Blowhard blogging versus professional writing
People interested in EDT compliant object creation in JFC with source code.
30 developers.
People interested in me ranting about current events.
8000 developers.
You need a blog to exist on the Internet because of how search engines index material. The problem is that the value is very low because people do not link to you with the correct keywords. And even if they did the related-content industry would probably outrank you anyway. And this is why many businesses try out the social notworking angle.
13 121 unique developers over 30 days might seem impressive. But the reality is that most of these readers never link to this website and therefore, in 20 days time, it will be back to 200-300 unique users a day. And this is why getting linked on Techcrunch is probably almost worthless unless people Twitter about it. So you might as well buy some Stumbleupon ads, or something, to test your server.
The reason blogging is so powerful is because old media companies almost never link to the competition and because many blogs use other blogs as a sort of judicial indemnification. And because of this related content can outrank original content on fringe keywords. Which then fuels the crazy me-too behavior that we see on Techmeme.
There are several websites that can give you this kind of traffic. But you have to write for a specific niche and talk about interesting things to get there. But as I said, this does nothing to promote your actual product or service. So this is basically a hobby that can distract you from your real business.
Time spent on site for normal people is three to four minutes but the average is just 27 seconds. And instead of reading the blog front page people instead go to the main website to locate the about page. So pages per visit on the blog is just 1,17.
Check out Jan Erik Paulsen on Twitter.