Blake Schwendiman's Blog and Blook

This is day 5 in my series: New ways of driving traffic to your site or blog. [Read Day 1]

Okay, so you've made it to day 5 and you're still trying to figure out what I think the big deal about modules is. Okay, the big deal is traffic. Like I've said before, I get an enormous amount of traffic due to my Google and Pageflakes modules. It's incredible by itself, but it doesn't directly impact the intent of my blog.

If I were actually selling something over the Internet, I'd be freaking out by now if I didn't have a good Google module to help me sell. It's important that you catch the key word in the previous sentence: good. There are already too many bad Google modules available: modules that don't do anything, modules that don't do what they way they'll do, modules that are plain stupid, etc.

So, if I were selling something on the Internet, I'd figure out how to make a good Google module to support sales. Some things lend themselves directly to a Google module. For example, if you're selling art, you should have a Google module. People seem to like modules that have an entertainment aspect. As I mentioned on Day 1, my Flickr modules are being viewed over 270,000 times every day. People like pretty pictures. So if you're selling pretty pictures, your module would be an easy fit!

Now, if you're selling products, especially if you're selling a lot of products, you might build a module that displays current specials, provides coupons or special rebates or other incentives. If you are selling a specialty product, you could have a module that displays recent customer comments or innovative ideas for using your product. If you are selling a food product, you could show recipes using your products.

Here's a concrete one I'd like to see: How about a module that displays movie listings for my favorite movie theater, filtered by movie rating (or genre or whatever) that also allows me to know exactly which movies are sold out and links directly to online ticket sales? The same could go for concerts, sports events, etc.

If you're selling a service, think about what types of information you can give away for free that will lead back to more service sales. Maybe an online stock broker could allow me to see my portfolio in a module and provide me with links back to make trades online.

Hopefully I've expressed the idea well enough for you to be excited about it. Let's see what you can develop!