What’s the secret to making money on the web? If you ask some arbitrary business-type, chances are they’ll start frothing at the mouth, do a little bobble-head dance while their eyes roll back into their head and they squeal: “Traffic, traffic, traffic!”

It’s easy to get caught up in this mentality. Of course! If people see my product there is a 10-40% chance that they’ll download it. If they download it, there is a 1-4% chance that they’ll buy it. This all adds up to … between 1 and 16 sales per 1000 visitors. Obviously, the only thing to do is increase visitors.

But that’s only looking at one side of the equation. There seems to be an obsession on increasing the quantity of visitors instead of improving the quality. I’m guilty of it, too. Maybe it’s because we have better tools at our disposal for measuring sheer numbers.

Of course I get excited when a mention on some popular blog or in a news publication sends a bunch of visitors my way. They show up on Mint, and it makes me feel popular. So I pat myself on the back and keep working. I have also enjoyed watching my Technorati rank slowly increase. It’s something. A metric that tells me I’m doing something useful and should continue. But when hundreds of 5-second readers surge in from Digg or some other general-tech news source, is it really doing anything for my blog or my business? At least the Technorati ranking has the secondary effect of improving my appearance in niche categories. So getting a lot of traffic from whatever source can help inflate my numbers and increase the odds that somebody actually looking for what I’m writing about will see it and be encouraged to come visit. But what does Digg do for me?

I suppose it’s easy to argue that more eyeballs is always a good thing. After all, some goofball who couldn’t care less about Macs or software development might nonetheless recognize my name when sitting in a meeting where a committee is trying to decide whether to give me thousands of dollars. What? It could happen!

But in general, the dialogue of my blog and the sales of my software are directly related to the quality of my visitors. So it’s a lot better if Merlin Mann notices and points to my app than if it gets mentioned in some Windows-user forum as something they’d “like to see” on the PC. What am I going to say to bunch of PC users? I’d rather open a coffee-shop or write music than develop for your platform? Lo siento. No hablo PC, Señor.

Digg is like an international tech freeway. Lots of people are traveling on it, passing through thousands of sites per day. Maybe they snap a few pictures as they speed by at 85 MPH, but they rarely stop to truly take in the surroundings.

There’s a reason the freeways always pass through poor sections of town. Nobody really wants to be on or near them. They’re a means to an end. We use them when we need a change of scenery – whether we’re wandering or speeding through the night towards a known destination. In any case, we’re not in the mood to buy anything meaningful on the freeway. Nobody is. We might pay for a Coke from the rest area snack machine, or be seduced by a Taco Bell billboard, where we’ll stop for 15 minutes to part with at most $5 of our hard-earned cash. The freeway is a trashy marketplace.

When a freeway plan intrudes on a thriving city marketplace, the shopkeepers get furious. They know the freeway spells the death of their neighborhood, and therefore the death of their business. But on the Internet most of are convinced that a freeway running through our neighborhood is a good thing, and I think we’re wrong about that. Dead wrong.

And yes, I see the irony of this post having just below it a “Digg This” icon. What can I say? I still like to be dugg. But it feeds my ego much more than my blog or business.

Since I moved to the Boston area, the TomTom Go 300 GPS has been a real lifesaver for me. Actually, since before we moved – we drove across the country from San Francisco to Boston, and let me tell you it paid for itself just in helping us to find food and lodging along the way.

And then it paid for itself doubly and triply as I got my bearings in the crazy streets of Somerville, Cambridge, and other Boston suburbs in which I dwell. It’s just so handy to be able to type in an address and “go there.” I love it in spite of its sometimes quirky ignorance of one-way streets, etc.

And then they tooks it from me. Last night or this morning, somebody smashed in the passenger’s side window of my car and took the TomTom from my glove box.

Bastards!

I was a fool to leave it in the car, but that’s just sort of how I am. I tend to tempt humanity with trust until proven foolish. I’ve also gotten a bit of false security about my neighborhood because of crazy incidents like accidentally leaving the windows down with the TomTom in plain sight, overnight, with no repercussions! Coming here from the Mission District in SF, it does feel kind of like Candyland in many regards.

But my poor TomTom is still gone.

Scott Stevenson over at Cocoa Dev Central picked up on a couple good new blogs, which he’s included in his front-page summary of “Cocoa + Mac Blogs”:

Cocoa Samurai – Colin Wheeler is adopting an educational approach that I really appreciate. The more “Tutorials” the better, as far as I’m concerned. His article on Doxygen looks like it’s worth reviewing.

Losing Fight – Andy Finnell seems perplexed by his inclusion, claiming that he’s hardly writing about Cocoa at all. But the front page of his blog is littered with Core Data references, so I guess he might just be pertinent in spite of himself!

I’ve also noticed a few recent additions that are worth keeping an eye on:

Lap Cat Software – Jeff Johnson is one of the developers of the Vienna open source newsreader, who recently took the plunge into blogging. He’s on the right track with his detailed analysis of getting NSTableView to do the right thing in response to single vs. double clicks.

MacMojo – The official “multi-blog” of Microsoft Office Mac team. This is an example of Microsoft kicking Apple’s butt in terms of public exposure. I’m not suggesting this blog will be a completely transparent view of the inner workings of the Office team. There’s bound to be some self-censorship, at the very least. But they have a blog, and that’s a bold step. Where’s the Core Data Blog? The QuickTime blog, etc? Apple employees who blog do so outside the umbrella of their workplace, in a disjointed fashion and always carefully “not speaking for my employer.” All that effort is squandered, when it could be building Apple’s reputation as being engaged in the public discourse.

The Masked Blogger – speaking of Apple’s idiotic blog-stifling policies, this blogger decided to glorify the circumstances surrounding his or her anonymity. Not really sure what the gist of the content is – it seems to be specifically about the need to be masked, which could turn interesting. Judging from the Sainsbury’s references (perplexingly misspelled in the blog), I’m guessing the Masked Blogger works for Apple UK.

Erik Schwiebert and David Weiss – Two Microsoft bloggers who demonstrate that there’s room for both corporate and private blogging. These men contribute to the aforementioned Mac Mojo blog while still running their own private blogs outside the company. Notably – they are not secretive about their association with Microsoft, event from their private blogs.

Google Mac Blog – Add this to the list of “cooler than Apple” corporate blogging entities. Well, they haven’t really posted much here, yet. But the mechanism is in place for Google’s Mac proponents to communicate with their public. Go, Google!

I try to stay up to date with new Mac bloggers, but you know how it goes: it’s easy to miss out on things. So I’m sure there are some other recent developments that have slipped past my radar. If you’ve got something new to share, feel free to comment about it below.

Sumana Harihareswara on the Fog Creek Weblog explains how FogBugz plays a central role in customer management at the company. Especially impressive to me is the part about how incoming voice messages get automatically converted to tickets with a voice attachment.

Thought 1: I wish I had a dedicated server so I could run FogBugz in all its glory.

Thought 2: Would it be excessively eccentric for me to run Asterisk in my apartment?