Going the distance: building blog traffic through perseverance
July 21, 2005 | By Duncan | Filed Under Guides and Tutorials
Duncan Riley> You know, I don’t think I’ve ever met a person yet who doesn’t like people visiting their blogs, but I’ve know plenty of people who want more people to visit their blogs. Building up a number of blogs over the past few months has reminded me of a lesson that’s is sometimes forgotten in the pursuit of traffic and (for some) wealth on the blogosphere. Perseverance.
Very few people find fame and fortune through launching a blog overnight, but over time most people can build a reasonable audience, or even more, based on perseverance at blogging, literally going the distance.
In my case I’ve got two recent blogs launched under the Weblog Empire banner: The Gadget Blog and Donklephant, and both are entirely different in their traffic profiles to date. Both blogs show spikes upon launching where people have gone to check out what’s on offer, and some have stuck around. The Gadget Blog has shown steady growth, and although it isn’t doing record breaking numbers, its continually grown an audience over time, based on depth and quality of content, and as more traffic has come in from search engines, others sites that have discovered the site for the first time and links and relationships have been built. Donklephant’s traffic looks more like a rollercoaster ride with massive peaks followed by drops again caused by links from sites like Instapundit and yesterday being named as a Yahoo! Site of the Day. The base figure keeps getting higher at the bottom of each drop, so in some ways there is that growth there as well, but as compared to The Gadget Blog, Donklephant’s growth profile has been based on lots of high profile exposure.
So what does this all mean to you. It means your growth can come in two ways: you can continue to blog and as long as what you write is interesting and has a market, you’ll continue to build traffic over time. Alternatively you can have a some really good days, but you still need to persevere and go the distance to keep that traffic interested over time.
There are a few tips that will help you build your traffic over time:
1. Post regularly
I can’t emphasize enough that you wont build traffic unless you post regularly. Blogging should never be a chore but try setting a time each day you can spend reading and blogging as required. By all means take days off, but develop a pattern
2. Post quality
You need to provide readers with a reason to return, and quality does it all the time. Quality is of course subjective, so some research in your market or amongst your peers might give you an idea of what works, or what isn’t being catered for.
3. Don’t give in
There are going to be times where you get the blog blues, where you’d ask yourself why you even bothered, we all get them at some stage, your success will be measured on your ability to get past this and get on with the task at hand. Remember, the longer you post and the more you post, results in more traffic from search engines, which means more visitors to your blog.
Go the distance, persevere and you too can cement your traffic and place in the blogosphere.
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Great series of posts today, Duncan. I find I’m drawn to comment on all of them. Illustrates the points you’re making :-)
Very good advice. I’ve found this all to be true as I’ve managed my blog.
Wow - thanks so much for this post - it really has encouraged me to continue with smallbiztechnology.com
Ramon
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Duncan Riley has some good advice for those o [...]
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Thanks for the “boost of energy”. I’ve been blogging for quite some time now and so far I’ve been measuring my “success” with my AdSense revenue. It’s pretty silly considering the reason I “persevere”. You didn’t encourage me to do that, but you did encourage me to have better passion for what I’m doing, for having fun with it even when I’m hardly making a cent out of it. Thank you! :D
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Good point, persaverance is the name of the game in getting blog traffic.
[...] don’t usually last when they don’t get what they want. The Blog Herald has an excellent article by Duncan Riley about blogg [...]
Thanks for the encouragement. Perseverance is definately the key.
[...] in the pursuit of traffic and (for some) wealth on the blogosphere. Perseverance.” Read the rest.
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heck sumtime both them on my site at same tim!
ABSOLUTELY RINGS A BELL with me. Who does not want blog traffic.
I even want comments - Care to read my blog?
[...] ime get discouraged and want to walk away from blogging, there is some excellent advice at The Blog Herald. And despite the author̵ [...]
Simple advice, but worthwhile. I know my web traffic at http://www.alexawebermorales.com/blogger.html has quadrupled since I began my blog last February. I agree that consistency and quality are key. I’m tempted to start a new one that would be more controversial. Hmmm. The wheels are turning… Alexa
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