Working in the Newspaper industry gave me a fascinating look at the ridiculous chase for more eyeballs. Many newspapers continue to steeply discount (and devalue) their newspaper simply to maintain high advertising rates with inflated viewership. This went to extremes – such as counting readership on stolen copies of the newspaper (yes, it was allowed by the Audit Bureau of Circulations).
My Readership is Steady
Readership on my site has had its up and downs, but it’s fairly steady. During the week, I average about a thousand readers directly, about two thousand RSS and another 100+ via email. Given the fact that I write a lot about Indianapolis and the narrow topic of online marketing – combined with me being a one-person, part-time shop – I’m proud of those stats.
Regionally, the blog has provided me a lot of exposure. I believe I’m well-respected for the hard work that I’ve done, both on the blog and helping companies. I get a ton of invitations for coffee and meetings – so many that I’m often not available and it sometimes irritates those who are trying to catch up with me. I also get enough speaking engagements that I’m seriously working on ‘tuning’ my speeches and improving on their delivery.
The number of eyeballs that take in my blog exceed the resources that I personally have to deliver on every request. I couldn’t imagine my readership doubling and how that might impact my life. I already work too many hours and feel as though I don’t spend as much quality time with my family as I’d like to.
As you look to how your company is going to grow the volume of readers and traffic, you need to ask yourself, “How much is enough?”. What if you doubled your readers? How many more leads would that put in your pipeline? Could your business handle it? Many businesses aren’t prepared to scale. Others do quite nicely with enough traffic to pay their employees and owners with an honest salary.
It’s not always about more eyeballs, sometimes it’s just the right eyeballs. Relevant leads are what counts.
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