i just checked my blog stats…turns out my Liskula Cohen post had 46 views…significantly more than my next highest post. Now the writing there wasn’t too original…what I think made that one stand out was the picture of 5 BEAUTIFUL women that I inserted in the post and used to post to facebook. people see beautiful women, they click on it…both guys AND girls.
so does sex still sell? is that how to attract people to read content…good looking people in pictures? well, here’s another test run. part of an adalytics experiment 
UPDATE: per Timothy’s comment below, i think that he’s right. bigger audience may not be the desired audience! i guess the question is, does my targeted audience click through more when there is a picture of a good looking person rather than a nice winter day?
i also want to say, thank you photo loader (flickr creative commons plug in) that allows me to pull pictures about anything. it makes for very quick posts, and I think posting a picture in a blog is helpful for breaking up text!
#1 by Sherry Main on January 9, 2009 - 11:46 pm
Get enough hits, and add ads to your blog… and you won’t ever have to work again!
#2 by Sherry Main on January 9, 2009 - 11:46 pm
Interesting experiment, btw.
#3 by Adam Ainbinder on January 9, 2009 - 11:49 pm
@Sherry Main -
so many factors…time of day, time of year, what week, what day…but that cohen post….amazed at the number of views relative to the other posts. also got picked up on a techcrunch post at the bottom since i linked to it, but i don’t know if that was the reason. i guess we’ll find out
#4 by Timothy Hsu on January 10, 2009 - 12:25 am
Depends on what you want your blog to be known for- original writing or trashy photos? IMHO, gratuitous cheesecake is a crutch for substandard content.
Oh, and the woman in that photo is totally surgically enhanced.
#5 by Adam Ainbinder on January 10, 2009 - 9:05 am
@Timothy Hsu
good point timothy. the question is an interesting one though because what if substandard content is what works in today’s society? is it an American thing?
i think you’re right though. although the audience may be bigger, is it the audience i want to attract?