I've been running blogs since about 2010. The first four or five years, there was no traffic. Then a few years ago the traffic started picking up slowly until today I have enough hits to theoretically monetize it and break even on the hosting costs. Over the years, I'd noticed that almost none of the hits traversed the article tree, which I have linked from each article to the next, or from each page of the article to the next page of the same article. Yeah - some of my stuff is boring I know. But this was close to 100 percent being first-hit-only.
So, I did some checking and discovered that nearly all the traffic is coming from blog spam urls. When I culled that stuff out, the remaining hits didn't justify the extra costs for monetized hosting, so I decided not to do it. So, does anybody else run a blog, and have you noticed an increase over the past few years in blog spam urls? Make sure you check your real hit count before you commit to any extra hosting options.
So, I did some checking and discovered that nearly all the traffic is coming from blog spam urls. When I culled that stuff out, the remaining hits didn't justify the extra costs for monetized hosting, so I decided not to do it. So, does anybody else run a blog, and have you noticed an increase over the past few years in blog spam urls? Make sure you check your real hit count before you commit to any extra hosting options.