Just Another Writer

Money isn’t really the currency of the internet… Traffic is.

The success of your website depends on a lot of things. In a general way, it depends on the topic you choose, your writing style and content, your personality, your monetization strategy, and even the design of your site. But all in all, the measuring stick you should use to gauge the success of your online business is simple… it’s your traffic.

Getting traffic to your site is one of the most important things you can do as a web-prenuer. I believe that it’s easy to make money on the internet, so long as your traffic is high. You can have a sub-par design, or mediocre navigation, or you can even be a terrible writer. But if enough people are interested in what you’re doing, and you’re actively driving subscribers and new visitors to your site every day, than it’s inevitable for the money to follow… to varying degrees, of course. There are always ways to tighten the screws and increase your conversions, but for new bloggers, the early and immediate focus should be on producing valuable content and finding ways to distribute it as far as it will go.

To be honest, I didn’t take this lesson to heart until recently. In the beginning, everything carried equal weight to me… writing, designing, struggling to learn things that I didn’t know about, and balancing my day job all sort of went hand in hand. But the key that I’ve learned is this:

Without traffic, your website is just words on a page, no matter how good your content, your design, or your personality are.

If you want to avoid feeling like a monkey on a typewriter, then you’ve got to be actively working at building traffic. The web is filled with ideas on how you can do this… I’ll share a few now.

• Actively participate at other web sites- Comment on articles others have written. Contact your favorite blog authors and tell them you like what they do. Use forums and message boards to identify people who might be into your topic so you can invite them to visit.
• Carry a “blogger” business card- You can find a way to work your web site into just about any conversation… do that, then the minute someone asks you a question, you can present your card to them while you answer it.
• Submit your articles to popular sites- You might be tempted to hoard your articles for your own site, but sharing them with a site that has a much larger audience or readership than yours is actually a top-notch idea. Make sure you include mention that you wrote it and use a small, unobtrusive link back to your page.
• Make syndication easy so that new visitors will subscribe- A great way to get me to never come to your site again is to make me look around for an RSS icon. It’s the standard on the internet… text links to your feed might get me there, but I’m the type of person who needs an RSS icon to smack me in the face so I can subscribe and come back later.
• Link to other websites freely- They’ll probably return the favor. I’ve written about the way I name drop in a recent article on my site… for the most part, when you start sharing love with fellow bloggers, it makes them pay attention to you, and while you have their attention, they might visit your site themselves or link to you and encourage other people to visit.
  
• Post new articles frequently- If you produce new content frequently, visitors will have to stop by frequently to keep up with you. Careful, though… your readers don’t like to feel like they’re falling behind, so don’t over do it.

As a rule of thumb, I’ve recently started making traffic my first priority, ahead of producing content… making that adjustment isn’t easy at first, but when you create the habit of not doing anything until you do something to drive traffic first, then you’ll see gains, and it becomes much easier at that point. And once your traffic is up, it should be easy to maintain… unless you’re a monkey on a typewriter!

This article was written by Chris Bloczynski, from Chris Bloczynski dot Com. Chris writes about lifestyle and entrepreneurship, with an emphasis on principles such as attitude, removing distractions, mentorship, and tactics for marketing and growth.