Initially he wanted to blog like one of those pro-bloggers who has quite a high traffic rank. I checked through that blogger using Alexa ranking and yes, this guy has very good website traffic with an Alexa ranking of around 69,000! Very high indeed. Much better than my travel site which has a ranking of 600,000.
Then on further scrutiny I found that his bounce rate was rather high. According to Alexa his bounce rate was measured as 70%. Since this guy was just blogging only, I cross check with my blogging website, which also gave me the same result, approx 70%. Alexa must be using a different criteria for measuring bounce, because in my Google Analytics, my blog website has a 89% bounce rate, so my guess is that this pro-blogger is experiencing the same.
So what does bounce rate means? A bounce is when a web visitor happens to find your website on search, curious about your site and drop in for a quick look to see whether it has the information that they need. If you are just blogging about everyday inane things, very likely it would not interest the visitor much. A quick glance (give about 3 to 5 seconds) and if they don’t find what they need it is sayonara, goodbye, adious!
Whereas on my travel website with proper structure and well written content for visitors who are looking for specific travel information hanged around longer, reading what I have to say, and either they click an ad or leave a comment or inquiry. Now that would be your most wanted response, right? If you are running a web business you definitely want your visitors to inquire more about what you have to offer. And for your info, the bounce rate for my travel site is about 45%. That’s a big difference when you compare it with a blog.
So if you just blog aimlessly you are unlikely to get the desired result even though you may get very high website traffic. That’s why when I first started out with SBI, they have a very good action guide that takes you through the steps of creating a REAL website. i.e. don’t blog, though you can create a blog to compliment your website, but your website should be a website that is geared towards giving the information that people wants and eventually get the desired response.
Here’s an interesting sidebar from Ken Evoy of Sitesell:
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Many SBI! owners who are not affiliates recommend SBI! to their friends, family, local businesses, etc. For no commission? Why? Because they love SBI!, and because this monetization model does not fit their main one (ex., selling real estate). If you are an SBIer AND a 5P affiliate...
Do the same, except collect a commission, too! :-)
-----SIDEBAR-----
Haha, and I do recommend SBI to my friends who wants to start an online business. Those that didn’t heed my advise tended to wonder aimlessly in their online seeking of business.
So now that one of my friends has signed up SBI, he is now going through the action guide and digesting the finer points of setting up a web business. So will see how’s his progress in the coming months.
So what about you?
Blog or build? Webhosting or SBI?
Don’t be like my friends who didn’t heed my advise earlier and wasting so much time (and money). Take up SBI and do it right first time. (Against the advice of Billy Lim’s Dare to Fail school of thought).
