Traffic spikes don’t matter!

What if you wake up on morning and find out that you’ve got a huge traffic spike from., let’s say StumbleUpon? what would you do? What would your reactions be? Well, of course, you can jump for joy and throw up a party. But party’s going to be all over when you’re down to (little more than) your 30 unique visitors the next day. It might get you some quick bucks from those CPC ads you put up on your blog. But does the one day party really matter?

If your post got stumbled and you receive a decent amount of traffic, good for you. But, did you really think of any means of converting those Stumblers into your loyal blog readers? It’s possible, is it not? StumbleUpon traffic is targeted traffic. People find your blog through relevant reviews and tags right? But, don’t forget, after a while, StumbleUpon traffic, like any social media traffic is eventually going to go away!

True enough, it can give you a sense of accomplishment on the very successful article you did or the breakthrough news story. But when your site stats tell you 8000 people have visited your blog and the next day, it’s only 1% of that, the 8000 doesn’t really matter. The quick AdSense bucks don’t matter. The traffic spike doesn’t matter.

What matters is sustaining that traffic!

There are more bloggers trying to build organic traffic spikes than bloggers trying to sustain real traffic. Organic traffic is what comes by when you exploit a system or go hardcore on a system. Things like power-dropping 300 Entrecards a day and using a spammy commenting software! (You won’t believe how many people use these) Maintaining sustained traffic usually takes half the time of creating organic traffic. So, in the long run, organic traffic is well, an organic solution.

See, traffic is like rain. You should let it come naturally or planet earth will have it’s fury on you. If your blog is dry and facing a drought, huge showers will ultimately give it some life. When the rain goes away, you’re back to your usual dryness. But if you can develop some means of saving some water during the wet season, you’re better off. But unlike rain, the cool thing is, if you know your blogging, you can create rain anytime.

But, what if you could move your blog to the tropics? Where you get rain every day? Or make the monsoon last forever? The only proven way of sustaining traffic (monsoon-everyday) is by:

Building a better blog!

Why? Because people are there, in the very blogosphere that you exist, getting 8000 unique visitors a EVERYDAY. Sometimes, your biggest traffic spike ever, can’t match the usual daily traffic they get. And the only advice they followed, the only motive they had and their prime objective was “building a better blog”. Isn’t it the most magical blogging tip ever?

If you spent the first six months of your blogging life trying to find a quick fix that would drastically boost your blog, then you might have found that there are no magic blogging beans in the blogosphere. It’s pure hard work and well, sometimes, circumstantial luck. I have never posted about gaming a system or exploiting a social network site because, by experience I know that; one, they don’t last and two, they can get you in trouble. Much like creating artificial rain would mean lesser natural rain fall. (Mark my words – “By experience”)

May your traffic spikes be natural or organic. You’ll excel anyway if you are concentrated on building a better blog. I know, because that’s the only level 1 blogging tip I followed. Call me a conservative, but if you could really pay $100 for 100,000 quality visitors that would subscribe to your blog no matter how bad it is, then, I’d say my fairy god-mother granted me this blog:)