Thank you for the great comment and compliment. It’s much appreciated.

Yes, “stickiness” of your repeat visitors is a goal worth working toward. A lot of visitors may only come to your site once, but it you build a great site, you will begin to amass a group of loyal readers.

I think business, whether it’s a storefront or a blog, survives based on principles that know no barriers, including continental barriers. As your business and blogs are based in the UK, and ours are in the US, through cyberspace we can all help each other…whether it’s words of encouragement, hints or tips, sharing a story, or through a referral (such as a link-BTW, thank you for the link on your blog), we develop a worldly “community”, that has no limits. I find that amazing.

Although we are completely off subject, (who cares?), watching the blogs and businesses of my “blogging buddies” grow and change, is a real pleasure for me. It oftentimes gets me sidetracked from posting, but again, I think that defines how blogging becomes more than making money, or being so intent on posting everyday, that we fail to see the big picture.

With regards to your new business blog, I am sure a few of your competitors are also visiting, and beginning to worry, due to your ingenious marketing techniques. Let them sweat!

I’m still waiting to hear that happy ending on your other blog, but by the “tone” of your writings, it appears things are looking up. That’s super!

I’m still not sure if I fully understand blogs. But I do have a theory that if your blog is also about your business then it possibly becomes a different entity – a community perhaps for primarily your clients, and possibly visitors.

I do appreciate your comments. And yes, we do have some publicity planned for it too! The orange hat and the reactions of the passers-by was interesting (at least to us and our clients!).

So stickiness of clients is a goal. Building a sense of community and freely giving advice and information can’t be a bad thing for that end.

And if we manage to build that community feel, passing visitors, Google Ad Clickers may wish to get involved.

For too long I have wrongly thought that the web was not a place to transact with a wider community than local.

But if it’s local or international, it doesn’t matter who comes to the party. I realise they may not buy, but they do bring a bottle so to speak, and really add to the experience. So everyone’s welcome!

I really appreciate your comments. And the web-stats are phenomenal. The clients are visiting, commenting, but coming back.

It’s only a few days into it, but I’m massively encouraged by the early results. The page views are huge from those who are coming.

While I realise this will decline because they are largely clients who are sniffing around the site, and they won’t keep on looking at pages they’ve seen before, I want to get them into the habit of interacting via the blog. I can learn from them probably far more than they can from me.

Likewise with your blog. I may not yet have bought something (I’m still improverished following this year’s shenanigans!), but already I sincerely value your opinion and trust that you will recommend, like Cath Lawson does, stuff that I wouldn’t hesitate to buy on your say-so.

So please keep up the excellent work. It is very much appreciated!

Thanks again

Ian

Thank you so much for the support and kind words. You’re both giving me a lot to live up to…but, I’m going to give it my best shot.

Yes, I do research, and have been researching long before I even started blogging. I don’t always trust what I read, so I want to find out what may (?) be the truth. And, that information is what I share with my loyal readers.

As for how many visitors you need to earn decent money from your
blog, unfortunately, the numbers are high….in the tens of thousands. Plus, it depends on the audience you are writing for. Computer savvy readers, and bloggers, rarely click on ads.

Ian, re: affiliate links. It’s great that you chose ones that you are familiar with. When choosing affiliate advertisers, it’s best to either have used their products, shopped their stores, ordered online, or have done enough research on them to know they are reputable. It’s easy to get caught up on who has the biggest “payout”, but if you’re not aware that their reputation isn’t all that good, your click through rate, will suffer.

Making money off of your blog is not a bad thing, but as Asako pointed out, we do have to remember, we blog, to share with others what we know.

Back to researching, I go….it’s obvious I have some loyal readers to tend to.

Again, I say, Thank you!

I agree, and in the end, we are writing because we want to share what we can share with people. If we start writing because we want to make money from AdSense, we will be distracted.