"What is the main thing that you're trying to get readers to do when
they visit your blog?"
Last week during a conversation with an ad network executive I was
asked this question as it pertains to my photography site. It was a
good question to be asked because it made me stop and think a little
about the priorities that I had for the site.
The first thing that I was tempted to answer with was 'clicking ads'
or 'buying affiliate products' - perhaps it was because I was talking
with an ad network representative that my mind automatically went to
that conclusion…. however the more I thought about it the more I
realized that my focus has changed over the last year or two away from
having earnings as the primary focus for that site.
I realized that these days I spend a lot more time focusing my
energies upon creating engaged and loyal readers.
The main calls to action on the blog and forum areas these days at DPS
are to get people to 'subscribe' or 'join' rather than to 'buy' or
'click' ads.
I know this hasn't always been the case - on previous blogs I was much
more interested on making the blogs profitable, but these days while I
want the site to earn an income I guess I've realized that it will
only increase in profitability if I work on other aspects of the site.
So my priorities are these days more about 'creating engaged and loyal
readers' - how am I doing that?
There are many ways that I've tried to do this of late with DPS but
the main 3 things have been:
1. Content
I've always attempted to make DPS as useful as possible but since
redesigning the site earlier in the year and expanding it in terms of
topics covered (we added a post production tips area and a cameras and
equipment area to our previous photography tips and tutorials section)
I've attempted to increase both the quality and quantity of content.
Quantity - Instead of one post per day we now have two per day. This
has definitely boosted traffic but more importantly it seems to have
increased reader engagement a little. It's hard to track it but I've
had quite a few readers email me over the last few months commenting
that they were a little dubious about the increase in posts when it
first happened but that they have come to appreciate us widening our
topics to cover the new areas of the site.
Quality - I've always wanted to keep quality high but in the last few
months I've made particular effort to create content that is more
interactive. On a weekly basis I now try to include either a poll, a
reader discussion question or some kind of 'challenge' for people to
go away and do. More often than not there's two of these types of
posts in the week. I've found that since doing more of these types of
posts that reader engagement has increased, comment levels has been on
the rise (in all types of posts, not just the 'reader engagement'
ones).
2. Building a network on Twitter
I've put quite a bit more time into both promoting the site's Twitter
account and using it more effectively. I'm not completely satisfied
with how I'm doing it yet but am seeing some real benefits of doing so
in two ways.
1. Firstly follower numbers have risen quite a bit of late:
The early rise back in May was when I did a post on the blog promoting
the fact that we were on Twitter. I've also added a Twitter icon to
the 'subscribe' area of the site (top right hand corner), have
promoted it in weekly newsletters and have mentioned it in numerous
articles on the site over the last few months.
2. The second aspect of Twitter has been the amount of traffic that it
has been driving to the site's two main areas, the blog and forum.
The Blog - When I started renewing my efforts with Twitter I spent
most of the time promoting new articles on the blog. Here's a chart of
traffic coming from Twitter.com to DPS since the beginning of the year
(click to enlarge):
You can see that even back before I started promoting the account more
heavily back in May it was driving some traffic to the site. This was
because we were tweeting new posts on the blog to those few followers
that we had and because occasionally others were sharing links.
However lately (particularly in the last couple of months) I've
started Tweeting not just the automated posts alerting followers to
new posts but also the occasional 'Earlier on DPS Tweet' later in the
day to catch other time zones but also links to popular archived
posts. This has helped bring about a marked increase in blog traffic.
The Forum - I'm not sure why, but until a few weeks ago I had rarely
shared a link on Twitter to any page in the DPS forum. Why I'd not
done this I have no idea but it struck me a couple of weeks ago just
how short sighted I'd been. So I began to Tweet links to 'hot threads'
and cool photos and latest assignments in the forum area. Here's what
happened:
Do I wish I'd been doing this earlier? You bet I do!
All in all a renewed effort and focus upon Twitter has helped to drive
traffic to the blog but also it is giving us an extra point of contact
with readers - many of whom had not ever used one of our other
subscription methods.
Note: keep in mind that the traffic above is just that traffic coming
in from Twitter.com and does not include traffic being driven from
Twitter clients like TweetDeck.
3. Building Newsletter Subscribers
This continues to be the ultimate goal for me on the blog. I push
people to subscribe to the newsletter wherever I can because I know
it's so powerful at increasing reader engagement, driving significant
traffic and as a result increasing earnings.
The guys who operate the servers behind b5media hate the days I send
newsletters - it sends as much, if not more, traffic as a front page
on Digg. My ad network partners always ask me why revenue increases so
much on Thursdays - the earnings are so good.
Another chart - firstly daily direct traffic (ie it doesn't include
referring site traffic or search engine traffic) on the blog over the
last month. You can see the days the newsletters go out pretty clearly
- direct traffic doubles (at least) those days. Page views go up by
even more because visitors from the newsletter typically view multiple
pages.
The forum has similar peaks on newsletter days.
The next chart shows the shape of AdSense earnings on the blog (with
the actual numbers removed) over the last month. Again you can see a
similar pattern.
If I were to chart affiliate earnings the pattern is even more
pronounced as I find my newsletter subscribers respond well to
affiliate promotions.
I really can't stress enough the power of this email newsletter that
I've been running and promoting heavily - it's certainly been a
cornerstone in everything that I do on that blog of late.
Summing it Up
Three years ago if you'd asked me what strategies I'd been
implementing on my blogs it probably would have been more about
optimizing advertising and affiliate promotions. While I still do work
on these things I guess I've realized that making money from a blog
tends to look after itself a little more when you have an engaged and
growing readership.
Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.
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