Traffic Stats the A List Will Never Tell You

I'm sure many of you are longing for the day when you have an RSS following in the thousands and an Alexa Ranking in the Top 10,000. Fess up...

You are impressed by stuff like that - High PR, Massive Twitter Following, all the little signs of "wow this site must be successful" and "I bet they are making money". (Success and making money do not necessarily go hand in hand.)

To that end I just thought some of you would like to know some real numbers.

Allyn Hane had mentioned in his comments on Blogger Illustrated that he was kinda shocked that Chris Brogan got so few comments on his posts in spite of 45K RSS readers. The same applies to Darren Rowse 165K or Brian Clark at CopyBlogger 105K and so on with the A list.

The thing most people don't realize is that most of those RSS numbers are grossly inflated with the numbers added by Aweber Sign Ups. Download a free report or buy one of their books and you end up in the RSS number. The numbers are in no way reflective of how many people actually sign up for just reading the post feeds.

Hence don't assume you are going to get a flood of traffic by Guest posting or racing to get a fanboy comment first in queue on one of these sites. The fact is only a very small percentage of readers ever bother to read the daily feed update, even less click over to the site in question and most readers just delete the notification in the email alert. This is reflected in just how few comments these large blogs get in relation to their "perceived" reach and influence.

Between the 3 sites they have 300K readers... and yet they manage only a 1000 members for the Problogger.com forum. A couple thousand (or so I've seen mentioned) for the Third Tribe Marketing thing/forum. Not really a whole lot of clout when you think about it. Those they do influence tend to be the same small group of fans that fawn over them on their sites while the rest of their readers have largely ignored their call to open their wallets.

I used to wonder just how much traffic do you need to breathe the rarefied air among Alexa's Top 10k sites.

Well I have broken into it from time to time - most recently the other day, and the first time I did months ago I remember thinking how far off I had been regarding just how much traffic was necessary.

Click to enlarge images.

In fact the real numbers will probably surprise a lot of you.

Here is another shot of my site compared to the "Big Guys" taken today and you'll notice that I topped Brogan's site for a day or two.

Wanna' know how much traffic he has?

Keep in mind that I'm talking averages and not absolutes. How well Alexa tracks and quantifies search traffic (they are getting better btw.) as compared to toolbar/social traffic could skew things. ie. maybe you rank better with much less traffic if it is heavily toolbar/social or maybe the same applies to search and not so much to the toolbar. Never the less, for our purposes I just thought some of you might be interested in some raw numbers...

But not until I hear your guesses...

Leave a comment and tell me how much traffic you think a site needs to sit 7k on Alexa.

I'll tell you the answer after the comments

Cheers,

Griz

Update: The answer has been posted in the comments. Only a hundred or so to sift through finding it... (stupid blogger comment system or I'd tell you what #) :-)

Write Something I can Send Traffic To

I like to send traffic elsewhere. Love it in fact. I have no idea how many requests for link exchanges I get every week - more than I can keep track of. The thing is link exchanges are crap - or should I say the sites asking for a link are mostly crap. Too bad. If you want a link then write something worthy of getting noticed.

A few examples;

Carla wrote a hub a little while back that I have meant to acknowledge but haven't got around too until now. (Sorry Carla - please forgive) Aside from showcasing Carla's extreme talent as a writer this post is the B all and End all for anyone wanting to know how to use hubpages to its full advantage. Beginners - that means you! It's called How to Make Money Writing on Hubpages Everyone trying to make a living online should read this - downright excellent.


In the same vein, if you are going to target a niche (meaning keywords) then learn the art of writing long posts full of great content (for the readers) while laser targeting your keywords (for the search engines). The following post by Dave aka Mr. Dirty Boots is as good as I have seen anyone pull it off. Take a full pot of coffee with you - Dave's fingers were on fire for this Make Money Online post. Read it - he pretty much sums up 3 years of my posts in a single article - brilliant.

Speaking of Niche's - Fiar describes How to Make Money Writing Political Humor and does a great job of showing you how to integrate various themes (Keywords) into a post that you might think is irrelevant but isn't. This is how you can take a single themed site and turn it into a multi niche site without losing your main focus. (If you are using Adsense this is key to maximizing your profits.)

KS also wades into the niche marketing arena with the following post The Science of Niche Internet Marketing

If you are a beginner just starting out online those posts should be required reading - take my advice and study what they say. Btw - they didn't ask for links but they deserve them.

On a lighter note Terry wrote a post mocking the make money online niche which just happens to show you folks how to get yourself a number 1 ranking keyword in short order. Now his keyword may not get much traffic from the MMO crowd but it might lead to some decent traffic from the Spanish food connoisseurs. Lol Make Paella Online

And Carl wades in on the ever popular "The Secret" with "The Super Rich use The Secret to Dupe The Masses"

And finally Lissie is on another mission to save beginners from wasting money on yet another A-List "noobs can be sold anything" program. This time she has set her sights on CopyBlogger's regurgitated Teaching Sells membership program. I could tell you why Brian Clark is just as much a waste of time as his buddy Yaro Starak but Lissie really enjoys putting the boots to the A-List so I'll let her have her fun. (Check out the comments - Clark shows up but doesn't have the class Darren Rowse showed on Al's Interview with Darren Rowse.)

Related Post; Dirk adds his thoughts regarding Teaching Sells on his make money online blog.

Or check out Agrande's post covering the "Teaching Sells" topic. "Will Teaching Sells give you an Online Business?"

Btw - I have been spying on the forum over at the Keyword Academy. For the handful of you that haven't joined yet I suggest you make your way over there. The forum is a busy place and no - no one is selling anything. Just a bunch of people helping each other out and making good progress as budding Internet Marketers. Spend a buck and find out yourself - it's the best place a beginner could start online.

And yes I have a tee off shortly...

Cheers

Griz

Update: Some people just have the kind of personality that shines - even online and one such sparkplug has taken up the challenge and produced a post about "How to Make Money Planning a Wedding". Alexis is a lovely young lady living in the Swedish outback and I urged her to take action in the comments below - and she did. In record time! Ya' gotta admire her "get up and go-ness" so please take a moment and read her post.

Another Update: Remember Agloco? Well another version of the same old same old has reared it's ugly head called SQIP and before you get lured in check out Simonne's post. (Thanks Simonne!)