A blog flames out

All bloggers want that link that pushes them into the big time. In fact, a lot of bloggers are addicted to it. There is nothing wrong with that. I know, I was there once. I've had a couple of nice links since I started, and the traffic they produced was addictive. Making it to the big time (which this blog has not done yet) is not about that fleeting traffic from a big link, though. It is about quality over time.

I present to you example A, Musings of a Fat Kid. Musings had a meteoric rise. First, take a look at Musing's traffic from the past year, and notice that in February they had well over 25,000 visitors. Much of that came from an unholy triumvirate of links on the same day from Instapundit, The Corner, and Michelle Malkin. It was deserved. I loved Musings of a Fat Kid. But Musings was a flash in the pan. It had one month, nay, one week of a bright spotlight. By March, they were already back down to regular traffic levels. Now, Musings is rarely updated, and their traffic is below that of most first year blogs.

So what is the moral of this story? Links are good, but you need to build up a regular stable of visitors that don't come to you via someone else's site. A link brings a nice amount of one time traffic, but unless you convert them into fans of your site, and make your site a destination for them, it is a very short term gain. Links are important but perhaps over valued. It still comes down to developing your own regular readership. That's a lesson that too many bloggers over look.