I am often asked why so many blogs fail to deliver the results expected by the owner. Unfortunately, many individuals and small businesses find themselves trapped in the sandbox, not entirely sure if what they’re doing will work in the long run.
Getting out of the sandbox is the most import challenge for any new site, and the time it takes to do so is the primary reason why most blogs fail to generate traffic and lay the foundation for a successful business online.
Understanding ‘The Sandbox”
“The Sandbox” is a loose term used to describe the initial period of any new site in which it does not see significant, if any results.
During this time, which is usually a minimum of six months for any site related to pull marketing, but often up to a year, the site is still unknown to search engines and, if known, it remains untrusted because it is both new and probably has minimal content.
For many new marketers, there is a huge temptation to check site statistics constantly, hoping to see first indications of results. It’s an easy trap to fall into, and I confess I’m guilty of the same thing at times, but checking daily or weekly stats when a website is young is a complete waste of time. Not only are the results statistically insignificant, meaning you can’t gain any valuable insight into your audience’s behavior, but checking these types of metrics before your site is ready will only serve to discourage and distract you from achieving your aim.
Why Most Blogs Fail
The reason most blogs fail is simple: time.
Most bloggers (by which I mean bloggers intending to develop a business around their site, not personal, hobby bloggers) simply do not invest enough time into their websites. This comes in two forms.
- They do not produce enough content
- They do not stick with it long enough.
Blogs take a lot of time to develop and begin to generate significant traffic. You need to have consistent content over time in order to even begin to appear in search results.
Think about it this way: have you ever noticed that search results often provide top-ranked pages that are old? As long as the content relevance hasn’t changed (eg: it isn’t ‘news’ or otherwise time-sensitive material), it isn’t uncommon to see search results that are a minimum of 2 years old, and often up to 10 years old!
The reason goes back to how website indexing and search results works, which I’ve talked about elsewhere on this blog.
Most bloggers that begin a new site with the intent to develop a business are discouraged when they don’t see results after a few months. The overwhelming majority of new blogs stop producing content before the 6 month mark, and many fall off the train well before that.
This reality creates a self-fulfilling prophecy in the blogger’s mind. They think: “I’ll wait to see indication of results before investing more time or money into the project,” when the results will never come without a substantial up front time investment. The simple fact for many is that, had they persisted they would have seen better results.
As Winston Churchill said:
Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
This quote resonates extremely true in my mind when it comes to affiliate marketing, and establishing yourself as an authority in a niche.
The development of an online marketing business is not rocket science. Practically anyone could do it, but few succeed, because few are willing to put in the consistent time and effort involved in getting a new site off the ground. Do you agree? What are your tips for getting through the sandbox?