Most of us want to turn a buck with our web sites. Even if your motivation for producing the site isn’t monetary, profitability is an undeniable yardstick for success.
Traffic determines just how much success your site is going to enjoy. Traffic is a reflection of how well you’ve done optimizing your site for search engines, how on target your content is to your market and how well you write and present it. Traffic is going to make your pay-per-click ads produce, your affiliate ads convert, allow you to pursue private sponsors and determine the monthly rate you will charge them. So what can you do to get that herd on your site? Be something that people want.
To be. The pinnacle verb in any language. The pinnacle is exactly where we want….to be. The following are five things you should strive to be if you have great ambitions for your web site:
1. Be a writer. First and foremost good prose will make people stick around to find out what you’re saying and will make them return for more. Communicate your thoughts clearly and effectively. Write well and people will notice.
2. Be an entertainer. No matter how well you write you are going to alienate readers by delivering your thoughts in a manner that reads like a physics text book. I’m not saying you should stumble over yourself trying to be the class clown, but you will retain readers if you are witty and can make them smile. I frequent blogs that are way off the beaten path for me, all because they were so well written and entertaining that I was engaged with the first article.
3. Be controversial. Obviously this point is not going to be for everyone. This is a whole blog philosophy. I’m not telling you to provoke people on your SEO blog. If you have a blog whose subject matter is concerned with matters in current events that people are familiar with and that evokes an emotional response in people, your blog is going to explode, provided you’ve done everything else right. People love to comment on topics they have strong feelings about. Blogs with controversial subject matter tend to have insane comment traffic. These blogs also get big traffic from search engine results because people are searching keywords related to things they’ve seen on CNN, heard on the radio, or read on the internet. These blogs also tend to get mentioned in articles by mainstream media web sites, which also makes for big traffic spikes.
If you have a blog that is firing on all cylinders that is based on newsworthy, controversial subject matter, expect big traffic. If you also have subject matter that mates well with product, expect to make a lot of money. The problem with controversial blogs is that they will generally be harder to pair with product, but if you find the right formula you will be printing your own money.
4. Be social. The only Firefox addons I use are a Google PR bar and the Alexa toolbar. I’m not a real big fan of social bookmarking. I don’t use it myself, but there is no denying the impact it can have for the right blog with the right content. Don’t just submit everything you write and tell all your friends to Digg or Stumble it. You can get traffic by doing so, but you will expend more effort than it’s worth. My time is valuable. I’m not spending it unless I have a good indication the payout is there, and submitting everything you do will reap some traffic, but it won’t pay for the time you spend doing it.
Submit those items that you feel will reap the benefits of social bookmarking. If you have a piece of content that is extraordinarily good, or something that you beat everyone else to the punch on, give it a shot. Now is the time to tell your friends to help you get it jumpstarted, and if it does take off I hope your hosting can handle the wave that will be coming your way. Time to enable those page caching plugins.
5. Be first. This point is tricky, and has two parts as well.
First, if you have a genuinely original idea for a blog, and that idea is going to appeal to people, you have a winner. Unfortunately that is like trying to invent electricity. Everyone has thought of everything, and that is why so much of the world, much less the internet, is derivative. It’s ok to be derivative as long as you’re good. That’s the boat most of us sit in. Truly original ideas are few and far between, and the ones that will enjoy mass appeal are even scarcer. If you find yourself fortunate enough to come up with something great, something that fills a void, something that others will emulate, then do everything else you need to do and expect great things.
Second, for the rest of us who aren’t clever enough to invent the wheel, lead and don’t follow. Tirelessly strive to generate fresh content that others will emulate. Be the first to write that article about the Big New Thing. Don’t follow the big boys after they have already covered it. This is tough and requires effort on your part, but sooner or later readers will realize that you are a trailblazer and will either make your site a frequent stop or subscribe to your feed.
We all wanted to create a web site for different reasons. Perhaps you have an area you are particularly passionate about, maybe you want to kill some time, maybe you want to supplement your income, or maybe you want to quit the day job altogether and get rich off the internets. Regardless, ultimately we’re all after the same thing, which is justification. Nothing says “hey thanks, you’re creating something of value” more than a boatload of visitors, and preferably they bring wheelbarrows full of cash with them.
Create something with some passion behind it, care about what you do with it, do it well, and almost certainly success will follow.
