An Informal Poll...

I was interviewed by the Wall Street Journal the other day; the interview won’t actually be published, it seems, because I didn’t Say The Correct Things to be worthy of that esteemed organ. The reporter I spoke to was basically asking me to back up her premise, which was more or less as follows:

A person has a small business. They start a blog to drive traffic to that business. The resulting traffic doesn’t make the business do any better.

I think the entire point of the article was to say “see, blogs are worthless from a business perspective.” What she wanted me to do was either agree with her, or refute her Fact with other Facts. I couldn’t do either; I know for a fact that _some_ of our sales at Audio Damage are as a direct result of this blog, but the only reason I know that is because people have posted it here or emailed and mentioned it as an aside.

But the whole event got my curiosity piqued. I mean, the entire point of this blog isn’t to drive traffic to Audio Damage; I’m not entirely sure _what_ the point is, but it isn’t that. It is, if anything, a side effect. But here’s our topic for the day: in your buying habits, SPECIFICALLY as it relates to music products, do you find the information from the four main gear blogs (AI, MatrixSynth, CDM, and MusicThing) informs your buying decisions in general? And specifically with AI, do you find that you’re more (or less) likely to buy an Audio Damage product as a result of my not-infrequent mentions of same here?