Retailers have bottom line in mind of course, their goal is to make as much profits as possible while attracting as many consumers as possible. Traditionally this is a razor's edge - if they charge too much for an item there will be other retailers who offer it at a reduced price, thus their profits dip. If they charge too little they will be swamped with consumers and sell out of their stock. They have to find that point where they can just sell out of stock and charge just enough to attract hoardes of hungry consumers.

Unlike e-zine subscriptions or autoresponder mailings, it's not quantity of visitors that counts, it's quality of visitors as well as how often they return to continue reading your blog.

Quality, in this case, refers to how often they click on revenue-generating links in your blog and how often they buy something that you're blogging about. Of course, if you're operating an altruistic blog that has no revenue-generating features, then you are only concerned about how often readers return to bask in illumination of your knowledge, expertise, biting sarcasm or humor.

Either way, those are two measurements of a successful blog. Now don't get me wrong, number of readers is important, of course, but it's better to have 1,000 faithful readers who return regularly than it is to have 5,000 readers who come once and you never see them again after that.

There is no free traffic!

I love when bloggers say "I won't pay for traffic. I can get it for free". Nothing is "free" my friend. You will either pay for traffic with money or you will pay for traffic with your time. Neither way is "free".