Covering the business of education and training

On January 21st I wrote a post 66 Successful Bloggers and What they can teach you.

It took me about four hours to wade through the book, What No One EVER Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting, hunt down all the links, then make sure they worked after I published the post.

I then emailed some of the people on the list, Seth Godin, Guy Kawasaki and started to email everyone on the list, until that got pretty burdensome....after about a dozen emails (I am kind of slow)....

I remembered, I could write to the author, Ted Demopoulos and ask him to do that, thinking he probably had everyone's email in a group list and could do it in one email instead of me sending 66.

Then I thought to send it to a few others who were not on the list but should be (i.e.Darren Rowse at Problogger, etc.) and to post it on Netscape, Indianpad and a few other places.

After all the work I went through, visitors began posting the link on del.icio.us, where it made it to the front page, on Popurls, Presurfer.meepzorp, stumbleupon and other places that I have never heard of....which is what accounts for the visits to date....

Whew! To be perfectly honest, that was a lot of work for just one blog post, I thought.

Problem: Calculate the going rate for one blog (if you get paid) + the going rate for 1,000 visits X number of visits (so far, I have received about 7,000 visits to this post) and divide that by abt. 5 hours of time. 

Question: Is the time spent wisely, just for 7-8000 visits? 

Answer: The clear answer is NO, IF that is all that I were to think about.

Consider: The Long Tail 

For the blogger it means, in short, what happens in the next week, even month and beyond of a spike in traffic will be more than what happens in the first few days.

More have subscribed to my feed.

Additionally, a sister site, KnowMoreMedia, of the blog network I belong to saw a huge spike in traffic - double the normal traffic it usually receives. This, in turn, builds the reputation of the network as a whole...which benefits my blog.

So, what does this mean?....If the long tail is a true phenomenon, and it is, I can indeed expect more visits and possibly more links in the days and weeks to come than I got in the first couple of days that the 66 Bloggers made the rounds. 

THAT makes the 5+ hours I invested in this blog well worth it. Would you agree? 

Lesson - It is said, over and again, in the book What No One EVER Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting that the most important thing a blogger - veteran, rookie, professional, business, personal or otherwise - can do is to provide good content.

Good content = something people want to read, something they can learn from, something they feel good enough about that they would, in turn, want to pass it on to others, something that would make them want to come back to find out what else you have to say.

Not every post will enjoy a large spike...but good posts will most always enjoy a long tail.

Do I spend enough time on all my posts? Honestly, the regular reader of my posts can tell by the content...the answer is a clear "no."  But, I should. After all, I am learning, too.

Write well...and if you have time, please tell me how I can do better.