How Do You Blog: Don't Forget The Traffic

So you've decided to start a blog. Good for you. Blogs are a wonderful way to exercise your mind. They are a great way to build your reputation. And along the way, you might even be able to make a little money.

And they're flexible. You can create written content. You can create video content. You can create audio content. And you can create content on just about any topic you can think of.



They're also easy to do. With the modern tools like WordPress or Blogger, anyone can create and maintain a blog without having to know anything about web programming or html.

But before you jump into creating your content have you given any thought to how you are going to get traffic?

Yup, blogs need traffic too. After all, if you want your blog to be of any use, you need to have an audience. And to create a regular audience, you first need traffic. After all, any writing without a reader is a very sad and lonely thing. By the way, traffic is just internet marketing speak for the number of visitors your site receives.

Traffic is important for a number of different reasons.

Returning traffic is important if you are hoping to build an ongoing relationship with readers. And you should. An ongoing relationship is important to creating an environment that encourages your readers to buy from you.

Returning traffic also helps you to build the number of readers. Unfortunately, it takes time to build up to a valuable level of traffic. Being able to convince your readers to return will make the growth much easier.

New traffic is important because of the high loss rates with the internet. The sad reality is that unless your reader bookmarks your site or opts into your mailing list, it is very unlikely they will be able to find your site again. You'll lose them. Even if they do bookmark your site, chances are they won't bother to return. Even when they pay for the service, chances are they won't return very often.

Traffic levels are also important if you sell advertising on your site. Some methods pay for the number of impressions. Unless your site (and the ad) is seen, you won't earn anything. Even if the payment method is on click, your traffic is key to your success. Every ad has a click through rate. This is the percentage of clicks for every hundred impressions an ad gets. While it does change from week to week, this percentage does tend to vary within limits over a period of time. So if you are being paid by the click, you need to have a high level of traffic to get sufficient clicks.

If you are receiving payment based on commission, the situation is even worse. Not only do you get clicks proportional to the traffic, but you'll make sales in proportion to the number of clicks you receive. Let's say, you have a click through rate of 10%. In order to make 100 sales in a month, you'll need 1000 clicks. But to make 1000 clicks you'll need 10,000 visitors in a month.

Of course, not all traffic is equal. In fact, too much of the wrong type of traffic can sink your site. Most sites have some level of limitation on the amount of traffic they can have before you begin being charged extra. If you are receiving too much untargeted traffic, your advertising and other sales will not be enough to justify the extra costs. On the other hand, targeted traffic -- that is visitors who are ready to buy a product like yours -- will increase your advertising and other sales.

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