After reading Jeff's post about advertising on your blog and why it's so deliciously evil I thought I'd look into a few of the ad services he mentioned. Hey, I'll take a few extra bucks if you want to shill your stuff on my blog... and then I'll knock your product anyhow. I'm a huge fan of spite!
But I digress.
I was checking out some of Text Link Ads' free tools and I came across the Blog Juice Calculator. As best I can tell this is nothing more than a tool, and I use that term loosely, to judge the relative popularity of a blog and/or web site.
How did I fare?
I started with this blog's URL, stevenharman.net, and then chose Computer/Technology as the category. Not surprisingly my blog rated near the low end bringing in just 2.4 out of a possible 10 Blog Juice points.
For added fun I thought I'd see how I stacked up against my friend Phil. Not surprisingly Haacked.com came in at a much higher number - 6.9.
And then just for kicks I added Jeff Atwood's CodingHorror.com blog into the mix. This time I was a bit surprised.
As the chart to the left shows, Haacked pulled down a full 1 Blog Juice Point more than Coding Horror. I'm not sure exactly what it is that I find surprising... it's just not what I was expecting.
A theory... maybe
After digging into the Blog Juice statistics I have come to a conclusion... or at least an explanation that I can pass off as plausible.
One blog is very tightly focused and has a large number of loyal and dedicated readers whom subscribe and link to the blog regularly.
The other is still technology focused but in a much broader sense - focusing on the less tangible aspects of computing and programming.
As I see it...
The more focused blog fares better in this type of popularity contest because of its loyal fan base and large number of backlinks. I believe these characteristics are quite common of active, tightly focused communities.
However, the other blog is more widely read (per the Alexa stats) but its readers are more likely to be one-hitters and therefore less likely to be subscribers and backlinkers (is that even a word?).
What does all of this mean?
Probably not much. But I find it interesting.
What would be even more interesting would be to know how this derived popularity translates into dollars. Specifically dollars earned through the various advertisements run on these two blogs... but that's a hypothetical conversation to be had over a few pints after we all become Open Source Millionaires Billionaires.