Blog Tipz

Many, if not most sites still sell advertising based on the number of page views they receive monthly (or daily). They use catchy tricks to increase traffic to their properties, like directing visitors to their sub-domains, through multiple pages (breaking up each page into 500 words, etc.), ultimately providing inflated stats to the advertisers, who often pay “per” visitor.

During the first few months of starting out a new blog, you will be focusing more on the stats than anything else. There isn’t anything wrong with this, but it won’t be the right approach in the long-term. For example, there are sties that can draw in millions of visitors each month (as well as decent advertising revenue), but they won’t be nearly as successful as the sites that take the long-term approach to drawing in high-quality advertisers who are looking to associate with your brand.

Your visitors (and the advertisers you are seeking) could honestly care less about the stats, but they want some return on their visit (or purchase). If you are dedicated to simply drawing in more “page views,” then you will have a hard time at properly building your brand.

Here are a few tips to avoid that problem:

1. Focus on Marketing – No matter how small or large you want to grow your site, focus on branding and marketing. The further your reach across the web, the more likely an honest advertiser will look beyond your pageviews and see the site that you have created.

2. Be Honest with Your Readers – This technique can really work in the long-term for both you, your readers, and your advertisers. You won’t be associated with false statistics or shady techniques of drawing in traffic if you remain honest and continually produce valuable content.

3. Have a Proven Approach – The key to success on the web is to find something that works, then continually repeat doing it. This is why spammers are so successful (and annoying). Even though they have low conversion rates, they are still successful in capturing a small segment of their “audience.” If a certain type of post is able to draw in new commenters and readers, then why shouldn’t you repeat it?

While some will argue with me over the value in presenting pageview stats with their advertisers, there really isn’t any better method (at this time) in providing a valuable metric to use to gauge how much to charge advertisers. A site that receives 100K pageviews/day may result in less returns than one that receives 10K pageviews/day but costs more.

Until we have a method in place for measuring the true cost of advertising, there will be many, many bloggers and advertisers addicted to pageviews, rather than the overall package that you can offer (which includes the brand/recognition, subscriber base, and “mainstream” importance).