- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
I started my first adult blog in 2010, while AVS and free sites were still quite successful models. That first blog never became very successful, but over the period of one year it started to make some sales, and it’s still active, although I update it irregularly.
On the other hand, my next blog which I started in 2011 turned out to be a big success. The traffic has been on the rise steadily and it reached almost 3000 visitors a day now. Also, that blog usually makes sales every day. But I also remember that it made nice sales even while it was brand new – when the biggest traffic came from the other adult sites. Somehow, the surfers fell in love with it from the very beginning and I didn’t have to try hard to drive traffic to it. The process went somehow smoothly.
However, I am not completely sure what “ingredient” made that blog successful. I’ve been mentoring a friend of mine for his two blogs (which I explained in some of the previous posts) and boy oh boy… it’s so damn hard to get even one sale a month, even though he does pretty much the same things that I would do. He writes original descriptions, the design is not bad, I exchanged links with some other blogs for him…. but the sales are still not coming and the traffic is below 100 visitors per day. Google isn’t sending much traffic to them for now.
So, I’ve been thinking, has anything drastically changed regarding how one should market new blogs? How much time should one wait realistically before the traffic gets sufficient for steady sales for new blogs nowadays? One month? Three months? Six months? A year?
Apart from regular updates, exchanging links with other blogs, and submitting some of your posts to sites, what are the other ways to drive traffic to new blogs?
I would love to know myself why one blog makes more sales than another. At a guess I would say choice of content, using something unique or different makes a big difference. Maybe personal taste in what content you do pick has an impact. It can often feel like hit and miss with blog posts though. A bit like Free sites used to be, some would make sales again and again, while others would not make a single sale ever. B
Trust and personality might also help. A site with personality might be easier to trust or have a bigger chance at making a sale. After all a horrible looking, boring and bland site isn’t going to inspire anyone to part with money.
But in the end it all comes down to traffic, visitors is everything! You can have the greatest looking site with the best possible content, but you still won’t make a sale until you have enough traffic. A few hundred daily really isn’t enough. It’s far too small amount to see anything more than a random sale here and there.
Not only do you have to concentrate on getting lots of new first time visitors but once you have them you also have to make sure that they will come back, i.e. getting bookmarkers which of course requires that you have a good site with interesting content. The problem will always be finding them. You got to submit to directories, link lists, search engines etc.. everything possible to get them going to your blog. The irony is that the larger you become the easier it gets, that includes with Google. The stronger gets stronger.
One fairly new addition to your tools is Social bookmarking / sharing. Making it easy for people to share and link to your content.. that has become a very important factor – natural links.. the holy Grail of Google.
I think it may take 1 to 2 years to build a steady business out of anything. When you start up there are always wild swings in income, customers, visitors, etc. Keep going, keep updating and after a while you will have a steady stream of customers/visitors/sales. It may seem daunting when you seem to get no return at first for all the hard work. It may seem as if you you work only for yourself. But persist and believe in what you do and eventually it will start to make money.
Thanks fago and DOC.
I think you are right fago about everything you mentioned. The successful adult blogs are not exact science. It seems that there are many factors involved, including the elusive “personality” of the blog in question.
However, I have a feeling that it has become harder to obtain good search engine traffic when we compare the present situation with, let’s say, 2009. Perhaps this is due to Google Panda update which gives a great advantage to certain blogs at the expense of many others.
I took your idea about social bookmarking and found a plugin for the WP. The little icons that it puts below each post don’t look too obtrusive to me, but I am still unsure if this is the right thing to put under every single post because it just might distract the potential customers from parting with their money while they’re bookmarking blog posts. I already installed another social bookmarking plugin about a year ago and I had a feeling it lowered the sales until I removed it (the paranoid streak of my personality ). The same goes for the plugin that displays similar posts within my own blog.
However, I now think that lower sales were probably not due to the social bookmarking plugin last time. It could have been just a coincidence. What is your experience with social bookmarking in every blog post? Would you say that it has made a difference in terms of traffic from social sites?
