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Here is everything you ever needed to know about web traffic. I wanted to get to this before the debate started.

Let me get this part out of the way. If you are linked to by a blog outside of about the Technorati Top 50, you are likely to see 25-100 visitors unless that blog is in the middle of a Digg or another traffic drive.

Don’t be surprised, it’s just how these things work. Now for the interesting part…

Gridlock

If you get linked to by the “Top Tier” blogs, it is a mixed bag. “Human Interest Stories” usually drive a few hundred visitors. If you happen to break some decently big news you will pull in a few thousand. Something silly and entertaining counts as “decent news” these days.

Social news sites drive a lot of undifferentiated traffic. The real point of getting on these sites is the possibility of being picked up by one of the large blogs.

Traffic operates in waves. Getting picked up by one big source will likely get you a mention in several others. The tech blogosphere is always on the prowl for new stories, and we are constantly reading each other’s stuff.

These sites will buy you great links but relatively little traffic: Techmeme, PopURLs, Del.icio.us.

Forums and niche sites drive a large amount of traffic compared to their size. Forum members are extremely committed to their communities and tend to click through more often.

Publishing cycles are getting wider and individual posts (even on the “Top Tier” blogs) are counting for less. The same amount of compelling content is being produced, the only difference is that a lot of non-compelling content without traction makes well meaning people think that it isn’t.

UPDATE: I woke up this morning and it had already started. Here are a few show notes before it gets too out of hand.

  • Techmeme is a great site, but normal folks don’t read it.
  • If you publish a lot of posts, fewer of them will drive huge numbers of click thrus (see the case of Techcrunch)
  • Sometimes Community is more important than raw statistics.
  • Sometimes, if you don’t have that baseline, you need statistics to build community.
  • The blogosphere never really changes, people just love to remember the “good old days” that never existed.

Web 2.0 Roundup

Traffic isn’t everything but ten thousand voiceless bloggers will tell you that it is currency if you have something to say. Keep all of these things in mind before the next blogstorm about the dilution of editorial voice and link power in the blogospere erupts. It will help you weather the storm.

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