What can blogging do for me?

[RawAlex]

Free sites and galleries tend to be "quick result" things. Provided you follow the rules and build reasonable sites, you can get traffic to these sites quickly and easily enough from link sites and TGPs.

Blogs are much slower, tend to have much lower traffic levels, but providing you are making a fairly focused blog with some good content and links, you can make some decent moves with them.

I am currently tending a couple of smaller blogs, but I have already seen sales off of both of them which I am enjoying. Provided you keep your blog up to date and happening (not an easy job) you can start to attract bookmarkers, external (unprompted) links, and blog trades that can drive your very niched traffic right up there.

I will say this: Unless you are truly dedicated and are able to track down sites / galleries / links / things and are able to write decently, blogs may be a losing battle for you. You can find tens of thousands of derelict blogs with less than 10 posts on them, gathering dust and doing nothing.

I will also say that unless you are willing to put a little effort into making your blog look at least passibly unique and interesting, people will blow over it and the magic won't happen either. Default themes and flat text just doesn't do it, from what I have seen.

Alex

[Carl]

Originally Posted by RawAlex

I will also say that unless you are willing to put a little effort into making your blog look at least passibly unique and interesting, people will blow over it and the magic won't happen either. Default themes and flat text just doesn't do it, from what I have seen.

Alex

Design is where I am the most limited. I am trying to figure it out as I go though… I also need to work on my ablility to write some good text.

Thanks for the link Ana... I have been reading problogger for a while now that is part of my sudden interest in blogging.

I would also like to thank every one else for the info, I got pretty much what I wanted…

I need to update the blog regularly to keep the bots, and users coming back.

I know I need to keep the traffic leaks down and so on, but is it not acceptable to lose some click traffic in the name of keeping fresh content, and articles posted for people to read?

[walrus]

Originally Posted by Carl

I know I need to keep the traffic leaks down and so on, but is it not acceptable to lose some click traffic in the name of keeping fresh content, and articles posted for people to read?

Perhaps I've got it all wrong here but I never look at my link partners as traffic leaks. I prefer to think that for whatever reason, the surfer was at my site and read what he wanted and bookmarked so he can return at a later date, in which he is leaving to go to one of my link partners which makes my trade even more valuable to my partner.

Or, I failed to interest him and he's clicking away to find what he really is looking for again making my trade even more valuable to my partner.

Either way, its a win - win situation and it makes it easier for me the next time I approach my link partners looking for other link trades.