Making money basics: traffic

Just as there are three major ways to earn money on the internet, there are also three ways to get lots of visitors to your website:


1. Advertise
2. Advertise
3. Advertise

This is not meant to be insulting to you; it is meant to focus your attention.

How many ways are there to advertise? A heck of a lot more than three. A heck of a lot more than Google Adwords.

In short, pretty much every single thing you can think of to do which will somehow serve to publicize your website falls under the general category of advertising. A lot of the things on the following list are things you very likely do already. Maybe you just haven’t thought of them as being “advertising.”

Adwords bidding (I didn’t say not to do it, just that it isn’t the only way to advertise.)

Visiting other websites and commenting.

Syndicating your content.

Creating a topical and informative newsletter.

Forcing yourself to join some social networking websites.

Making a list of relevant forums and being a regular contributor.

Pay for advertising space on popular websites, at least as popular as you can afford.

Write free PDF downloadable informational ebooks.

Be a teacher. Set yourself up as an authority on something. (You are, you know.)

Finally, make sure your website is attractive, informative, entertaining, and fun to visit. Unless you are selling used cars, respect your audience by leaving out the audio, the popups, and the unutterably despicable sticky regenerating exit windows. If you happen to be selling cars, new or used, then the above is ok, because you don’t respect your audience anyway.

Are there more? I haven’t even scratched the surface. Use these to jog your thinking about more.

More importantly, DO them.

Secret lives of successful bloggers

Is there a big secret?

There must be. There has to be. There is. You have suspected this for a long time now, but let’s finally get it out in the open:

“There is more to blogging than just writing a lot of stuff and setting up your blog to suit the search engines.”

There. I said it. I feel better already.

As always, you can find the clues to the “secret” things that successful bloggers do by simply reading their blogs on a regular basis. Perhaps you have had a sneaking suspicion all along that these people were doing something you weren’t doing. You were right. If you don’t have tons of traffic, you were right: they ARE doing something you aren’t doing. Or at least you are not doing it as well as they are.

Some things are hard to explain, hard to define. On the one hand, you have what I call the “mechanics” of running a blog: things like good and interesting and helpful writing; good monetization techniques; advertising; commenting on other people’s blogs, and so forth. On the surface it seems like you are doing every single thing that the “big boys and girls” are doing on their blogs. That must not be true.

Like I said, it’s hard to put this intangible thing into words. But at the heart of the matter is the fact that the really successfull bloggers have found a way, somehow, to CONNECT with their readers. They are on the same wavelength, the same side of the street. They have discovered what their readers are looking for, and they give it to them.

For the next few posts, let’s explore that “secret” in more detail.