Comments on: JLP’s Grassroots Effort to Build Blog Traffic

By: Personal Finance Blogger

Personal Finance Blogger — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 21:52:57 +0000

Personally I don’t mind the links to outside articles. It saves me the time it would take to scrounge the net for interesting tidbits. If I don’t see anything that interests me, I just skip it for the day.

By: JLP

JLP — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 20:42:37 +0000

Anon,

I have always thought that I published a lot of original content. A lot of “how to” posts and things like that.

That said, I do link to a lot of outside articles and resources that I think are worth passing along.

Obviously if you don’t like what you read here I would not want you help spread the word.

By: Anon E. Mouse

Anon E. Mouse — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 20:23:54 +0000

My point was, look at the posts on your blog lately. From what I can tell, on the front page of the blog, there is not a single “original” article about finance. The only thing that comes close are the “Questions Of The Day”.

Most of the posts are just links to articles or other blogs. I don’t mean to pick on you — this is true of most of the “finance” blogs out there. Very few actually write anything original.

But, while I subscribe to some of these blogs because it takes only seconds per day to see if there’s content or not (thanks bloglines!), I’m certainly not going to suggest to friends and family that they spend their time reading the blog.

If you want me to do that, you need to come up with something a bit more original than yet another “Blog Of The Week”.

By: Kira

Kira — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 19:58:21 +0000

Well I like you anyhow. I will try and link you where I can, although you linking to me definitely was a bigger boost to traffic. =)

By: Henry Phish

Henry Phish — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 18:28:40 +0000

Word of mouth builds a solid group of readers; it just takes time. If you want more traffic I suggest a layout change that focuses more on the actual article content and less on the ads. Remove one of the side bars and pare it down to relevant items.

Your site often comes across as more about the side bars than the actual content.

By: JLP

JLP — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 18:19:48 +0000

I didn’t expect this kind of response.

NO, I don’t want to start a chainletter or anything like that. My POINT was more about the power of word-of-mouth than just trying to get hits.

By: Personal Finance Blogger

Personal Finance Blogger — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 18:15:20 +0000

If all you care about is making the hit counter spin, then just go onto EBay and buy some hits from one of the traffic exchanges. You should be able to purchase 1,000,000 visits for $50 or so.

Why you would want to do so I’m not going to venture to guess. The quality of the traffic will be even lower than the viral campaign you’re proposing. But if 1MM hits is your goal that will get you there.

By: Anon E. Mouse

Anon E. Mouse — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 18:11:39 +0000

Are you really asking your readers to be the initiator of a chain email?

Do you really want your website to be associated with a chain email?

Perhaps the better way to go about this would be to write great articles which your readers might then choose, of their own volition, to forward on to friends and family members (because the articles are well written, concise, and relevant). Those friends and family members might then choose to become regular readers.

Or maybe that’s just crazy talk.

By: Henry Phish

Henry Phish — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 18:07:24 +0000

Anon’s questions is legitimate. You have much more to gain than those who help you.

Will you donate all of the blogs profits to charity?

By: JLP

JLP — Mon, 19 Jun 2006 17:53:49 +0000

Anon,

Why not?