@Andy – Thank you. My thinking comes from the likes of the Cluetrain Manifesto, Tom Peters, Seth Godin, and Clay Shirky (to name a few). If you want an awesome education in this kind of thinking and marketing, read anything from them.

@Brandon – Generally, yes, it’s true. It’s been my experience that a greater percentage of people are likely to purchase a relevant product that meets an immediate need than will click an ad on some related content.

Also, unless you’re in an extraordinarily profitable niche with gobs of traffic, AdSense payouts are not that great. Most people make less than $100 a month on AdSense. I make more than that with just one single download of my latest information product.

While there are plenty of great “make money from downloads” products out there, If you’re just getting started, I recommend Naomi Dunford’s Online Business School. It will give you an honest and useful education to start.

I’ve been reading your blog for a while, and find your explanations commercial ideas very innovative. With the growing trend of consumers becoming ‘blind’ to standard ways of advertising postive PR from ‘neutral’ sources is becoming more important.

This is one of the most useful posts on blog traffic I’ve read in a while.

I especially appreciate you simplifying the quality / quantity debate (you create your own audience with the content).

I’ve been going through my posts lately looking at the ones that have received the most comments – and have been learning a lot. One interesting thing is that these posts are ones that I’ve had the most fun writing.

John