have your friends, loved ones, and household pets do the same. Cross your fingers.
2. Technorati rank
Technorati rank is not an official metric for many advertising platforms but it helps, especially when it comes to private advertising. Essentially, Technorati ranks the number of sites that link to your blog. It counts sites, not links, so if I link to you 53 times in a day, you’re no better off than me linking to you once.
There are two numbers involved in your Technorati “score”. Your “authority” is (basically) the number of sites that link to your site. Your rank is where you stand in relation to the rest of the blogosphere. To use IttyBiz as an example, my authority is currently 193, meaning 190-odd sites have linked here. My Rank is 30,347, meaning this blog is 30 thousandth or so on the list.
Keep in mind, every site that links to you is created equal in Technorati’s mind. I’ve been linked to in Problogger (authority: 9,433), Remarkablogger (authority: 4,841), Performancing (authority: 5,068) and they all just count as one each. (I can’t tell you how disappointed I was to discover this.)
Generally speaking, Technorati rank goes up organically, but there are ways to improve it. When Shane and Peter ran their Interviewing You, their authority went up by over 50 from that one post alone. How’d they do it? They put out a (pretty freaking compelling) request to participate in an interview, posting the results on your own blog. People linked back to S&P when they did so, increasing their authority, and accordingly, their rank.
Short version on increasing your Technorati score: Find cool ways to get people to link to you. Linking to them tends to increase people’s affection for you dramatically.
3. Google Pagerank
Nobody really knows how to get a good pagerank, but people have theories. Last I heard there were over 200 factors taken into account, some of which obviously being more important than others.
IttyBiz has a PR of 4, although I have no idea why. (Keep in mind that Zen Habits, with a subscriber base of around 35,000, has a PR of 5, and Problogger has a 6.) I have done absolutely nothing to make that happen, I blatantly ignore the rules that SEO experts swear are vital, and my domain is less than five months old. Basically, this one beats the hell out of me, but it beats the hell out of everybody else, too.
Short version on increasing your Google pagerank: Create good content, preferably the kind that makes smart people with good blogs want to link to you. Don’t link out to “bad neighborhoods”. Don’t be involved in linkfarms or massive you-link-to-me-I’ll-link-to-you blogrolls. Use good anchor text for your internal links. Keep your domain for as long as you can. Hope for the best.
4. Subscriber base
Most advertisers don’t give a damn what your subscriber count is because subscribers don’t see ads. The only reason advertisers care is that your subscriber base is often representative of your readership as a whole. Darren had a good piece on how to get your subscriber base up today. You can go read it, but for those of you who are busy and don’t want to leave my charming site, I’ll quote:
“People will subscribe to your blog if they think that it will enhance their lives in some way in the foreseeable future.”
Jonathan Fields does a good job of this with his sidebar widget, Coming Attractions. (“Here’s a sneak-peek at a few of the articles that’ll be coming your way soon…”)
If people think they’ll miss out on something if they don’t subscribe, then they’ll subscribe. Pretty simple, but surprisingly elusive.
Short version on increasing your subscriber count:Indicate that it is easier and lower risk for your readers to subscribe than to just keep coming back to the site itself. Promise juicy stuff tomorrow or next week or next month.
5. Traffic
Ahh, traffic. The Mac Daddy of metrics. When it comes to direct advertising, the kind you get from people clicking on your little “advertise here” widget, traffic is pretty much the only thing that matters. Advertisers want to know that you can get asses in the seats.
Here at IttyBiz, my traffic sucks. Mine is the only website I know with three times the subscribers than daily pageviews. Nobody comes to the site unless they’re commenting. The thing is, up until recently, I didn’t actually care if people visited the site or not. If I got 100 comments on a post, and 100 visitors that day, I was pretty happy with that. Now that I’m looking into advertising, though, I’m changing the strategy.
The easy way to get more traffic and pageviews is to give people suggestions on where to go next. Have a “next post” or “previous post” option at the end of each post you write. Have a suggested reading section at the end of your posts. Link to your own site from within. Publish a partial RSS feed. (People hate these, and so do I, but few can deny that they increase your traffic.)
The not-as-easy way to increase your traffic is to enhance your SEO so more people arrive at the site via search engines. This does not work for IttyBiz because I write titles that frequently utilize words like “topless”, “thong”, “shitless”, “breasts” and “toilet.” Suffice it to say, the people who come here from Google leave very, very quickly.
Short version on increasing your traffic:Tell people where to go and they’ll usually go.
6. Content is king, blah blah blah.
If you don’t know this, you’re screwed. The only reason I’m putting it here is to stop the keeners from yammering about it in the comments.
Bottom Line
It ain’t fast and it ain’t easy, but neither is med school. Sit back. Become rich. Thank me in your book.
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***
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Well, your argument for Alexa was good enough it got me off my busy butt to install it. (I think it was the digital pebbles for homies bit…)
Now my Firefox won’t restart. Ugh. Hope I don’t lose all those saved passwords in the recovery.
Tzaddi! I very, very, very much hope it didn`t screw you! 30 trillion Firefox-running Bush-hating Diggers can`t be wrong, can they?
Diggers, wrong? Never! ;-)
You didn’t screw me, but the Alexa add-on sure did. I had to uninstall FF… which I’ve been meaning to do anyway since mine had a strange memory leak or something. So it’s not all bad.
Lessons learned:
- back up your bookmarks from time to time. Good thing most of mine are in ma.gnolia
- google before you try an add-on. A quick search after-the-fact shows I’m not the only one: http://www.jerryhuang.com/blog/alexa-toolbar-crashes-firefox/
- umm, those passwords are gonna come back and bite me, I’m sure. What were you saying about paper…?
Tzaddi, I`ve edited the post to reflect the ugliness. Thanks for the heads up.
Just my opinion, but I’m not a big fan of putting ads on a business site. Seems to say you’re not getting any.
Business, that is.
It sends the wrong message. If business was great (and nobody will want to do business with you if they think it isn’t) then why do you need ads on your site?
None of the punctuation on my keyboard is functioning properly, so…
AT Michael Martine - I definitely agree. As far as IttyBiz is concerned, we are moving in a different direction, making ads more appropriate. I didn`t run them for the first five months but I`m going to start incorporating them as appropriate.
In general, NO ads on a business site, for two reasons. One, as you say, it makes you look like you`re not getting any :), and two, because you don`t want to distract your audience from spending money on you.
I thought of one other thing…
Blogging forbusiness and blogging as business are two very different things. Skellie blogs as her business, rendering ads totally acceptable. You blog for business, meaning you don’t want to whore out every Tom, Dick, and Harry when you could be whoring yourself.
‘K. I’m done. I swear. I will stop artificially inflating my comments immediately.
That’s the beauty of interwebs. You eliminate the middle man and whore yourself.
I was actually wondering why you didn’t have ads up on here yet. All of these are really nice tips. As far as the Google pagerank goes, I think part of the low rank may have to do with how old the site is.
That also makes me notice that you still have © 2007 in your footer. If you change it to © 2007 - 2008, that might help some. I don’t know how comfortable you are modifying the theme files, so you might want to have your designer do it, but you can place this code in your footer.php file where you have the copyright now and the year will update automatically so that you never have to worry about it again.
© 2007 - IttyBiz
Sorry, it stripped out my code! I’ll send it to you by email.
I heard the word whore, and I felt the calling. Then I read the post, and the comment whore in me became an enraged demon who wants to rip into you for promoting partial feeds.
It’s very important to stress that if you want READERS for your blog, then you do NOT want partial feeds. If you want people to see your ADS, then you don’t give a shit if people read your content and remain loyal.
Partial feeds LOSE readers. They’re annoying bastards and I generally unsubscribe from blogs that use them. Also, they are false ways of boosting your site traffic:
“I have 2,000 hits to my site per day!!”
This means ABSOLUTELY nothing if only ONE of those people was a NEW, UNIQUE visitor. It means you have a fan club and that no one else is interested in what you do.
Reasons not to use partial feeds: Find them here and here.
Also consider this: There is a huge difference in blogging to gain readers and blogging to gain clients. Big name blogs like John Chow, Copyblogger and Dosh Dosh don’t use partial feeds.
Why should you?
@ Naomi - If you move to partial feeds, I’ll have to find another street corner to work on, which would make me very sad. Please don’t.
@ Michael - I do think advertising relevant, additional services that you cannot provide as being smart. We do copywriting. We also advertise marketing, productivity and graphic design. That’s everything a client needs to get started with a website. It also shows that we approve of these businesses and recommend them, which means clients don’t get screwed.
Hand on heart, I actually visit every time google tells me you’ve posted something new.
I reckon I’d comment to most, but I’m usually on a coffee withdrawl, which makes facing the keyboard hard work.
If only someone would come up with a way for me to think text on to the computer…
On second thoughts its probably a good thing that I can’t just upload my brain, I don’t think the world is ready!
Bang on article. I just went and installed the Alexa toolbar. I had always avoided doing so, but I guess I need to. Guess I should also put it on all my families computers too.
Oh, and I love the way you fit the words like “topless”, “thong”, “shitless”, “breasts” and “toilet” into your post. That should help those Paris Hilton an Britney Spears loving search engines to find your pages! Nothing like a little naked bait to get things going. :)
@James - Great point. I think if the blog is quality and the advertising is carefully chosen it will not detract. But man, it’s a mighty slippery slope that starts with good intentions (great paving material) and ends with jumping the shark and selling out.
BTW, there are plugins that allow for full feeds even though you may be using excerpts on your home page.
@ some other Naomi - Thanks, dude. I honestly thought when the PR update came out I’d come in at a 2. I have a feeling that mine is going to be one of those websites that loses PR at the next update. Shane says it’s because I link too much. :) Thanks for the code, will talk to Chris.
@ James - Always nice to see you. :) I do not recommend partial feeds. I am not going to partial feeds. I think partial feeds increase your pageviews. I do not profess to be the governing moral authority over what my readers do — see “People hate these, and so do I, but few can deny that they increase your traffic.”
When I go to Copyblogger or DoshDosh or Problogger and I look at the homepage and I see something I’m interested in and I click “Continue reading…” I don’t see how that’s all that different from publishing a partial feed. You want more, you have to click and thus give the author one more pageview. Same activity, same result, different media.
@ Greg - Thanks, dude! That’s really nice. Although yes, the direct brain download might be too much. The internet may not be ready.
@ Michael - That was nice, wasn’t it? Now hopefully I can increase my Google bounce rate to 100% and have an average time on site of 3 seconds. This is my dream. I don’t talk about Paris Hilton a lot, though. I should probably ramp that one up.
@ Michael - Yes, I should’ve pointed out the plugin. We use it on our new site at MwP and it works GREAT. There are also strategies to getting readers of feeds back onto your site every now and then, like a section of the site they can’t see and a weekly notice of what great content they’re missing. They’ll click through every now and then to see. Daily? Yuck.
Agreed with the road to hell. However, making informed decisions and taking calculated risks usually offers a better chance of success than someone who slaps up ads and hopes for passive income fame and fortune. Also, testing goes a long way. Nothing is ever set in stone, and there’s usually low risk in trying something for a little while, seeing if it works, and ditching it if it doesn’t.
*whispers* Entrecard…
@ Greg - How about voice to text? There are programs to do that…
@ Naomi - It’s different because when you visit the home page, you’re making a conscious free will choice to be there. When you click, you are making another free will choice. But a partial feed is not so free willed - it is a contrived, on-purpose tactic to force you to click. Yes, you do so if you’re interested in doing so, agreed, but the sole purpose of a partial feed is to make you click. It’s not to save space or put more content before people, such as Copyblogger and the others try to do. Big difference.
And it’s nice to see you awake too :) Morning!
@ James - I am not awake yet. I woke up specifically to argue publicly with you because this is what makes my day complete. Now that my day is complete, I can go back to bed and not get up until Thursday when we can argue again. Is it my term to say something asinine and controversial just to get my pageviews up, or yours?
(Note: this is just a polite way of saying “Your place or mine?”)
@ Naomi - Kiss-kiss, sweetie ;)
Hey Naomi! Thanks for the link and mention about my use of a Coming Attractions section. I figured, if they get me to TIVO House, why wouldn’t they make readers subscribe?
Damned if you didn’t link to it the day I revised my designed and pulled it down.
Actually, I think I’ll put it back, but I found it did little for my RSS, even though I linked each item to my subscribe link. Not giving up yet, though, I am going to try a slightly different approach, using a bit more copy-magic.
Oh, btw, DUDE…PREGO…CONGRATS!!!
Promise not to send you sappy youtube links til this time next year.
Oh, my so many things..
First, as you almost said: RSS counts are not only unimportant to advertising, but unimportant to you also: RSS readers and regular readers don’t click on ads. Search engine traffic clicks on ads ( yes, I know this because I’ve been doing Adsense and tracking it since day one for four years now: search engine visitors are your ad clickers).
Second: even with lots of traffic and good Alexa/Technorati/PR, it’s still hard to attract direct advertisers. I get some, but Adsense is still 90% of my income. Advertisers in general don’t want to deal with sites in our size range (I get around 250,000 PV’s monthly). Oddly, those same advertisers will spend money on print ads in magazines with less circulation, but when it comes to the web, they prefer Adwords and its cousins. But heck, so do I: I’d much rather pay Google once than deal with a dozen websites. So - yes, you CAN get some ad business without being humongous, but it probably won’t be much.
Finally, I absolutely disagree with the “no ads for a business site”. The MAIN purpose of my site is to drive consulting business to me and it does a bang-up job of that while at the same time delivering a nice extra chunk of Adsense cash that more than pays my mortgage and service fees.. you CAN do both.
“fuck hard” is the number one search for my blog. i should maybe write a post someday about fucking hard. my stats suck, but i am committed to improving it. i blog for fun, it’s like a break for me, but if some motherfucker wants to pay me to say some offensive shit then i’m on board.
keep it groovy (that is what all the kids are saying these days right?)
Ok, I know the main subject here is how to lure advertisers, and I don’t want to get all John Chow here, but there are definitely more that 2 ways to make money as a pro blogger, including affiliate marketing, writing/selling ebooks, paid reviews, etc.
On a less contrary note, I really have to get on the Alexa tip. I’m out of the loop on that one.
@ Dave - There is zero money in blogging per se. There is potential to achieve other means of revenue - but it’s an extremely difficult area and does take effort, time, and quality products or services. Not impossible, but definitely not the get-rich-quick that people make it out to be. But you knew that ;)
Re: the perennial Partial Feeds Debate.
It’s not as simple as you think. And yes, I’m talking from a position of actually MEASURING, not assuming based on what *I* like.
The BEST thing is to be able to offer both partial and full. If you can’t do that, well, it’s your crappy blooging software’s fault, isn’t it?
See http://aplawrence.com/Web/fullorpartial.html for real DATA on this subject rather than opinions.
Partial feeds DO NOT LOSE READERS. My partial feeds subscribers continue to grow - not as fast as the Full Feeds (though that gets an unfair boost because its the default).
NOT EVERYBODY LIKES FULL FEEDS. If you really care about your readers, DO BOTH.
Sorry for shouting but this constant assertion is wrong, wrong wrong. The only point I will give it is that if you cannot do both (because you have crappy blogging software) then yes, do Full. Otherwise, do both, period!
So… I think I’m hearing that you feel strongly about this issue… would that be right? ;)
Sigh..
Partial feeds are not “a contrived, on-purpose tactic to force you to click”
They are a time and space saver. They let you read a little and then decide if you want to read more.
Why would I have over 400 partial feed readers - who are told at the bottom of every excerpt that they CAN subscribe to a full text feed if they desire - why would they continue to read the partial feed and why would new readers sign up for that even though it is more difficult for them to do that than accepting my default of full?
Why is that if partial feeds are such horrible things?
Sheesh :-)
@james
Ayup :-)
I feel strongly because the prevailing opinion among bloggers is wrong. Simple as that.
Just because two thousand bloggers keep parroting what someone told them doesn’t mean it’s true. It isn’t.
You need to give your readers both. Period.
@ Anthony - Well, in my case, it’s not parroting. I tend to get in trouble because I usually have differing views than the herd and explore both sides of the coin (funny how people don’t like that).
In the case of feeds, it’s my preference speaking mostly. Offering both would be a fantastic idea. Does WP do that? If it doesn’t, it’s full for me. The sites that consistently only offer me partial piss me off, honestly, because it’s frustrating for me to play games.
So. WP?
I haven’t played with feed customizing, but apparently this plugin is worth a look. Says it offers both partial and full, and some other features too.
http://www.scratch99.com/wordpress-plugin-dualfeeds/
I know nothing about WP. I write my own CMS software.
However, you can always create a feed externally - I use simple Perl scripts that I wrote to produce my feeds (which is what I feed to Feedburner).
Whenever the partial feeds subject comes up, it’s alway hotly contested with neither side giving up much slack. This is the blogosphere’s equivalent to the abortion debate (can’t wait to see who flames me for that one.)
“Nobody comes to the site unless they’re commenting.”
Sure we do–we read the comments even when we don’t leave any words of our own behind. : )
I checked out Alexa–if they only offer it for IE and FF they’re not counting a tiny important segment (meaning me, since I use Safari and Camino.) So blogs with lots of Mac readers would tend to be screwed there, wouldn’t they?
@naomi: “Nobody comes to the site unless they’re commenting. ”
Not true. I’ve ready many a post here and had nothing to say.
@Mary Anne
“blogs with lots of Mac readers would tend to be screwed there”
Not necessarily. I get a lot of Mac Readers. In the last month (from Google Analytics):
4. Safari / Macintosh 14,537 7.63%
5. Firefox / Macintosh 11,035 5.79%:
@ Anthony - I think she’s referring to Alexa ranks, as in if it’s only for IE and FF then heavy Mac sites would by necessity have lower Alexa scores. I have no idea if this is the case with Alexa, but if so, it would stand to reason.
@ Naomi - Okay, I have a few solutions for you.
First, All-in-one SEO Pack plugin for WP lets you write your create your own title tags on the Write Post page, regardless of what you use as the post title, giving you the bet of both worlds, pizazz and SEO-love.
Second, for those who wanna be able to show excerpts at the blog, but offer full-feeds, check out the Post-Teaser plug-in. I just implemented both on my blog and I think I may even go back and SEO-up the meta titles of old posts (need to check with my smart friends before I go an do that , though)
On Alexa’s usefulness, I know, it’s one of the first things I look at to get a feel for a site’s authority, and I’m not even uppity! I also use a Mac, but surf with FF, not Safari, because of all the plugins and customization. and, most mac users i know have made a similar switch
anyway, my 2 cents!
Jonathan
You moving to full feeds yourself, Jonathan? That’d sure be nice!
@ James - yup, just started today, now that I have post-teaser rocking!
RSS subs are important, As I use Feedburner ads and make about $50-80 per month from them. I know, I know, not big money, but it buys the groceries once a month. And if you visit http://www.e-junkie.com/hdbizblog and buy one of my calendars, I may be able to get to SOB Con 2008 in May.
Who’s a whore now??
In fact, I know a quote from a movie, something along the lines of, “What kind of girl do you think I am?” and the response is, “I thought we had established that, and now we are negotiating on the price” (or something like that).
Any way, I have ads in exchange for services on my site and ads for $$$ in my feed. (And I have three-plus-times as many feed readers as visitors, now you know two blogs with that stat!!) So I think that it is working out, AOK.
Feed subscribers are important in the same way an email list used to be (still is) important. They are your most important monetizable long-term permission asset. Other than pure income regardless of method, RSS subscribers are the most important metric of a blog’s success. The two most important assets are attention and trust. A high number of RSS subscribers represents high levels of attention and trust. Attention and trust leads to further opportunities such as affiliate sales, cross-selling and up-selling. What they used to call mindshare in the recent past.
High numbers of subscribers aren necessary for many types of monetization, including selling products and services. I did very well even before my subscriber count went over 1,000. But now that it is higher, I see the effects in the form of a greater number of inquiries which are the result of more backlinks and social media hits. By having a content strategy designed to create new business, a good number of my audience members are qualified leads for my services.
Where you can get into trouble is when you’re running a business, have high numbers of visitors or subscribers… but nobody’s buying. Then you’re not targeting your content properly and you might need to change your blog design, too. There are blogs written by people who claim to be in business, but I’ll be damned if I could tell that by looking at their blog. Having blog success without business success is not much of a success. Selling services directly is usually far more profitable than advertising revenue.
A good number of my clients ARE feed subscribers. I don’t send them ads in feeds. I send them relevant content. Eventually, the message gets through and they make an inquiry. I’m consciously crafting that message to get more business while at the same time it is useful for anyone wanting to learn more about blogging. This is the whole point behind Gateway Blogging. My blog has one purpose. Everything about it is bent towards that purpose.
Yes, I’m advertising. I’m advertising myself. And it’s the only “ad” I want my readers thinking about. It is an ad that doesn’t look like an ad. It is selling without selling. And that’s the beauty of it. It works… not just for me, but for others who have tried it, which is why I’m making a system out of it.
For what it’s worth, I also have a higher number of subscribers than uniques. Actually, I’m starting to think that might be a characteristic of a business blog that is doing things correctly. Your mileage may vary, but still… very interesting!
@naomi
“I think she’s referring to Alexa ranks”
Yes, that’s why I showed the stats. Nearly half my Mac visitors use FF, which can use Alexa (I have it in my browser right now and am visiting your site from a Mac - you get Alexa credit).
@michael
“For what it’s worth, I also have a higher number of subscribers than uniques. Actually, I’m starting to think that might be a characteristic of a business blog that is doing things correctly.”
Mmmm, no, I don’t think so. A business blog should be getting a lot of search traffic. Subscribers already know who you are and what you do - search engines are sending new blood.
Ideally, you want to be Google page one for search terms related to what you sell. I happen to enjoy that privilege and my search traffic is at least six times and sometimes ten times multiple of RSS subscribers. I’d be very upset and much poorer if it were not.
@ Jonathan - Thank you immensely. I will read your blog more often now - and comment more!
@ Everyone else - This is very interesting. I’m enjoying reading this.
@ Michael - I agree that high subs and low uniques means you’re doing something right - you’re taking who’s coming and giving them what they want so they stay.
@ Anthony - You’re right too. A sub doesn’t necessarily want your product or service. A unique hit may have the potential to be a buyer because that person is searching for something you have. Hopefully it’s what you sell, but we can’t assume that unique hits are all searching that specifically as buyers.
Having higher subscriber numbers than uniques does not mean a site isn’t getting a lot of search traffic. It means exactly what I said: one is higher than the other. Yes, the search engines send new traffic, and if you’re doing your shit right they convert and become subscribers if not clients. And if you continue to do your shit right then a percentage of subscribers become clients, too. Everyone’s welcome to their opinion, but this is an observable phenomenon.
When first starting out, generally the numbers will not look like this–search will be a higher percentage of your overall low numbers. If a successful site breeds a spin-off (like Skellie or James) then that new site has an even more pronounced difference between subscriber numbers and search numbers. Subscribers of the original site will subscribe immediately to the new site.
“if you’re doing your shit right they convert and become subscribers if not clients”
Not necessarily. Search finds things that aren’t always related to what you are selling and aren’t necessarily even related to what your site is about. That’s especially true as your site grows in size, but even people with small sites can see misdirected search (there was a post here about that just a few weeks ago).
The bigger you are, the more food for search engines, and the more unrelated traffic. Simple as that. I have 13,576 pages in my Google sitemap right now - that’s a LOT of fish food :-)
Yes, necessarily. Every site has irrelevant search traffic. If you have too much, it’s not a product of large amounts of content, it’s because your content isn’t focused enough on what prospective buyers or clients are looking for. Or in Naomi’s case, because she has a potty mouth. :D
And that doesn’t change that it’s the relevant searches that matter, that become subscribers, that become clients. If you over-rely on search traffic, you need to broaden your traffic acquisition strategies. I could lose all of my Google search traffic and still do well. Not bragging, just saying it’s good strategy.
Wow, we got way off-topic with this.
@michael
We’ll have to agree to disagree. I make a good amount of money from that traffic.. Not bragging, just saying it’s good strategy.
I think it’s too hard to narrow down which way is best or which is the more effective or which brings in more money, as there are far too many factors involved, and too much depends on wild-card elements.
Can some be predicted and considered? Of course. But there are factors that throw a monkey-wrench in it no matter which opinion or angle you take.
I think that’s what Anthony is saying - that there is no hard, fast rule and that every position isn’t the ultimate position, because one element or another can change the end result.
I’m on both sides with this - I see good in both of what you’re saying. I think both of you are right to certain degrees.
But what I do know is that what I’m doing now works for me and my blog. It might not work for the next guy.
Ahh, James: ever the peacemaker :-)
But yeah, I agree. And I don’t agree that we’re off topic: this is about advertising, not advertising, and how to make money from it if you do.
Michael is wrong :-) but he’s still OK in my book.
anthony said: “Nearly half my Mac visitors use FF, which can use Alexa (I have it in my browser right now and am visiting your site from a Mac - you get Alexa credit).”
So I went back to check the Alexa site. My eyes? My memory? I could have sworn that it said “Firefox (Windows)” but it just says “Firefox.” So I dug out the old 1.5 copy of Firefox that I tried and hated, and it’s real. Sorry I’m not willing to use a browser I hate to enhance to ratings of blogs I love. [Wannnh!]
@ Anthony - My husband and I have discussed this and come to the conclusion that James is not a peacemaker or an arguer. We have decided that James does whatever it is the people around him are not doing. For example, if everybody else is being nice and reasonable, James throws down the gauntlet and talks smack. If everybody else is snarkin’, only then will he make peace. It’s what makes him complex and unique. :-)
@ Mary Anne - You do whatever brings you joy. :-) No one will ever expect you to use a browser you hate… that is inhumane and all around icky. We’re just glad you’re here, whatever browser you use.
@Mary Anne:
So why are you using an ancient Firefox?
Current is 2.0.0.11
By the way, Alexa usage doesn’t just “enhance ratings”. See http://aplawrence.com/foo-web/muntz_tv.html
But I can understand liking Safari - it renders pages much more attractively.
So James must be destroyed then.. too bad, I rather liked him.
Oh well..
Wow… people talk about me? That’s so cool! Hm. And now I want to know exactly what was said… do you have a transcript of that conversation?
@ Anthony - Ah, such a throwaway society mentality. I’m disappointed, really I am.
But I am complex and unique - even on the trash heap!
@ James - If you enjoyed the content of the program you just watched, you can order a transcript for $24.95 + s&h. Please allow 4-6 weeks for delivery.
Hm. I am skeptical. Is there a guarantee? People buy if there is no risk. Can I return it if I’m not satisfied? Will you give me my money back? Why should I order my transcripts from you and not from your virile husband? What sets you apart? And do you offer discounts for Canadian customers? What about bulk orders - I want two. Will you drop your price for two?
Let me redirect you to the 6,000 word sales landing page that I’ve created just to answer concerns like yours. It features a lot of red text, as well as important words highlighted in yellow and effusive testimonials from important people of whom you have never heard. If that doesn’t put your mind at ease, you’re obviously too dumb to own my product.
Oh. Shit. Sorry, for a minute there I thought I was selling an ebook.
If I go through the screaming loud eye-burning sales page to buy your book, do I get four bonus offers, a personal letter from you that touches my heart forever and twelve P.S. messages that stress the urgency of this life-changing decision?
Wait, are you implying that those sales pages don’t work? Crap, there goes my business model.
Um… DUH! What kind of a fucking marketing professional do you think I am?
And if it’s really important to you, I can send you a second copy for free. In case your kid throws up on the first one or something. You can never be too careful.
@ Dave - Of COURSE they work! And to prove it to you, I’ll show you six months of my PayPal records with identifying information fuzzed out. Because there is NO POSSIBLE WAY of fudging that information with Photoshop or anything.
To be very honest, it doesn’t work well on Canadians. However, I know the long copy method to be referred to often as the “American style”. And this from marketing and copywriting experts, not just any person…
(please note that I love Americans and am not implying anything…)
Hey, we may be in more debt than you, but at least our dollar is weaker than yours now!
Hehehe… Yes, that’s quite the matter of smug smiles these days.
Bah, it won’t last. Never does.
People, I get paid in American dollars. I am not smug, I am weeping. I get $2500 by paypal that used to mean $3500 and now means a little over $2000. NOT COOL.
SHHHHHHH!!! That’s unpatriotic!! Canada rules! (Don’t worry, I’m crying each pay day, too.)
At least you don’t live in Europe. Try getting your American dollars converted to Euros. $100 = 67 € . Talk about painful!!
The hell with the guarantee: is there an affiliate program and how much do I get to skim from the suckers who sign up under me?
anthony: “So why are you using an ancient Firefox?”
I’m not. Tried it, didn’t like it, it’s still cluttering up the hard drive. I love Safari, I love Camino. (I used to love Opera in OS 9.)
Trying to apply all this advice to my future web site for my hands-on dog business is making my brain cramp.
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