Old Blog Traffic vs. New Blog Traffic

What is the significance between unique visitors and returning visitors in terms of blog traffic?

What I see on the Internet is a lot of focus on unique visitors but hardly any emphasis on returning visitors.  In fact, it wasn’t that long ago that I remember someone criticizing “sticky” websites.  But you know what, “sticky” blogs can earn you good money.

Let’s face it, the great thing about blogging is that you can build up a community of readers who are more likely to purchase from you in the future, whether they click on your AdSense ads, your affiliate links or purchase your products and services.  And if you read some of the big boy’s blogs such as Darren Prowse at Pro Blogger and Yaro Starak at Entrepreneur’s Journey, you’ll see just how much fresh new content is created by the community of people they have built with their blogs.

Whilst I’m sure you’ve read the fact that there are some people out there making a killing with an ugly website, I certainly do believe that it is important to have a good looking blog.  It’s certainly not the first thing that you should pour all of your time and money into because after all, you could have the best looking blog but useless content.  My suggestion is though that you have a well planned out blog that is pleasing to the eyes and, content that will make people “afraid” of missing a blog post for fear of missing out.

If you think of list building, as Alex Mandossian would say, it’s not the size of the list that matters, it’s the responsiveness of the list.  This is the same with your blog or even websites, it’s not the number of unique traffic that you get to your site that matters, it’s how responsive they are to take action - some positive kind of action - when they visit your blog.  That action might involve participating in the many opportunities that you present on your blog including clicking on an AdSense ad, an affiliate link, commenting on your blog posts, purchasing your own products or services and, contacting you via your online form.

One thing is for certain though, (andI don’t have up-to-date figuures) as of the end of July 2006, Technorati tracked its 50 millionth blog and the blogosphere back then was doubling about once every 6 and a half months.  And, did you know that there were about 175,000 new weblogs created each day … back then!?  That means more than 2 blogs were being created each second of each day with about 1.6 Million postings per day.  

You know what this all means?  Well for a start those figures would have increased since July 2006 but there is a greater meaning for you …

You Cannot Afford To Be Lazy About Blogging!

If you want to get noticed, if you want to be found online, and if you want to attract new traffic as well as keep your old buddies coming back, you have to market, promote, sell and work your blog.  And yes, it does take time but if you keep in mind that you’re building a business and not “just” a blog, the rewards are great and blogging is still in my view the fastest, easiest and most economical way to get online. 

If you are new to the online world, then look out for my new ebook, “JumpStart Blogging” which will help you set up a WordPress blog on a budget!  True it will not look like my blog (that takes some customization and is time consuming and often hard work) but there is a free WordPress theme that I personally recommend and you can upload that after you’ve build the blog and this will at least put you “in the game” so you can put your blog to work to become your 24/7 sales person.

To your online success,

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