There are blogs that generate ad revenue that support the blogger, her family, and her personal assistant.  Those blogs have millions of readers, and your chances of building an audience like that are about equal to your becoming a Hollywood mega-star.

But that’s not the point.

The question for you is:  how many people need to be reading your blog in order to justify the time and money that must be spent establishing and maintaining it?  Are people really going to be reading that much about the products they consume?

The answer is that it isn’t a question of how many people visit your website.  It’s a question of which people do, and what do they get out of it when they do.

If you post a couple of times a week, you might be talking to yourself some days.

But someone might happen on your blog looking for your exact business and when she does, she’s not going to read just the post you wrote this morning.  She’s going to dig.  Into your archives, through your categories, along your tags and titles.  She’s going to learn a lot about you and how you do business.

The preliminary coffee meeting of the 1980’s and before is gone. People meet on the Web now.  The post you write that is ignored today will be carefully read by every client that Googles you hereafter.

How often do you check your dentist’s website?

Right.

Now how often would you check it if she provided weekly tips on home-whitening products, ways to know if tooth pain is serious — or even advice on how much sugar is okay?

What if you saw a story in the news about the dangers of some plaque removal systems and knew for sure she’d have a post out on it by the end of the day?

If a local dentist had a website like that, if she dedicated twenty minutes per week to it, what do you think the returns would be on her business?

That dentist wouldn’t be a blogger, exactly — she wouldn’t be writing daily to build a large audience and generate advertising dollars.  She’d be a dentist with a thriving online presence that would help to build her business and increase her community visibility.

In the late 1990s, companies started realizing that they needed an online presence in order to compete.  But newspapers and radio were still viable then, and businesses sank money into websites as a sort of social-corporate obligation.  No one expected those websites to attract much business.

And in fact, those websites don’t.  The static, stoic, unchanging home page is boring and the only reason anyone will check it is to get your phone number or address to plug into the GPS.

Today’s thriving businesses — big and small — need an online presence.

If you knew a local dentist who was funny and approachable, if you had read her passionate treatise on calming patients and reducing pain — would she be the dentist for you?

Why would a Chinese restaurant need a blog?

Today, with almost seven million people in the  greater Boston area, the Globe circulates less than 200,000 newspapers per day, and steadily declining. Vanguard local radio stations are folding after three or four decades of popular programming, and most teenagers have no idea what an FM signal band is.

A business that approaches its advertizing budget with a 1994 mentality is going to waste time and money.

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“I’m just a small local business, I don’t need a website.”

I hear this all the time and it makes me nuts.  The Internet is killing local businesses and therefore it is bad and therefore we will not discuss it.

Here’s me on a table, with a megaphone:

Attention, Mom and Pop!  The Internet is not your enemy.  It is your knight in shining armor.

Sure, anyone can pop online and get their books from Amazon, their clothes from LL Bean, and their music straight to their iPod from iTunes.  That does change the landscape a bit.   But here’s news:  people still leave their homes.  They still like to eat locally, listen to concerts, look at their wedding invitations before they buy them, and try on dresses before they commit.

What’s more?  People like community.  They like to shop.  They like to do noble things with their dollars, and they like to buy from people they like.

Enter Internet.

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