Much to my own surprise, I now see the new media movement much differently than I did back when I first started dabbling with the concept. Back then I took the “sphere” part literally, and I focused a lot of my time on being a part of this “sphere” everyone was chattering about.

I remember the first time I read Hugh Hewitt’s book “blog”, and I remember finishing the last chapter with great enthusiasm. I studied the work of Lorelle VanFossen, Glenn Reynolds, Ed Morrissey, the guys at Powerline and many others. I monitored traffic trends, worked with PPC programs, watched networks work together in pushing big stories, and participated in just about every online forum possible.

I’ve been fortunate in my way of thinking in that I never sought blogging success for myself; Rather, I wanted to do what I could to help others succeed online with what they were already doing offline. I credit this mentality for what I see as a decent understanding of how it all works, and how we can immerse ourselves in it to further the freedom movement.

What stands out the most?

For starters, I’ve recently began noticing that a lot of the advice and consulting with regards to new media has evolved around traffic. Yes, over the past five years a common message on blogging has been increasing readership. Sure, increasing readership is important, but I think we might have put far too much emphasis on the numbers themselves. And in doing so we failed to express the importance of the readers we already have.

What makes me think this? Well, for starters I’ve seen countless bloggers throw their hands up and admit defeat in their blogging journey. Was it because they didn’t enjoy expressing themselves and sharing their opinions? Not likely. I would be willing to bet that most felt they simply didn’t have a readership.

But did they really lack readers?

I run a blog hosting community over at ConservaBlogs.com. We’re coming up on two years of being live now and we have more than 20 bloggers who post several times per week. You can see examples of these blogs here, here, and here. The site is no Townhall or Newsbusters by any means, but we see an average of 4,500 visits per day.

This traffic is nice, but it didn’t always exist. In fact, just last summer we weren’t even seeing half the traffic we see now. We were lucky if we got 1,500 visits in a single day. At the time we had more than 30 bloggers on the site and traffic was just starting to pick up. However, because the traffic was not there yet, several of our bloggers became discouraged and closed down shop. For two of them, it was the first time they had ever dabbled with blogging and will likely be the last.

One of the bloggers simply vanished. I’ve yet to speak with him since he closed his blog down and I have no idea where he is now. But I did get a chance to exchange e-mails with one of the other bloggers who had given up on his blogging efforts. When asked why he decided to bail on his blog, he said he didn’t feel it was worth the effort. He pointed me to his stats where it was apparent he never had more than 40 visits per day, and he insisted that other bloggers were telling him he should have much higher numbers.

Before I go any further I must admit that I’m probably a part of the problem here. You see, I’m one of those bloggers who has for years preached the importance of growing numbers and large traffic spikes. Now, I’m not asserting this is wrong, but I would suggest that it leaves a wide open gap in the understanding of how important new media can be.

A growing readership is important, and something every blogger should be mindful of. But more importantly, it’s the who, not the how many.

We political junkies too often look at the traffic stats when judging the importance and influence of blogs. Our national pundits and news makers have, in my opinion, completely missed the mark in identifying and crediting good bloggers. Most of the major players of the “conservative movement” will simply write off a blogger because, well, because who is that?

How ridiculous…

Many on the right assume that Townhall, Newsbusters, Redstate, HotAir and other major online news servers are some how the “A-List” bloggers of the center-right movement.

My question is simple… when was the last time Townhall.com worked to oust a school board member in Topeka Kansas, replacing him/her with a true liberty candidate? Name the last time HotAir.com worked with local bloggers in Texas to shoot down a tax increase?

Heck, Chicago just cranked the sales tax to 10.25%, the highest in the nation! Where were the “A-Listers”?

I’m not trying to say these sites are irrelevant, because they aren’t. In fact, they play an extremely vital role in disseminating news punditry. But without payrolls and full time staff would they be able to do what they do? Without big names on the roster would they have as many readers?

Think about it.

In my view, the rock star bloggers are the ones who are filing FOIA’s. The big dogs are the ones beating down tax increases and exposing local corruption. The brave bloggers are those who take on teachers unions with nothing more than a keyboard and a Wordpress login.

And guess what? I’ve seen bloggers with no more than 30 visits per day literally shift state policy. I’ve watched underdog candidates for school board knock entrenched politicians from their seats using nothing more than the internet and a few hundred dollars.

So in the end, I would argue that perhaps we should shift our focus away from being “A-list” or big traffic blogs, and start focusing more on what it is we are opining on. In my opinion, an effective blog is one that is driven by passion, honesty, and a blogger who isn’t afraid to link to a few other bloggers.

Sure, you might not see more than 40 visits a day for the first year, but those 40 visits may be the most important visits you’ll ever have.

Part two of this thought coming soon…