Before You Sponsor Any Blog ... Get the Facts!
Continuing my recent post on Making Sense of Web Stats, before you sponsor any blog, including this one, you should get the facts ... and do your own research. While they don't capture all of the traffic, or even every site, used in conjunction, the free traffic ranking sites of Ranking, Traffic Estimate, Compete, Quantcast, and, most importantly, Alexa are usually directionally accurate and are a good place to start. For example, if you were to check up on the major blogs in the space on August 15, 2009, you'd find:
| Blog | Alexa Rank | Traffic Estimate Visits | QuantCast Visitors | Compete Visitors (US) | Ranking Rank |
| Spend Matters | 317,868 | 47,000 | 12,000 | 7,760 | 188,166 |
| Sourcing Innovation | 324,279 | 47,200 | 4,400 | --- | 159,761 |
| Supply Chain Matters | ???,??? | ??,??? | ?,??? | ?,??? | ?,???,??? |
| (AG) Metal Miner | 573,991 | 25,200 | --- | --- | 924,425 |
| Supply Excellence | 960,349 | 10,700 | --- | 1,767 | 217,056 |
| Procure Insights | 1,546,610 | --- | 2,000 | --- | --- |
| Purchasing Certification Blog | 3,080,943 | --- | --- | 370 | --- |
| e-Sourcing Forum | 3,108,516 | --- | 2,300 | --- | 873,926 |
This says that Sourcing Innovation, which briefly held the top spot on Alexa from June 10, 2009 to August 15, 2009 (and still holds the top spot on Traffic Estimate and Ranking), is currently ranked as the second most trafficed niche blog in the supply and spend management space. Not bad for an Upstart Blog that's only three years old.
Furthermore, since you are also concerned about how much new traffic a site will attract, as new traffic is key to continued growth, the site's ranking with respect to relevant searches is also important. For an overview of how each blog ranks, I refer you to the Google Rankings of the Sourcing Blogs of June 19, which is summarized below for a corpus of 99 relevant search terms:
| Blog | Top 10 | Top 20 | Top 30 | Top 50 | Top 100 |
| Sourcing Innovation | 8 | 10 | 13 | 17 | 23 |
| Supply Excellence | 4 | 4 | 7 | 10 | 15 |
| Spend Matters | 2 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 10 |
| e-Sourcing Forum | 2 | 4 | 5 | 7 | 10 |
This is one of the reasons why, from a new traffic acquisition perspective, Sourcing Innovation, which continues to grow anywhere from 3% to 30% month-over-month, is one of the top two blogs, and why, one day after the blog's three year anniversary when Sourcing Innovation claimed the Top Supply Management and Spend Management blog ranking on Alexa, Sourcing Innovation has, in the past year, at least temporarily, ranked #1 on all five of the major traffic ranking engines.
Now that you've informed yourself, you can make the right choice. For more information on SI sponsorships, see the Open Pricing Model. (For more information on other blog sponsorships, if available, contact the respective blog owners.)
Categories: Miscellaneous,About
Tags: Supply Management Blog Sponsorships
This blog also stacks up extremely well against the trade publication web-sites, especially considering they have a stable of bloggers, dozens (and dozens) of authors and tens of thousands of "subscribers". For example, it gets at least one third of the unique monthly traffic of Supply & Demand Chain Executive and the Supply Chain Management Review.
Rank (by Hits)
Visits
Rank (by Visitors)
Visitors (US)
I posted this comment on Spend Matters in response to One Lead and One Associate [Spend Matters] Sponsorship Remain. I'm posting it here as well because it's good fuel for thought:
Sourcing Innovation and Spend Matters. Two blogs against the space? Will we win?
Combined, Spend Matters and Sourcing Innovation are more popular than the online presence of the Supply Chain Brain, Supply & Demand Chain Executive, and the Supply Chain Management Review!
And while it may look like the Purchasing & ISM stranglehold is still safe, you need to remember that Spend Matters is only 5 years old and Sourcing Innovation is only 3 years old (while Purchasing Magazine and the ISM are 94 years old), combined we have about half of the traffic of the ISM site and almost one third of the traffic of the Purchasing site, we're both growing, and we both have more tricks up our sleeves.
New Media is Emerging. Are you ready for this?