The secret to being successful online boils down to one thing, TRAFFIC.Making money is easy if you have a site that attracts a lot of visitors. Traffic equals power which ultimately leads to money.
It can be both easy and difficult to generate money depending on the topic of your site. Even a ridiculous site such as HotorNot.com has a profit of around $7 million a year. The gist of this site allows people to judge the photos of others based on a scale of 1-10. I first perceived this site as trivial, and was unable to see how a profit can be made. Contrary to what I thought, it turned out to be a simple dating site where connections can be made through a paid subscription service. As a result, a minor $6 a month subscription service added up to about $7 million dollars a year in revenue.
If your expenses are high, generating revenue might not be enough. Surprisingly, one of the most famous sites on the internet does not generate a profit. What site is this? Youtube.com. Originally, generating a steady profit was not part of the game plan for youtube.com. It started off as a venture capital funded website; millions of dollars were invested in building the website's infrastructure, bandwidth, and employees to create one of the dominant forms of online media for the Internet. However, the creators of YouTube did make a handsome profit through its sale to Google for $1.6 billion. Think about it, Google paid $1.6 billion on a site that never made a profit, why? Because Google understands more than anyone the value of generating traffic, and firmly believe that traffic is power...which is money.
So how do you build traffic to your website? The following techniques can be used for new and established websites.
Step 1: BAIT
Bait is an attractive proposition that appeals to your target audience, and is specific and unique enough to stand out from others. It can also be an incentive for the new visitor and should be intriguing or tempting. The bait should also represent your website in the most relevant light.The following are examples of bait for your website:Well written original articles (most commonly used by traffic generators)Web tools or application downloadsInterview with a notable personality your target audience cares aboutFree items, resources, or discounts/deals
Step 2: Send Traffic to the Bait
After setting up the bait, it needs to be marketed extensively. You should use a variety of marketing methods to get as many people to view your bait as possible. The obvious purpose of this is to spread awareness of your website.You also need to decide what you want the traffic to do before you send it to your bait. Do you want to build your opt in mailing list? Or are you simply trying to build links? You will need to optimize your website so that the traffic you receive serves it's purpose.The following are common ways to send traffic to your bait:Social media networking websites (facebook.com, linkedin.com, etc) Forums and bulletin boards of websites pertaining to your target audienceEmails to bloggers and webmasters in your specific nicheGoogle pay per click advertising to your website (costly, but there are techniques you can use to greatly lower your cost per click, I'll show you later)Buying ad space on well trafficked and relevant websites (costly as well, and the re is no way around that, unless someone else can show me otherwise)Submitting articles to article directories and blogs (The most common and cheapest, time consuming though)
Step 3: Create A Community and Repeat The Steps With Consistency
After you have successfully promoted, it is important to follow up with your audience and provide content that is relevant to their interests and needs.
Write articles to produce content that is similar to your bait. The goal here is to create a community around your website. Make sure you analyze how your followers interact with the website. After a while, create new bait to attract different audiences to but not so different that your website won't pertain to a niche market anymore. Do this by repeating the steps above.
The development focus of a new website should be 20% focus on content and 80% focus on marketing and traffic generation. You can write the best articles out there but if nobody knows about your website you are not building any traffic which equals income, nor are you building any loyal readership.
Understanding The Importance of Traffic
They say that 90% of businesses fail within their first year. The same applies to websites. Most new websites end up languishing in the gutters of the internet eventually being abandoned by their owners. It is important to realize that consistent traffic motivates you to keep the website alive, and positive reinforcement is very important for sustaining a website.
Finally I will also mention that there are many good tools and resources out there one can use to build traffic to their website. It is important to continually educate yourself about the best and latest traffic generating techniques out there. There is never too much you can learn. Here is a very successful tool I have used to generate tons of traffic to my websites VIA:
I'm certain that you won't be disappointed.
Cheers