Lets Light This Place Up

[ArtWilliams]

What always seems to escape me is how delayed are the traffic impacts when I make a strategic change to my blog? My traffic and conversion has been shit since spring. I've made some changes and traffic is up a bit (with conversions still poor). So is the traffic increase due to my changes? If so, which ones and why didn't conversions change at all? Man, I don't get this traffic thing.

[walrus]

Originally Posted by artwilliams

What always seems to escape me is how delayed are the traffic impacts when I make a strategic change to my blog? My traffic and conversion has been shit since spring. I've made some changes and traffic is up a bit (with conversions still poor). So is the traffic increase due to my changes? If so, which ones and why didn't conversions change at all? Man, I don't get this traffic thing.

Over the three years I've been blogging I've found peaks and valleys that seem to have no logical explanation.

If I'm in a valley and I make changes, I usually give it three months to evaluate my results and then watch for a few more to see if the trend continues.

[webpimp]

Originally Posted by walrus

Over the three years I've been blogging I've found peaks and valleys that seem to have no logical explanation.

If I'm in a valley and I make changes, I usually give it three months to evaluate my results and then watch for a few more to see if the trend continues.

I'm up to about 50 blogs now, 90% handwritten with probably around 20% overlapping content. Some have become SE sensations while others get no love. I can't really figure out why some rank so well and some are poop.

Now, I just follow the traffic trends rather than trying to control them. If I'm getting a big traffic increase in a certain blog, I'll put in more time and update it more often. If I see traffic take a big dive, I no longer try to "revive" it. For me, this has just wasted my time. I'll still leave the blog online and update it maybe once a week or every two weeks. But I'm putting the bulk of my time into the ones that are getting traffic now. And you know sure enough, some of those neglected blogs will fall back into favor and start racking up the SE hits again. Can't explain it, like I said I just ride it instead of trying to control it.

The way I see it, if 10% of the blogs I make become money then I'll have more winners if I keep building. But like many of us have said in this thread - it's a lot of work. Having one mega blog sounds so nice, but I'm too wimpy to try a general adult blog yet.

[walrus]

Originally Posted by webpimp

I don't trade with splogs, but I have built a few. They can come in handy for filtering your traffic into related niches and subniches. Say you have an asian blog that you put a lot of time into and gets decent traffic, you could create a bunch of splogs like asian babes, asian anal, asian bjs, asian teens, etc. The splogs aren't really meant to pull SE traffic (although they sometimes do), you're just providing every possible type of content the visitor is likely to enjoy.

I hear a lot of talk about this but I just don't get it. I can create a general asian blog and I can create categories like Asian Babes, Asian Anal, Asian BJ's, Asian Teens, etc. With a little sidebar coding I can promote the categories as seperate blogs, with seperate feeds, seperate links. Hell if you want you can have seperate themes (I don't recommend it only because it becomes a whole lot of extra work). So out of one general asain blog, I can generate 10 or so micro niche blogs. All with quality posts.

Now some, like me, will say that a blog built for traffic will not sell as well as one built for sales and one built for sales doesn't get as much traffic. The truth of the matter is that there are a number of effective ways to sell. Instead of building a splog, build a freesite, or just an effective sales page and link to that from your blog posts.

So if you have 10 categories, you only need to build 10 effective sales pages, SEO the hell out of them and I'd bet you'd be much better off than with the splogs.

Originally Posted by webpimp

I'm too wimpy to try a general adult blog yet.

Same concept as above, just a lot more work. General blog, Categories for niche's, sub-categories for micro-niches.

[RedCherry]

Ok I have a bitch. I'm working on a blog with a black background, and pulled in some feeds, and the sponsor had formatted the text to be black. Now why would a sponsor format a text to a particular color? Don't they realize we don't all do blogs with white backgrounds? My rant for the day as I work on this humongous project that is eating my brain.

[ronnie]

Originally Posted by RedCherry

Ok I have a bitch. I'm working on a blog with a black background, and pulled in some feeds, and the sponsor had formatted the text to be black. Now why would a sponsor format a text to a particular color? Don't they realize we don't all do blogs with white backgrounds? My rant for the day as I work on this humongous project that is eating my brain.

Sponsors that don't know how to format feeds correctly, or no clue what they are doing, never bothered to find out, or just jumping on the bang wagon so they aren't left behind. Sure every one here can name more than a couple...

[papagmp]

Originally Posted by RedCherry

Ok I have a bitch. I'm working on a blog with a black background, and pulled in some feeds, and the sponsor had formatted the text to be black. Now why would a sponsor format a text to a particular color? Don't they realize we don't all do blogs with white backgrounds? My rant for the day as I work on this humongous project that is eating my brain.

Yup - I dropped that sponsor (or one just as stupid)

After I sent 3 or 4 emails.

[RedCherry]

Originally Posted by papagmp

Yup - I dropped that sponsor (or one just as stupid)

After I sent 3 or 4 emails.

They actually had an ICQ contact for their RSS feeds, so I sent her a note, wonder if she will respond?

[walrus]

Originally Posted by RedCherry

Ok I have a bitch. I'm working on a blog with a black background, and pulled in some feeds, and the sponsor had formatted the text to be black. Now why would a sponsor format a text to a particular color? Don't they realize we don't all do blogs with white backgrounds? My rant for the day as I work on this humongous project that is eating my brain.

I've had this type of rant running through my head for about 6 months now. Only reason I haven't let it lose is I doubt any sponsors would really listen and I simply be preaching to the choir.

[ronnie]

Originally Posted by artwilliams

What always seems to escape me is how delayed are the traffic impacts when I make a strategic change to my blog? My traffic and conversion has been shit since spring. I've made some changes and traffic is up a bit (with conversions still poor). So is the traffic increase due to my changes? If so, which ones and why didn't conversions change at all? Man, I don't get this traffic thing.

I remember you posted some time back about how your blog was doing good, it was a great post. So the question is, have you still been doing the same as you were back then? Has your blog changed alot?

Not giving you a hard time, just thinking maybe it's something you've changed, stopped doing or are doing differently?

[ArtWilliams]

Quite simple I think. I took my eye off the blog and I started working on other adult projects. My entries began to get sploggy and people disappeared. I agree with what UW said. Blogs are a lot of work. I intend on refocusing on the site and I hope to see the site visits climb. We'll see.

Originally Posted by ronnie

I remember you posted some time back about how your blog was doing good, it was a great post. So the question is, have you still been doing the same as you were back then? Has your blog changed alot?

Not giving you a hard time, just thinking maybe it's something you've changed, stopped doing or are doing differently?

[Useless]

Originally Posted by artwilliams

I took my eye off the blog and I started working on other adult projects. My entries began to get sploggy and people disappeared.

You probably suffer from the same type of blogging personality that I have. I get an idea, I get excited, I blow my creative load on it for a short period, and then find it difficult to get those same juices flowing when it's time to maintain it properly. I work in spurts in sputters.

[ArtWilliams]

I am a bit like that. I want to do what catches my eye and not necessarily what makes money. Thank God my wife is better at doing the latter or we'd be fucked!

I also thought, if I can make $x with a blog then I can make $x times 5 with another blog, a link list, a directory and some mobile porn. What I found was that you can only work on so many things well. Turns out important things get neglected. What makes me feel stupid is I consciously decided to "put all my eggs in one basket" and then went and did the opposite. Now I need to see if I can fix it.

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

You probably suffer from the same type of blogging personality that I have. I get an idea, I get excited, I blow my creative load on it for a short period, and then find it difficult to get those same juices flowing when it's time to maintain it properly. I work in spurts in sputters.

[walrus]

Originally Posted by Useless Warrior

Yeah, I've never quite understood why free hosted blogs are considered legitimate while other free hosted properties are heavily frowned upon.

While I can't say for sure I would assume that it has a lot to do with how the blogging craze took off in the first place. To have your own blog on your own domain required you be a real nerdie / techie type. It was all cgi/perl, flat files and quite a challenge to get one up and running. You know pre-wordpress days.

Your choice was become a nerd or go with a free host. Once the free hosts started kicking porn off, it opened up a whole new area for someone like twan to take advantage of and he did.

I guess my point is porn blogging roots are in free hosts.

Originally Posted by artwilliams

Quite simple I think. I took my eye off the blog and I started working on other adult projects. My entries began to get sploggy and people disappeared. I agree with what UW said. Blogs are a lot of work. I intend on refocusing on the site and I hope to see the site visits climb. We'll see.

Very easy to do and I know I've been guilty of the same thing more than once and yes blogging is a lot of work.