Recently, a page on one of my websites was bookmarked
or listed on Digg, a popular social bookmark site. It
gave me the perfect opportunity to study and analyze
the traffic coming from these social media sites. Read
to discover the advantages and disadvantages of social
bookmark traffic and how it can be applied to your
own online marketing or site.Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless?First, we must make the distinction that no traffic
is useless. Any visitor to your site is a good thing
and should be welcomed. However, all traffic is not
created equally, there are great differences in the
sources of your traffic. This article takes a close
analytical look at social bookmark traffic from an
internet marketing perspective.In case you haven’t noticed, right now social bookmark
and media sites are all the rage on the web. Social
bookmark traffic comes from such popular sites as
Slashdot, Digg, Stumbleupon… basically these sites
are driven by their users — that is, users or members
pick and bookmark the content they want to view and
discuss.These social bookmark sites are extremely popular;
they command the high traffic numbers most ordinary
sites can only dream about obtaining.But is this social bookmark traffic useful?Is it worth your time? Should you be actively promoting
to these social media sites? Is social bookmark traffic
of any use to the affiliate marketer? Should you
concentrate your online marketing efforts on these
types of sites? More importantly, what are the benefits
and disadvantages of getting a front page listing on
a sites like Digg or Stumbleupon?As a full-time online marketer I wanted to know the
answers to those questions. Moreover, I wanted to
discover how or if I could use these sites from
an online marketer’s advantage; i.e. how can they
help me create more online income.Recently, the Digg listing gave me a first-hand
opportunity to really study these sites.Of course, nothing happens without a reason… I did
actually court these social bookmark sites by placing
the free Addthis.com bookmark on all my pages. You can
do the same. This simple bookmark lets your visitors
bookmark your content for you in all these sites; it
only takes a few seconds to place the bookmark code
on your webpages.But be careful; getting your site featured on the
front page of these sites can drive 100,000′s of
visitors to your site immediately, so much traffic
that it may overtax your server and crash it.So be warned; if you’re actively promoting to these
social bookmark sites just make sure your servers or
web hosting is up to the demanding task of handling
all these sudden visitors.In my case, it didn’t crash my servers but unfortunately,
the page/link in question featured an old poorly
written article I did on the history of the Internet.
It was just some random facts and things about the web,
not really an article at all. Why it was even
featured on Digg is a puzzle and beyond me.But still I am not one to waste an opportunity, so I
put my Google Analytics into overdrive and starting
analyzing these visitors and social bookmark traffic.It pointed out some very interesting factors about this
social bookmark traffic.Most of this traffic will:
simply bounce back
very few visitors will spend much time on your site
very few visitors will even venture into your site
very few will sign up to your newsletter
very few will enter your marketing follow-ups/funnels
(The unknown variable here being the content on your
site, how good it is? How well does it perform?)Regardless, one common problem with traffic from these
sites, it’s very temporary traffic. The high volume
will only last a few days… until your item is moved
back from the front page.These visitors will not stay on your site long and
most are gone within seconds, never to be seen again.
A few may sign up to your newsletter or venture to
other areas of your site but not many.Social bookmark traffic is very fleeting, like
customers in the drive-through section in a fast
food restaurant, they grab the content and surf back
to the major linking site very quickly and surf
on to the next item.This traffic will behave very differently than
organic traffic from the search engines, or from
your newsletter traffic or from traffic in your
marketing funnels. Much different.It was unlike getting one of my articles featured
in Addme or SiteProNews, where I can easily get 200
or 300 new subscribers in a day. Plus, these visitors
are interested in my information and have been exposed
to my content (article) before coming to my site.So there was no comparison; I would take the
traffic from these sites any day over traffic
from the social bookmark sites. And I would
take free organic traffic from the search engines
over any other source of traffic including
PPC traffic.So the question remains – is social bookmark traffic
useless?First, as I mentioned before, you must realize no
traffic is useless; any visitors to your site is a
good thing. Without traffic your site is worthless,
just a few files sitting on a server in the middle
of nowhere.Obtaining visitors is one of your first objectives
as a webmaster. You have to get visitors to your
site or it’s game over.The best kind of traffic is traffic coming from
organic search, visitors who come from the search
engines seeking exactly what you’re offering on
your site. These are targeted visitors who will
consider your offer, real your information,
maybe buy a product or sign-up to your newsletter
or follow-up system. They often become repeat
visitors to your site. These are your ideal visitors.
This is the kind of traffic you want.Social bookmark/media traffic is different but it
does have some saving graces.Mainly it can help expose your site to millions and
help brand your site or business. It can get the word
out about your site. Start a buzz.If you have a site that appeals to the mass market,
then these social sites could be an excellent
recruiting ground for visitors and traffic.These social sites are good for another reason;
getting your links on all these high traffic,
high PR7 and PR8 sites can’t hurt your search
engine rankings. Once featured on a site like
Digg, your link will appear on many secondary
sites around the web, so far 500+ and counting.
Monkey see, monkey do. Although it has never been
my main ambition to get featured on Fark.com, all
these sites do have high PR ranks so from a SEO
standpoint it is not necessarily a bad thing.Since many of these visitors will be using the
Firefox browser which has the Alexa toolbar
embedded – your site’s traffic rank will increase.
Over 50% of the bookmark traffic coming to my site
were using the Firefox browser. Alexa’s traffic
rankings are not a true picture of the web’s
traffic but it’s a good measuring stick,
nonetheless.Google might even consider it when ranking your
site. Google basically considers their whole
indexing system as a democratic voting structure…
sites give a vote by linking to your content;
wouldn’t it also be reasonable to assume more
traffic means more votes. So wouldn’t getting a
lot of traffic or being featured on a site like
Digg where the users vote to propel the best
content to the front be the ultimate vote.One strange thing I did notice, for some reason
the traffic from Stumbleupon was different. These
visitors stayed longer on my site and reacted more
like organic traffic. Maybe the Stumbleupon site is
of a higher quality and this may have been reflected
in the quality of the visitors coming from there.
It also reminded me, all traffic from these social
media sites can’t be judged with the one brush.This whole experience also pointed out another
important factor; it made me realize how unsuited
my content is for the general web surfer or the
mainstream web. Just how much my online sites are
geared towards marketing and selling. My main goal
as an affiliate marketer is to gather leads and make
sales for the companies and products I promote. All
my sites and content were planned and organized to
first draw in targeted (warmed up) visitors from free
organic search and from my online articles.If I or anyone wanted to take advantage of this
social media traffic, you would have to create
your site/content to appeal to these surfers and
then somehow draw them into your marketing funnels.
I don’t know if the majority of the users of these
bookmark sites would make good prospects, but my
guess is not very likely, the nature of the beast.
But it would largely depend on what you’re offering
on your site and how well it is suited to these users.So I am not drawing any conclusions yet. Hopefully, I will have further chances to study traffic
from these social sites and get the long-term effects,
especially in regards to my keyword rankings in the
search engines before making any final judgments.For now I will keep an open mind but the jury is still
way out whether or not social bookmark traffic is worth
the interruption to the daily marketing tasks of your site.
Just seems like much ado about nothing.

Two bloggers, Martins and Smith were walking on the road and the following dialogue ensued:Martins: Smith, how do you consider blogging?Smith: Well, I think blogging is a big businessMartins: Blogging, a big business? How?Smith: Because it is run like any other businessMartins: Don’t you think other businesses are different from blogging?Smith: How do you mean?Martins: Other businesses are operated by real businessmen while blogging is operated by bloggersSmith: Oh! I see! But what makes a business?Martins: Businesses involve investment and they generate profits tooSmith: Really?Martins: Yes!Smith: Don’t you invest time, money and intellectuality into blogging?Martins: Yes, we doSmith: Don’t blogs generate incomes from AdSense, advertisement, affiliate sales, sponsored posts and links, flipping, membership, etc?Martins: They doSmith: Then how are blogs different from other businesses?Martins: Hmmmmmmm! I never considered these questions before. I thought only those businesses with a tag are qualified to be called a business.Smith: Anything that involves investment of any kind and then yield profits is a businessMartins: Oh, I see! Thanks for the clarification. I will start taking my blog as a business from now henceforth.Are you still in doubt?Do you still wonder if your blog is a business? Did you start your blog as a past time? Did you build your blog because you just wanted to share your thoughts with the world? A lot of people started for one reason or the other – share thoughts, update personal album, promote business brand, sell products, solve people’s problems, provide tutorials, etc. So everybody actually started with a dream, and each person’s dream could be different from the next person’s.However, some of these dreams get modified as time goes by. New ideas crop up and get integrated into the dreams. Those who started with the purpose of sharing their thoughts, updating their albums, providing tutorials or solving problems begin to see why they should add a little way of making money so as to keep maintaining their blogs or take care of other personal needs.What makes blogging a business?The following characteristics make blogging a business; and if your blog has any of them, then you should consider it for what it is – business:Generates Income: Businesses generally generate incomes for their owners. Income could come from selling products on your site (profits), earnings from advertisements, membership fees, consultancy, etc. So if your blog gets money from any of these channels, your blog is a business.It’s an investment: Business involves financial investment in order to get make profit or interest. Wikipedia defines investment this way, investment is putting money into an asset with the expectation of capital appreciation, dividends, and/or interest earningIn other words, your blog is an investment because you are paying for web hosting, website design/development, templates, plugins, special scripts, webmaster services, etc, with the intent to make some gains either in the immediate or in future. Apart from investing money, you are also investing your time on a very serious note. Hope you agree with me on this?Employment generation: Employment generated by blogs is a two-fold thing. The blog owner is gainfully employed, and secondly, he employs writers or maintenance engineers to keep things moving smoothly on the blog. To be able to create employment, you are either a businessman or government.Retirement plan: A good business helps to secure the future of the owner. Good businesses are assets for the owners to lean on during their pension years. Blogging also provides that security if it is well handled and given the necessary attention it requires.Similarities between blogging and other businessesWhen it comes to business, there are a few distinguishable types of businesses that readily come to mind, and they include the following:1. Sole proprietorship: This is the type of business that is owned and managed by one person. Decisions making is done alone, and the death of the owner could also mean the death of the business. Most blogs are similar to the sole proprietorship kind of business in that the blogger runs his blog alone. He takes decisions alone, expands slowly and he’s a jack of all trade.2. Partnership: Partnership business involves two or more persons coming together to do business. While conventional businesses can operate on a partnership level, blogging can also be a partnership investment. A good example of partnership blog is the LeapZone Strategies where Isabelle Mercier Turcotte and Margarita Romano have been working together since 1996. Of course they both invest their moneys and also share profits and loses together.Other forms of business exist but we are okay with just these two. At least they have helped us to make our similarities. Now that we have seen the different types of businesses, that takes us to the next point.Why then do blogging businesses fail?Before now, some of us were not seeing blogging as a business. But now that we know, it is good to understand why a lot of blogging businesses fail. You don’t know some blogs fail? Well, they do, really! The nagging question that needs an urgent answer is why do blogging businesses fail?1. Failure to invest: One of the things I talked about earlier concerning business is that business requires investment (both finance, time, intellectuality, etc). Unfortunately, a lot of bloggers who are hoping to make money with their blogs are not investing real money to raise the standard of their blogs in order to make them marketable. Relying on freebies to run your blog in all aspects would at best make your blog a dumping ground for substandard materials.2. Lack of focus: Failing to focus on one’s dream or niche is one of the greatest reasons why a lot of bloggers fail to make it in their businesses. It has happened to me in the past. When I started my blog in 2009, it was pulling traffic and growing by the day. Suddenly I lost focus and began to pursue other dreams. That blog eventually paid the price of my loss of focus.3. Not driven by ambition: If you are not ambitious enough as a blogger, it would be difficult for you to succeed in your blogging business.”There’s no luck in business. There’s only drive, determination, and more drive.” -Sophie Kinsella, Shopaholic Takes Manhattan”To become successful, one must put themselves in the paths of giants!” – Lillian CauldwellThe moment some bloggers attain a particular height, they feel they have arrived and there is no more need to improve or grow. The zeal to add more flavor, innovation and new features is simply not there anymore.4. Neglecting your customers: Customers are the real gem of every business and they must be treated with care and love. Unfortunately, a lot of business owners do not realize that their sustenance is ensured by the patronage of their customers. They simply treat their customers with disdain.”It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.” – Henry Ford”If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful.” – Jeff Bezos, CEO Amazon.com”Quality in a service or product is not what you put into it. It is what the client or customer gets out of it.” – Peter DruckerMy word of adviceWe live in a world of intense competition, and only those who are willing to go the extra mile to do what others are not willing to do actually make it. As a blogger and a businessman, for you to succeed in your niche, you need to add the following to your portfolio:Invest in your business: Stop depending on freebies to run your business. The fact there are freebies and still there are paid versions of the same product is enough to convince you that freebies and paid products are never the same. In as much as you would need some freebies, you need also to invest real more to add some cutting edge to your business.Remain focused: If you chase two rats at the same time, you are going to end up getting none. Once you have a dream, make sure to pursue it to a logical end. Don’t get unnecessarily distracted along the way. Distraction and lack of focus are dream killers, and so they must be eliminated at all cost.Be driven by ambition: Don’t just go into any business because others are there. You must have the ambition and enough hunger to succeed in your chosen niche. If the ambition is strong enough, adequate energy would be released to help accomplish your dream.Treat your customers like gold: Yes, you heard me well! Your customers don’t deserve anything less. They pay the bills, and if they withdraw their patronage, you are nowhere. One satisfied customer brings 20 more; but one dissatisfied customer chases away 100 more. Do you agree with me?ConclusionBlogging is a business and needs to be treated as such. Stop treating it with levity because your future could largely depend on it. If you want your blogging business to prosper, you must be willing to invest money, time and intellectuality into it. Freebies alone can never give you the best in your business. Remember that you don’t pay the bills, the customers do. So never treat your customers shabbily because they are the reason you are still in business.Well, I would love to hear from you. Share your contributions or leave a question. Was this article helpful to you in some ways? Then remember to share it with your friends.