It’s all about traffic.

Without traffic (visitors to your site/auctions/etc.) you can’t have customers… so, the premise behind blogging is to increase your traffic.

One of the best ways I have found to increase traffic to a website (even your listings on eBay) is to have a blog… and here is why. Search engines absolutely love blogs! They love them because the content is frequently changing and fresh. Every time someone posts on a blog, not only does the main webpage change (ie., demonstrating an updated website), but a new page is added to the website (ie., fresh content) too. What has made blogs so popular, however, is that they are so simple to use!

If you can write an email, you can post on a blog… it is really that easy!

Once the blog is set up (also easy as following directions), you just type in your post title (like an email subject) and post content (like an email body)… hit the ‘publish’ button, and you are set!

I’m not going to get into the ‘how to’ for blogging – there are resources all over the net for that…

(In fact, you can get your hands on a short report I put together that answers the top 10 questions for blogging here.)

But, I do want to share with you some of my own experience with blogging.

I have a website that I built a couple of years ago – took me about 45 minutes to set up. This site is purely a “VRE” site. It has nothing to do with eBay – it is a “Virtual Real Estate” site… meaning that it is a site that has real, valuable content on it… but, it has ads sprinkled throughout to bring in a revenue. The site is www.SnacksForToddlers.com – and the original idea was to add a couple of new snacks every week or so (taking no more than 5 minutes) so that it was ‘morphing’ and producing good search engine results from being frequently updated.

After a few weeks of going live, the site started bringing in a nice little revenue stream from google adsense. I don’t know – it was like 50 cents a day or so… which isn’t much – but, remember, I initially spent 45 minutes on the site… and was only spending maybe 15 minutes a month after that to update it. 50 cents a day is $15 a month. That’s $15 a month for maybe 15 minutes of work… in reality, that is $60 an hour. Not too bad.

A few months later, my revenue from google adsense had grown – to $40 a month… but, I knew it could be better. I decided to add a blog and see how that affected my traffic. I added a blog (I’ll be conservative and say it took an hour to set up the blog)… and started posting to it a couple times a week spending no more than 15 minutes a month on it. The next month my traffic doubled… AND, my google adsense doubled. Now, I was making $100 a month in adsense revenue… and spending no more than 20 minutes a month on the site. I was 15-30 minutes (more like 15) a MONTH on the site… and my income was around $100. That’s $200-400 an hour! The thing is… each time I updated the blog, my traffic grew… and grew. And that traffic translated into more revenue from the ads I had on the site. Within 2-3 months, I was making around $130 a month with google adsense – for the same amount of work. That’s $260-$520 an hour…

It gets better.

Now that I have a good amount of traffic going to this site (it is number one on google for the search words “Snacks For Toddlers”), I am able to bring in guest bloggers who are looking to get established and drive traffic to their own related sites. Guest bloggers will come in and post on the blog for me… creating fresh, new content for me every time they do. I was never really spending that much time on the site in the first place… but, now, with other people posting on the blog for me, I spend even less time – while my revenue just goes up.

Okay, I understand that this example isn’t directly related to selling on eBay – but, the principle applies. You can create a blog that addresses different topics in your niche… and use it to drive traffic to your auctions on eBay. You can advertise to your hearts content on your own blog… if you have a shipping special for your auctions – write about it. Blog about a particular item you are selling – or if you are selling items related to a movie, do a review on the movie and link to your auctions at the end of it. You will likely be asking yourself why you didn’t do this sooner!

Lesson – don’t underestimate the power of a blog.

Okay… one more thought about using a blog to drive traffic to your auctions. What if you don’t want a blog? For whatever reason, you decide that it just isn’t for you… you can still use blogging to drive traffic to your auctions. Start visiting OTHER blogs that are related to your niche and get involved by leaving comments. Be sure the comments are adding value to the original post – ask a question, mention your own experience about the topic… whatever you decide to include in your comment on a blog post, it is imperative that you make it valuable so that it gets published as a comment. Now, every time you leave a comment on a blog, you are asked to include your URL. This isn’t necessarily published with your comment, but the link is still there. When you leave a comment on a blog that is in a niche related to the niche your listings market to… use the link to your eBay auctions as the link you leave with the comment!

Remember when I said that search engines love fresh content? Well, they also love links on other sites that are pointing to yours! So, the more links to your auctions that are out in the world wide web… the higher search engine ranking you will get. This means that when people (think potential bidders) are searching for something in your niche, your link to your auctions will be one of the top links in the results for the search. Cool, huh?

Learn more about blogging with my short report that answers the top ten questions asked about blogging. Here are the questions addressed:

1. What Is A Blog?
2. What Makes A Blog Different From a Regular Website?
3. What Kind Of Blog Should I Use?
4. Where Should I Host My Blog?
5. What Should My Blog Look Like?
6. What Should I Be Blogging About?
7. How Often Should I Blog?
8. How Can I Make Money With My Blog?
9. How Do I Get People To Interact On My Blog?
10. What Could I Be Missing About My Blog?
11. (bonus) How Do I Really Get Started With My Blog?

This report is only $10 and you can get immediate access to this report here.