New Vs. Returning
Someone asked me when I was a kid, “Would you rather have a million dollars or a penny doubled every day for a year (meaning 1 cent the first day, 2 cents the second, 4 the third, 8 the fifth, ect)”. At First glance the million dollars seemed great and I was a little disappointed that they weren’t serious, but as it turned out it would have been way better to take the penny the first day and ended up with far more than a million dollars by the end of the year. If someone would like to do the math, I’d love to know a total.
The more I get in to this blogging thing with artists management, and labels and all the other folks that want to know numbers, the one question I am asked more than any other is “well, are these unique visitors or returning visitors?“. It seems that this is the only thing that people who have no idea what they are talking about want to pay attention to. Most likely they have heard it once and that’s the easiest way to disprove the effects of blogging. Call it what you want, but it’s them trying to prove that it’s not working. Their last ditch effort, if you will.
Countless conversations have gone something like this:
Me: ”Hey, manager guy, your artist had over 60,000 total visits this month. What’s great about that is that it’s up from 45,000 last month”
Them: ”Well, is that unique visitors or just one person clicking 60,000 times?”
Me: ”If it’s the same person clicking 60,000 times, I guarantee they own your records.”
See how that happened? It seems the first thing they teach in Pretend You Know What You Are Talking About School is to find something negative and the conversation almost always goes to the Unique Visitor. This makes the person feel like they can engage in a conversation when they haven’t really thought it through.
My answer to this is always the same. While unique visitors are great, and we are all striving for more readers why are we always discrediting the ‘returning visitor’? Here’s the thing, we all know how to get the Unique Visitor, right? We Twitter something with a ‘provocative title’, we use keywords that will attract people that wouldn’t normally read, we link-bait, we link-share, we do everything we can to “trick” people into coming to our blog for a day and a week later we are back to the same disappointing numbers. But look at those unique visitors that month, isn’t my blog awesome?!! Never mind the fact that Carlos linked to you that day and 90% of his readers could care less about you the next day.
One day I blogged a simple picture and somehow fell onto a major social network thing. That day I ended up with over five times the amount of traffic I normally got. You know what happened the next day? They were gone. My “unique visitor” stats were enough to impress even the toughest critic. Here’s the thing though. It didn’t do jack to improve my blog as a whole.
So now, we move to the returning visitor. We move to the people that read every day. The people that follow what we are writing about and in a commercial world, the people that want to support you. These are the people that you want to focus on. I’m sorry if that doesn’t fall in line with what they taught you in blogging for dummies, but that’s the way it is. The Returning Visitor is the doubled penny that shows up every day. They are the “Tribe” that creates something worth blogging for. And these are the folks that will buy your records, tell their friends about you, support anything you are doing, and keep your career alive. Not the unique visitors that come and go.
So, while Unique Visitors are essential for growth, it’s the number of returning visitors we should all be noticing. If your unique numbers are high and your returning is dropping, you’re doing something wrong. Focus on the folks that want to be there. Focus on keeping them there, and engaging the ones that keep coming back. If you do that you will notice your unique visitors slowly convert into returning.
Thoughts?
I TOTALLY agree, Brody. Even if you have a small number of faithful readers, they are still faithful. It's way more challenging to provide content that keeps people coming back everyday than it is to get a big hit for one post (and then no one show up again).
I think that you are 100% correct. By building an audience/fan base that feels invested, they will be 10x loyal and interested in what is going on.
It might also be worth asking, "Why do I want people to be on my blog every day?"
At times, I have found myself working hard to get people coming back again and again and to subscribe and whatnot, but then I realize that my hard work is ultimately directed at becoming a strong distraction in someone's life. And what I'm offering is rarely worth distracting someone from say, their job, or reading a good book, or just unplugging and listening to the Still Small Voice of God…
So my two cents are that we who enjoy the blogosphere should do just that: enjoy it. But I think almost any time we're working to get someone to our blog, we're wasting our time and probably theirs too…
(PS – when you get done reading this, come to my blog! :0)
Your answer (starting with one penny on January 1st):
By January 27th, you'd be a millionaire.
By February 6th, you'd be a billionaire.
By February 16th, you'd be a trillionaire.
By August 27th, you'd have more pennies than there are particles in the universe.
By December 6th, your net worth in dollars would be a googol.
At the end of a year, you would have $751533626487627000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000.
Oh, and I agree with your thoughts on "unique" visitors. I'd rather have readers than be browsed.
Ok so every time I write a comment on someone's blog I think… I wish I could be quick and funny like Brody. No lie. You crack me up. H
I agree. I love my 14 readers! Unique visitors are good though… growth is always nice.
I should have known you would have already worked this out…I did a spreadsheet for him but it's not nearly as entertaining as your response. : )
Very similar post to Mark Lee's today. Fantastic.
I agree that returning readers are better than random people who find your blog by accident and never come again. I just wish I had more of the former. Right now, I have about….one or two. And I don't know how to get more of them. Sometimes it's frustrating because when I blog I'm talking to myself.
–
(my comment got deleted, so, time for round 2)
sounds like you had a rough meeting recently…sorry.
really enjoyed this post.
i think that the logic which the people you described are using is interesting.
i mean, if you took their rationale in the 'unique-is-better-than-returning' issue and applied it to other areas of promotion, eventually you'd expect to hear them saying things like, "well, we don't want to spend any time getting these songs on the radio for people to hear over and over again…we just want to get the cds on the shelves for people to buy (once)."
obviously they wouldn't agree with that approach, yet it's essentially how they're acting when it comes to web presence.
what i find so funny is that EVERYONE agrees that you have to have a website. you have to. if you produced a record without a url in the liner notes…well that would just be silly.
what is so confusing then (which you already know), is that even though they agree a website is necessary, they don't see the need for that website to be dynamic and of high quality.
love what you guys are doing.
stay strong.
Totally agree Brody!
P.S. Anyone have a penny I can have? :p
Brody, you hit the nail on the head with this one.
I run into this all the time with clients who want to have tons of website traffic and want it right now.
What I do is show them loyalty, avg. pageviews and bounce rate. Those are the additional stats they need to look at. How many people come back, spend time and complete an action (newsletter, item purchase, contest).
I can game search engine results, add PPC ads to drive traffic but if all that leads to is someone coming spending 10 seconds and going it really doesn't help.
Great post and I also 100% agree.
You can take case in point (in a way) with the current live shows you have been streaming for MercyMe combined with the blogging all of you do-there are obviously many of us who are loyal viewers and are becoming more loyal by the day-because of the doors it has opened. It really is a pretty amazing thing, and there is no telling how many people it has reached and will reach-just by simply opening a portal into the concerts, and creating a whole new community-which I believe will continue to spread like wildfire. You will probably never know how many seeds have been planted, but you can also see the fruit growing through the returning people, and those who are just beginning to hear.
Thanks for all you do-keep it up!!
Blessings~
Awesome post, Brody! It got me to thinking about my blog, and why I even bother. The most comments I've ever had for one post was maybe, 10. Sad when you compare that to my friend who gets comments in the low hundreds. Then again, she does it as a business. I do it for me. I have a few faithful readers, my mom, my aunt, and a few friends. For me it comes back to that verse that says you're a fool for comparing yourself to others.
I think what you're doing is great, and you obviously have a gifting for it. As Katherine said above, you have no idea the seeds that have been sown, simply because you're using the knowledge and what you're passionate about to help others with what they are passionate about.
Thanks!
Great post and great thoughts. You obviously get it, some people don't, and the ones that maybe don't get it, but are willing to take a chance, it will click.
Be encouraged and keep winning.
I totally agree with you! As a returning visitor to a couple of band websites. Believe me, we are the ones telling our friends what is going on and getting them excited about checking it out. Not the unique visitors!
This is absolutely wild! I have been contemplating this same thought recently. Whether you have thirty hits or three hundred ( neither of which I've had..DOH!) to your blog, Musician or housewife, the returning ones are the folks you should concentrate on. The unique visitor is just that: a fluke.
later!
I'm not really sure this is entirely an better/worse scenario. It all depends upon what the purpose of your site is. If you've got a visitor who is visiting six times a day but not contributing to the conversation, purchasing merch or otherwise taking some desired action, it's difficult to place their value above new visitors who come to the site, perhaps only once, and contribute in some meaningful way.
I fully recognize that as a personal blog owner, it's those repeat visitors who are the meat of my community and that I shouldn't get worked up about a low unique count. But for my clients, particularly those with any type of ecommerce component, there has to be fresh blood hitting the site or else a wealthy and crazy-active userbase.
I have made some very precious friends on my blog. I am so very glad for them. I would not give them up for 1000 hits. But there is that discouragement factor….this helps my focus though. thank you Bro.
I love you, Mom
[...] read two great posts today – one from Brody Harper and the other from Mark Lee. I don’t think they planned it, but both have posted more or [...]
That's the theatrical element in me – build the suspense before dropping a number with 107 zeros after it.
Absolutely I prefer loyal readers and commenters.
Euphrony…..of course you not only figured it out, but you provided a timeline as well. Classic.
Great post Brody. Have you read Kevin Kelly's, "1000 True Fans" article. It's a very interesting read along these same lines. http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/10…
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[...] Harper has some great thoughts on the difference between new and returning viewers to blogs. I totally agree with [...]