Comments on: Is All Traffic Good Traffic?

By: Laura

Laura — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 16:43:24 +0000

I agree Deb that negativity ultimately is not a good thing. Yes, you received increased traffic, but at what expense. I personally feel the more negative people are the more negative their life will be/become.

You handle yourself with the utmost professionalism and I have never seen you speak out on something that wasn’t warranted or true. I follow you (no not stalking…lol) in another forum and have never seen anything written by you to be rude or negative.

This is just another one of those times you can chalk it up to a learning experience. Have a great day!

I must have missed something though…lol…cause I never saw anything either.

By: Deb

Deb — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 13:00:46 +0000

Stumble Upon has been very good to me and I’ve had a couple of blog posts (for other blogs) make it to Digg’s front page. I think I prefer the staying power of Stumble Upon over the one or two day surge created by Dogg.

By: Amy Derby

Amy Derby — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 02:27:44 +0000

I agree that not all traffic would be good. It seems to me that people who are surfing the web for information (or products/services in some cases) would be the ones to click on ads, not people who are following you over from some social network site to read a specific article, and certainly not a bunch of people whose only goals are to be childish and nasty.

By: Rachel Goldstein

Rachel Goldstein — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 00:26:17 +0000

Hi there. I find that social networking sites drive tons of traffic, but for some reason these users almost never click on any ads. I still love traffic though. Here is a great article with 50 Tips to by Top Diggers on Getting to the Front Page of Digg – http://www.socialnetworkingarticles.com/2007/11/30/how-to-submit-popular-digg-stories-that-get-to-the-front-page-tips-by-top-digg-users/
… I thought your users would find it useful.

Thank you again for the great article.
Rachel

By: Lisa

Lisa — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:24:10 +0000

I’ve had exactly the opposite experience, Deb. Like Mark, I found StumbleUpon (and Digg and Twitter and others) a complete and utter waste of time. On the other hand, most of my “negative” traffic has come from forums/blogs/sites where the original poster/writer/commenter came off sounding so hysterical that I’m sure most people came to MY site just to see if I was really the fruit-loop the poster described. In my case “negative” traffic has been a very, very profitable thing. I don’t court it, I certainly don’t feed it but I’ve learned to live with it.

By: Erik Hare

Erik Hare — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 22:15:13 +0000

I believe that the downside to all of this is only starting to sink in. I’ve been a google advertiser in the past, and I was not at all happy with the results. Given that a recession, or something close to one, is coming, I don’t see anyone paying more than a penny an eyeball in the near future for anything.

There will be a big crimp in the revenue, and if the bashers and idiots take over a site I can imagine the readership will die off. Tight margins plus a real chance of major failure makes this biz something more like retail sales than I’d be comfortable with.

Still, the main reason any of us try this stuff (I had my first blog in 1999, before the word “blog” existed) is to have some kind of independent outlet for writing. While I’m not too sure about the security of the current state, we have to keep looking for something that works. It pains me to see how horribly under-valued good writing is, and the only way to change that is to have a viable outlet that we can control ourselves.

By: mark knowles

mark knowles — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:18:15 +0000

I have found stumble traffic to be a complete waste of time financially. I think google paid about 10 cents per thousand visitors to this post. And I have no idea my true clickthroughs after having the server crashed several times.
http://internationalpropertyinvestment.com/the-worlds-most-unusual-properties-for-saleI

I missed the controversy thing I’m afraid

By: Deb

Deb — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:57:36 +0000

@Crabbie, while true the celeb stuff does begat some vulgar and trashy comments. I’m trying to discourage this on my own celeb blogs and every now and then have to do a major clean out of the comments.

Again, I don’t mind disagreeing, but I’d like to keep it clean. For instance if you want to visit Celebrity Cowboy and talk about whether or not it’s more attractive to age gracefully over getting plastic surgery I’d welcome that discussion. If you’re just going to call Paris Hilton vulgar names, I’m probably going to delete you.

I think you can have a popular celeb blog and be a bit snarky without going over board. That’s what I’m trying to do anyway.

By: Lori

Lori — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:48:36 +0000

I’m glad I missed whatever unpleasantness was swirling, but I’m sorry you fell victim to it. This post shows what a pro you are – what a way to make lemonade from lemons!

By: Pamela

Pamela — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 19:17:04 +0000

I don’t think that creating negative traffic helps any blog or website. Positive traffic is what you look for with intelligent conversation to help people learn and find out important information such as this topic.

Sure there are blogs that thrive on negative and hatful comments and traffic, but that is their choice of a blog. The blogs in your post and at other forums are to be informational and drive people there to learn and have a pleasant chat.

I have to agree that negative traffic generation is hurtful to your loyal followers, who expect respect and tame converstion.

Just my two cents.