Or maybe there are such sorts of businesses, but they can never truly replace income by themselves. Perhaps the key to a good PIG-type muse is to have a collection of small businesses, each of which contribute a modest amount, but togethr contrbute a significant amount.

In that vein, I’m getting a few of my muses together. The first muse is this blog. But a blog isn’t truly a PIG. Indeed, a blog is really an Active Income Generator (AIG) because it requires continuous work on the blogger to allow it to derive value. Well, maybe not entirely… some blogs automatically parrot information available elsewhere. Those blogs then can truly be PIG-type muses. But it’s the one where new and fresh content is the draw that makes blogs AIGs.

Note: I really need better acronyms, since we like PIGs and the AIG acronym sounds too close to an existing, failing business entity. Anyone have any ideas that convey the same meaning but have better acronyms?

An e-Commerce site as a PIG

So, one of those modestly-contributing PIGs I am considering is an ecommerce site selling a specific niche of items. There is some set-up time involved in an ecommerce site, especially around the website development and selection of products. Also, there is the issue of dealing with customer support and shipping / packaging. But I have a feeling that e-Commerce has evolved so that it can be completely turnkey without requiring the user to do anything but generate traffic.

Here’s where I’m stuck. I need help here — has anyone recently put together an e-Commerce site with a minimal of money and time investment and managed to keep operations humming with little continuous money and time investment? If so, I want to hear about it! What tools did you use? What companies are you working with? Send me your advice, and we’ll keep it posted here.

See you around the 4HWW world!

Has anyone else had this experience? I am in the midst of remodeling my basement (I’ll have a few posts on that subject, so sorry to bore you all if you don’t care). In the process, I had to get rid of a washer/dryer combo that was not going to fit the new space. More importantly, I just wanted some new equipment. Anyways, I didn’t just want to put the washer/dryer out on the street or give it to charity, since perhaps someone would want a great washer/dryer set for just $100 as well as an old tub for the same amount. I was pretty much willing to part with it for whatever I could get, as long as they would haul it out themselves.

So, I decided to post my washer/dryer item up on the local Craig’s List. I figured if someone in the area would want it, this would be the quickest and easiest way to find out.

Lo and behold, 2 days later I get my first response:

Hi do you still have them thanks when good time to stop by

Disregarding the bad grammar, I replied:

Yes, I still have the washer and dryer (separate units). Are you interested in purchasing them?

He responded fairly quickly:

I want them can you hold them for me thanks – I have Blood donation tuesday and my dad gets home around 6pm what area are you at thanks can you give me number can get in touch [phone number]

Ok, so I understand now that he’s a student or some such. No problem. So, I email him my phone number and await his call. Didn’t get it that evening. Or the following day. Or the day after that. So, I email him asking what the status is. No response. So, I decide to give him a call on the number. I finally get a hold of him, and he says he’s still interested, and he’ll come that weekend. I wait for him that weekend. He never shows up. I call again, this time, no answer. I give up and chalk it up to a flake. Hopefully I’ll get another bite.

Sure enough, just a few days later, I get the following inquiry from someone new:

Is it still available?

Yes! But it needs to get out of here this weekend. Can you come and pick it up?

My husband is in XXX tomorrow dropping my step-daughter at college. We actually are renovating a farmhouse in YYY but I thought possibly he could load in his car & drive back…I’ll need to have him coordinate with you. Is there a # you can be reached at?

My husband wasn’t able to be in touch–our loss…

Is the tub still avaliable? i am getting ready to buy a house and a clawfoot tub is a must for me. thank you.

Yes, but it must go tomorrow! Can you come by tomorrow to pick it up? It’s on the third floor and needs to be taken down (carefully!). It’s quite heavy and I can’t help to carry it down, but I’m sure you can (perhaps along with a small crew and a dolly). Let me know if you can come and get it!

what time would be good for me to come and get it? im free after 5?

Hello, Is this still available?  I own an antique and refinishing shop in XXXX and am putting a vintage style kitchen and bathroom on the upper level.  thanks so much for your response.

Yes it is, but you’ll need to haul it from our third floor. It’s quite heavy – do you have folks who can get it and bring it?

Yes, I do, my husband has a truck as well.  How much are you asking again? and could you send me the link or ad # I am so sorry I have responded to about 15 ads today for clawfoots and am trying to keep them straight..

Hello Again,  I was able to find one with a kitchen sink also, so I won’t be coming by.   Thanks again

Flakes: 4, Me: 0. Ok, I’ve had it. I donate it to a local good will and get $300+ as a tax write-off. I guess I win.

Here’s what gets me about this whole thing. I understand that there are lots of choices on Craig’s List and maybe my appliances and tub weren’t the best, but it seems that the ratio of flakes to real buyers is quite high. NONE of the buyers bothered to let me know that they were either not interested or found another option after they set up a specific date and time to come by and pick it up. They had absolutely no consideration for my time. I thought this might be just my bad luck, but apparently, after doing a search on “Craigslist flake” on Google, this is so common, it even has its own Urban Dictionary definition!

It seems that it is the exception that someone is able to find a buyer on Craig’s list rather than the rule. Geez, if there ever was a decay of the value of a social network, here it is.

Craig’s List: Good for Nothing

Digging into Craig’s List deeper, I found that Craig’s list provided very little tangible value to anyone. I saw blog posts and forum comments about people who couldn’t even give away items on Craig’s list. Even more worrisome is the trend that people are using Craig’s List for scams and criminal activity. Craig’s List provides a great anonymous front for the very sort of criminal element you don’t want near the items you have for sale.

Indeed, that very anonymous front might result in probably the only community that gets value from Craig’s List: Pimps and Hos. In the personal’s section called “Casual Encounters“, you will find a deluge of advertisements for thinly-veiled offers of adult services of all sorts. There must be a lot of buyers, because there’s a heck of a lot of sellers. If many legit sellers of goods, like myself, are having such a hard time getting real people to buy goods, and if scammers are pushing out the good sellers in droves, then it must be that the Pimp-n-Ho audience is what Craigs List caters to the most.

But even in this area, Craig’s List is a danger zone. Police the world over now know that Craig’s List is an open market for sex trade, and both buyers and sellers are targeted in Craig’s List oriented raids and stings. Over time, even the Pimp-n-Ho audience is bound to leave Craig’s List when the pressure is too much to bear.

Where does that leave Craig’s List? With no value whatsoever. When a good social network that provides a real value proposition is left to decay without any quality enforcement, it rapidly becomes an abandoned, crime-ridden, and flake-prevalent destination. Just like many of our good urban cities — when the real value generators leave the community, all that’s left is decay.

Am I wrong?

Is it just me? Am I bitter because I had a quadruple-flake experience and over-generalizing? Has anyone had any luck (recently!) with Craig’s List? Have you been burned? Have you had the same experience? Please tell me I’m not alone or off my rocker!

Sorry for the pause in content. I’ve been working hard as well as I’ve embarked on my MADFUN exercises. Plus, I haven’t really had much to write about. Maybe I should write anyways?

In any case, thanks for the feedback I’ve gotten from you all on my eLance and Time Management posts. I hope they have helped. On the 4HWW front, I’m looking at writing and publicizing some eBooks as a passive income source. Has anyone else had any experience in successfully doing that? Ironically, if I come across some great techniques, I’ll publish them as an eBook so that you all can learn from me!

I often listen to NPR and other Public Radio stations. Do you? Doesn’t it annoy you when they have to interrupt their broadcasting to make an appeal to their audiences for donations and support?

Just like you, I find it annoying that those pledge drives interrupt the shows I like to listen to you, but at the same time, I understand why they do that. They have to somehow fund their activities, and since they don’t barrage you with advertisements, the pledge drive is the only way to make their financial ends meet. It’s actually good that they don’t rely heavily on advertisements as the non-public radio stations do, since that could also taint their independent perspective.

Like public radio stations, I write in this blog mostly for my amusement and for the information and pleasure of those who read it. While I do have many advertisements placed throughout the site, the truth is that they really don’t result in much, if any, revenue for me.

I posted a while back on the topic of blog revenue as a passive source of income, but until this blog reaches a significant traffic level, it’s pretty much all a pipe dream.

In that vein, I come to you, my faithful readers. Like NPR, I’d like to take this opportunity to pass the Tip Jar and ask for donations. I am working as hard as I can to turn this blog into a Muse and thus a Passive Income source. But until then, it’s hard for me to focus on the blog when there are other pressing financial concerns.

As such, I’d like to ask you to donate whatever you can to my cause. On the right side of the screen, you might notice a donation widget from a website called ChipIn that allows you to contribute to my Muse. If you can’t find it, I’ve also included it below:

Thank you so much and keep tuning into this station!

But on to my point.

I finally understand now why Tim says that he always used to shrug off the “What do you do?” question by babbling about selling drugs. Because “I sell a weightlifting supplement over the internet and through magazine ads” is a little… well… cheesy. It’s not really something to write home about, or brag about. No wonder he was relieved to publish 4HWW so that he could start answering, “I’m a published author”! And after months of trying to think up muses of my own, I’m beginning to suspect that they’re all like that, sort of inherently.

I think that’s part of why I and probably other entrepreneurs like myself have had trouble redirecting our existing businesses towards creating muses. Our original business ideas had more inherent value… they had more depth and substance. We had goals like “Become the best-known technology consulting company in North America” or “Dominate the content management system market with the most useful and best-priced system.” We were, to use Guy Kawasaki’s phrase, “making meaning.” We were trying to create something BIG that other people would want to get on board to do, with ideals and dreams we could recruit with. And we wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have if we didn’t believe in what we were doing.

Muses, on the other hand, are just there to make some cash. They’re cotton-candy businesses, all artificial color and sugar and no nutritional value. They’re small by definition. If you’re an ambitious and idealistic person, it’s almost embarrassing to tell people what you’re doing. It feels like a big letdown from your original purpose. You don’t even want to recruit for it, and the goal is to be a one-man outfit with an outsourced army anyway.

So what’s the solution? What if your dream IS owning your own business… and it’s important to you to be contributing something of significant value to society? (Granted, I’m sure it isn’t impossible to create muses with inherent social value, depth, and substance… I just haven’t been able to think of any yet!)

Well, my theory is that even if you’re embracing 4HWW wholeheartedly, you can still end up being the president of your own company doing the exciting & worthwhile work you originally set out to do. Naturally, as president, you’ll make the executive-level decisions while other people do the hands-on work. But since you’re creating your own company culture, you can build in 4HWW values like freedom of time and location for everyone, including yourself. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?

The trick is getting there. I think you can “DEAL” your way out of working on the business fulltime (assuming you’re working fulltime now) without reducing income, then use your spare time to build muses which generate cash you can then use to expand the company (by hiring, automating, and outsourcing, not by getting sucked back into working longer hours). Building your own one-man outfit into a “real” company is always a challenge, but you’ll have muses to carry you through the expansion, and even get you through outright failure if that should happen. And, with this in mind, building cheesy muses is a backburner activity… not something you even have to tell people about (unless you’re blogging about it – LOL).

If what you’re doing as an entrepreneur right now is pretty cheesy already, then you probably don’t really get what I’m talking about -grins-. You’ll just “DEAL” your way out of it, like you would a day job you dislike, while you’re building muses and picking out your dreamline activities – which also makes total sense.

Thoughts and opinions? I’ll pay attention to the comments here and respond.

Getting a bit more practical, one of the themes in the Four Hour Work Week is the idea that you can have a nice source of passive income from a short investment in time called a Muse. Hilarycat posted recently on what constitutes a Muse (or in her words, a Passive Income Generator [PIG]). But the gist is that it’s not necessarily your main “day job”, but rather something that allows you to earn the income needed so that your main job doesn’t consume you. You can be free to pursue the things you want because the lights can stay on and the kids can stay fed.

As a way to get things started, blogs themselves can be nice sources of revenue and could potentially be muses if they turned into something bigger. That does not mean that it has to consume lots of time, but you should definitely thing about all the ways to generate revenue from a blog and related media. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far. If you know of other ways to turn blogging and writing activity into muse-worthy income, let everyone know by posting some feedback in the comments.

Advertising

Most folks who think about generating revenue from their blog think of the advertising business model where you post ads on your site and get paid for every click through. This is certainly one of the best ways to generate passive income from a blog, since you’re simply leveraging the traffic that comes whether you are working (or even awake) or not. The general formula for increasing advertising revenue is: Increased profit = increased traffic + increased visibility/placement of ads + increased quality / pay-out of ads + increased relevancy of ads.

• Google AdSense — The Obvious One. Of all the advertising brokers on the web, Google is the King of them all – with over 60% of total context-based advertising around. It’s hard to beat, and so that’s why most bloggers use Google AdSense for their advertising revenue base. The problem is that making money on Google Ads has been getting harder recently. There are thousands, if not millions, of sites that place ads, meaning that you’re sharing in a very small percentage of the total ad traffic. Some more comments and thoughts on Google ad revenue for bloggers here.

• Text-link-Ads — Another possibility for advertising revenue is getting paid to put text links into your blog. Not quite the same as Google Ads,but Google definitely frowns on it and penalizes sites that use it, so see it as as no-go if you want to use Google AdSense and Text-Link-Ads together
• Chitika,WidgetBucks, Azoogle Ads, Intelli Txt, DoubleClick, Tribal Fusion, Adbrite, Clicksor, AdHearUs, Kanoodle, Pheedo, TextAds, Bidvertiser, Fastclick, Value Click,MSN Adcenter, YPN, and BlogAds . Yes there are a bazillion ways to get ads on your site and get paid on a per-click or per-results basis. Much has been said about the above, but given that most are sharing the remaining 35-40% of the market amongst each other, you’ll be sacrificing the visibility that Google has for the wider base of potential advertisers. That being said, I don’t have much experience with the above. Can someone in the blogging world point me to a comparison of the above and state whether or not they can happily co-exist with each other and/or Google AdSense?
• Kontera — Another contextual ad system, but this one is different. It finds keywords on your page and automatically creates an advertising link that becomes a pop-up “ContentLink” that refers readers to additional opportunities. There’s some conflicting evidence as to whether Google allows it or not, but I’ll try it on this blog and let you know.
• Feedburner RSS ads — As you might already know, FeedBurner powers this site’s RSS feed. It not only syndicates it for wider distribution through a variety of formats, but also allows me to manage, audit, publicize, and even monetize the feed. FeedBurner now allows you to insert ad links into your RSS feeds and collect when they’ve been clicked. I’m trying it, so let me know if it annoys you.
• Blog Networks — A blog network is a group of blogs that team up to increase their mutual traffic and thus share in the increased ad revenue. I haven’t really done much research here, but I hear this can be quite lucrative. Anyone have any feedback?
• Sell your own advertising — Who says you need to get your ads thrown at you by a third party? If you think you can get significant traffic, sell your ads direct! Offer a permanent spot on your blog for a 125×125 ad (or whatever size you like) and sell it for whatever you think you can get. This will really only work for high-traffic blogs, but it really is a better way to go. You have to promise a certain amount of visibility, but you’re getting a fixed monthly income without any surprises or variability. I suggest this is something you can do when you get a few hundred thousand hits per month or a tens of thousands of dedicated readers. Not as hard as you would imagine…
• Get your site sponsored –Another take is to have your site be exclusively sponsored by someone. The same tack as selling your own advertising, but perhaps you offer to brand your site in a specific way or do some joint activities with the sponsor. Either way, a nice way to make some real passive income.

Merchandising

If you have merchandise closely affiliate with your site, then you can sell it online as a way of earning passive income.

• Cafepress — One of the most widely known merchandising site. Allows you to sell shirts, mugs, hats, books, bags, baby clothing, lingerie, lots of stuff emblazoned with your key IP and identifying marks. I’ve tried to put together some DHFW related items and merchandise here, but of course, the quality of the goods will determine how well they sell!
  
• Write eBooks – Another way to earn passive income is to sell content online. Write an eBook about a topic related to the blog or something else that suits your fancy and sell it on your blog, eBay, and even Amazon. Another possibility is to turn the blog itself into an eBook and sell that. How’s that for passive income? I’ll try writing a few eBooks myself and I’ll let you know how it goes!

Affiliate Programs

Have products that you are genuinely happy with and want to refer others to? Would you like to make a commission helping to sell products and/or services that you already support? Affiliate programs are there to help reward referrals for sales. I would suggest doing this only if you would have made the recommendation for those products and services anyways. Why ruin the reputation of your blog (and thus your traffic) pitching stuff that doesn’t interest you or your readership? But if the products do indeed help and stuff you are legitimately using already or supporting, then why not? Get the passive income that comes from easy referrals.

• Amazon Associates — Probably the best-known affiliate program is Amazon Associates, which rewards you from 4% to over 6% for selling books and other items on your site. I have been running Amazon Affiliate advertising on this site since I started to promote the FHWW book and the shredder that I love so much. It’s a great way of generating passive income, especially if you’re already recommending the products!
• Commission Junction — One of the largest networks of affiliate-based revenue streams and offers. From their site: “Commission Junction’s network, the CJ Marketplace, provides publishers with opportunities to partner with leading advertisers while having access to millions of links and offers. The publisher is paid a commission by the respective advertiser when a visitor takes a specific action such as filling out a form, subscribing to a service (both lead examples) or making a purchase (a sale).” I am not sure how to use CJ effectively, but I am sure I will learn soon.
• Linkshare — Similar to CJ, LinkShare “runs the largest pay-for-performance affiliate marketing network on the Internet” and coordinates the relationship between advertisers and publishers (that’s you, the blogger).
• Clickbank — Similar to the above affiliate programs, but with one big difference — the products that you are referring visitors to are exclusively digital products. So, if you want to make referrals to music, eBooks, etc. that are available for immediate purchase and download, or if you have an eBook that you want to promote, ClickBank might be the way to go. I’ll let you know if it works with my eBook ideas!
• Affiliate Sensor — This one is a unique idea which combines the way Google Ads work (automatically placed ads based on contextual relevance) with the revenue generation of Affiliate links. So, you’re getting random affiliate links placed on your site that you will get paid on a Click-per-Action (CPA) basis. Hmm, not the best idea if you want to control your content. And, I’m not sure what Google will think of another context-based ad/revenue generation system on your site.
• ShoppingAds — Monetize your site with live merchant listings that display (supposedly) relevant products and pay you through good click-through rates. Because the ads are non-contextual, they don’t compete with or violate any Google Adsense Terms of Service. However, there have been a number of complaints about their business practices and timeliness of pay-outs.
• Roll-Your-Own — There are literally thousands of affiliate programs out there. If you have a product you like, see if they have an affiliate program, and go forth, promote and profit. But be careful and remember to promote only that which you’d recommend anyways!

Get Paid to Blog

Just like the affiliate programs, you can seek revenue for posting on blog topics that are of interest to you and your readership. There are a number of programs that will pay you to write about stuff. But, just like the affiliate programs, you have to be careful with these. The small amount of money you can make in posting a paid advertisement can be counter-productive to ad revenue since it could drive away readers. No one likes obvious advertising shills, and you’ll ruin your credibility, which means reduced readership, which means reduced advertising revenue and all the other sources of revenue. So, post only on what your readers will legitimately care about so that the little bit of revenue from posting itself doesn’t bite you in the end. You should post only on things that compliment existing writing and make it clear that while the post is sponsored, you support the content and are responsible for the results.

• PayPerPost — A somewhat controversial concept in which advertisers will pay you to post a topic on your blog. If the topic is of legitimate interest to your readers anyways and you can write it in a way that’s genuine then go for it. I believe it’s potetna revenue for work you are already planning on doing. But if it’s going to be clearly advertorial content that edges on authenticity, don’t risk your traffic and diminish all the other revenue streams for a few bucks. I’m undecided on this one. Thoughts?
• ReviewMe -A slightly different twist on the get-paid-to-blog concept. This site will pay you at least $25 per post to review advertiser’s products. Supposedly you can be quite candid and honest (even negative) in your reviews without penalty. But a word of mention here — ReviewMe will only accept blogs and websites that already have significant traffic and visibility. My site got rejected as being too lowly in the Blogosphere. So, the paradox is that if you already have plenty of traffic, you’re probably getting it without having to be paid to post. And you’re probably already making tons of $$ through other revenue sources. So, why would you want to sacrifice your traffic and ad earnings for earning just a few bucks on reviews? ReviewMe should see their opportunity to help fledgling bloggers get a market and traffic, not help the already well-established blog players.
• Blogsvertise, SponsoredReviews, BloggerWave — The same ideas as PayPerPost and ReviewMe. A review of all these pay-to-blog providers can be found here. You can also see a more comprehensive list of pay-to-blog sites here. I might give Blogsvertise a try, but they require you to post about them on your blog (interesting marketing technique), so you might see a post on that shortly. I’ll let you all know the results of these activities!
• Blogging for Hire — Finally, there are a number of sites that will pay you to post on their blogs. Now, I don’t really consider this as passive income cause you’re basically doing the writing for someone else and getting paid for your work. Maybe in that regard, all of these pay-to-blog services aren’t really passive income either. And if you’re working to get paid, you have to really see how much time it’s taking up. In which case, is it really a muse? It’s only worth it if you can generate significant income for very short amount of time. I’d only consider being paid to write a new blog post if I can do it in 10-15 minutes and get paid at least $25 for the effort. This makes my time worth $125 an hour (do the math – 12 minutes or 1/5 of an hour – for $25). So, in general, I wouldn’t really consider any of this section truly passive income.
• Another key consideration: Google is really smacking down pay-t0-blog sites. This might serve as warning to folks who want to get paid for posting. Since it doesn’t really back up the idea of passive income (it’s just another way to get paid for work), I’m not sure that it’s going to be a good idea in the long haul for folks looking at blogs as muse-worthy businesses.

Blog Applications

Perhaps better and more valuable to readers than being paid to blog stuff you might not otherwise post is the idea of creating applications that run on the blog and are automated. These little applications can generate one-time or recurring revenue that requires little, if any, upkeep.

• Job Boards — If you are in a business niche that can attract job seekers as well as job posters, then running a job board on your site makes a lot of sense. You can automate both the posting functions as well as the seeking functions and charge a few hundred dollars for the post, and provide it for free to job seekers.
• Personals – Some high-traffic blogs that cater to a specific personality / cultural niche can do the personal equivalent of the job-board: personals. A few blogs generate hundreds of thousands of dollars this way, charging either for the post or a recurring fee for retrieval of messages, etc. If your blog caters to such audiences, then this might be a good idea for passive income generation.
• Other ideas – Do you have other application ideas that can generate one-time or recurring fees? If so, let me know and I’ll post it for a future update.

Other Forms of Passive Income

• Vizu — Make money by posting polls. There’s the free polls that cost nothing and generate no revenue, and then there’s the Vizu Power Polls that allow you to earn money by posting market-research type questions. I’m going to give it a try. Let me know what you think.

Donations

Say you don’t want to blatantly advertise but still want to turn your blog into a muse. Say you advertise, but you would rather get the support of your community. Yes, your readers might have sympathy (or support) for you and want to support your efforts. If you have a blog that champions a cause or is worthy of support, you can simply ask for money. In fact, the only reason I’m running this blog myself is to turn it into a muse so that I can focus my time on other things. Indeed, if I can generate $150k a year from this blog, I can focus my efforts (and time) on things that are not so urgently related to making money. If you want to see what a donation page looks like and donate to the Help Rex Get a Muse Fund, please check it out on the sidebar to your right. If you want to download and install your own, check out ChipIn, the one I’m using on this site.

Of course, the key to any of the above revenue streams is traffic. No one will come to your blog and thus allow you to monetize that traffic if it isn’t interesting. And without traffic, there’s no revenue. So, how do you get traffic? The best way to do that is to make your site interesting. Increase the quality of the content and make it remarkable (in the words of Seth Godin) and you’ll see the results come in. All the rest of the above is just gravy. After all, your muse should be fun. If it’s just work, it ain’t a muse. But then again, if it’s not making money, it ain’t a muse either.

There are a few ways to go about increasing blog traffic organically (that is, without pulling shenanigans). One way is to keep writing good content and encouraging your readers to share it with others. Another way is to make your blog more search-engine friendly (where most of the readership will first come from) as well as make it easier to allow people to share content. This means never delete old posts, archive individual posts, incorporate the title of the post into the tags of the post, link a lot externally and allow people to link in a lot, make your blog slim and trim (something I probably have to do), and wrap hypertext around words. Another thing you can do to increase your blog traffic is to register it on blog registries like Blogowogo, Blogshares, Globe of Blogs, Eaton Web, and other places.

Other methods are to have Forums / Discussion Boards, Chat Rooms, Polls, Guest Maps, and Newsletters. Each serves as a way of either increasing the amount of good content or spreading the good content you already have. I might start a few forums and newsletters for Four Hour a Weekers if I can do it in a way that is passive and contributes to the overall value and traffic of the site.

To help with the above, getting accurate figures on how your blog is performing is key. I suggest Google Analytics as a key step to getting the sort of ongoing traffic numbers you need to determine if your blog is a PIG or just a Hog.