Looking at Links Again

One thing blogging has done for me is force me to put into words vague ideas that have been floating around in my head for a while. I may not have the clout to say some things or suggest theories, but do you think that is going to stop me? I beg to differ. I think that theories and ideas just give me something new to test. And after hanging out here on the internet for long enough to know that experts at web traffic disagree more than doctors in scientific studies, I figure coming up with my own theories and reasons for doing what I do are just as good as any.

And today I would like to add some more to my last post. It felt complete when I wrote it, but not so much any more. Another thing I have noticed among some bloggers is that they get trapped in a closed loop of blogs where all of their traffic comes from and they wonder why they fail to make any money from their blog.

First, a disclaimer. This blog is yet to be monetized to the extent I want it to be, so hey, I don't know what I am talking about. But I do know to get traffic and make money from traditional sites.

Has your daughter ever sold Otis Spunkmeyer cookies for school. Yay, can't wait for the next time, right. Every kid in your neighborhood is selling the same cookies to the same houses. There is a limit to the amount of cookies your daughter can sell in her own neighborhood.

I see taking a little of the time you spend in the blogosphere to build links that help you rank higher in the search engines as getting out of your own neighborhood. Your neighborhood may be great. You know everyone there. They're all friendly. But after she knocks on every door, there is no one left for your daughter to sell to.

I know a guy who owns an ecommerce site that does half a million dollars in sales a year. The other day he asked me what a blog was. He has owned his site for three years. If I had a blog on running an ecommerce site, how would I ever reach him if not through the search engines. And, if fact, I do get hits from search engines here from people looking for information on Oscommerce, Filemaker, Drupal, Sharesale, Zen to Done, Google sitemap issues, installing php on Vista. Just about every one of my site lists ranks high in the search engines also.

This is not meant to be bragging. This is meant to show how you can bring traffic into your blog that is not related to the blogosphere into it. By using the What Would Seth Godin Do and the Landing Sites plugins, I can try to keep these new people on my site longer and coming back later.

A Tale of Two Sites

The first site is whose traffic mainly comes from what I called dynamic links in my last post. That is, links that do not increase your rank in the search engines. These have to be physically clicked to bring traffic to your site. These links come from commenting on other blogs, being active in social networks, etc. In other words, I am talking about this site. Up until I released my theme, I had done hardly any linking campaigns for this site. And the search engine of the pie has actually been increasing over the last couple of weeks. But I have picked a lot of link love for the site lists I put together.

The second is a site whose traffic I built through links. There is a blog there, but I have yet to promote it much. Notice the difference in the type of traffic. Almost a flip flop on the type of traffic. Which one do you think it takes more work to maintain?

This one.