Because there are so many different niches, markets, and demographics, there is no an exact science to find out what will attract people to come to your site; however, you can always try to list out some of your more popular pages and figure out what made these sites pop.
In this following list, we will be looking at some of the more popular articles throughout ASANT Media’s portfolio of sites, and try to figure out what exactly made these pages popular… (no specific order)
While there are tons of off-site activities that can be done to increase site traffic, many people often overlook a simple on-site task they can use…
Create articles related to popular current events.
Regardless of your particular niche, you can almost always relate an article back to some current event. Here are a view reasons why it works:
1. Increase chance of ranking high in search engines. There is a reason why reporters try to be the first one to jump on the story, and then others quickly follow. After a big event or news story, see what the most search keywords are. Odds are it will be filled with that particular news story. You never know when you might happen to sneak into the top page.
Regardless of whatever you are trying to do online to make money, you are essentially try to sell something. Whether it is through some direct product you have created or through some sort of affiliation, the end goal is to have readers convert on something.
In my years of experience, I have both tried and seen many different selling approaches, and they all usually involve different levels of aggressiveness. That being said, is your selling approach aggressive enough?
Because there are so many different products, niches, and services to sell it is hard to get a good gauge on what the best true level of aggressiveness is; however, I always feel that if you are not annoying some people with your approach then it just is not aggressive enough.
On your sales page, in your newsletters, and even within your ads, there should always be some form of call to action. At the same time, whatever you are pushing should be thrown into the face of potential customers multiple times.
Too many times sellers are scared to take chances. Afraid they might annoy some people and turn them away, but the truth is that if your content is good the “real potential customers” will always be there.
For an example, think of Best Buy. Nowadays, you will walk in and have to navigate your way through product displays in the front of the store, but because most people are interested with what the store actually has in it, they will put up with the displays. Best Buy will sell some of those highlighted products, keep actual interested customers willing to put up with the excessive displays, and lose a few people; however, the rewards are much higher than actually losing those few people. Why? Because they are still selling products, and odds are that the customers they lost were not really customers at all.
The process of analyzing how aggressive your selling approach should be may seem complex, but it is really not. Just remember that if you don’t tell people what they need to do, then odds are they probably won’t do it. It is better to lose a couple leads yet still make sales than pleasing everybody and making no money at all.
When it comes to designing your site and choosing the best layout, everybody has their own opinion of what looks good. Obviously if we have created the design or selected a theme to use, then we have placed in our minds the reason for creating our choice.
The problem is that what gets filtered through our mind, might not necessarily get passed onto other viewers. There are several ways to test the usability and flow of your site. There are various premium solutions that conduct some research or formulate some plan to determine where eyes lead to, but is there really any way to determine if its right?
The easiest way to test the usability and flow of your site is to simply monitor people actually using your site. Find friends, family, co-workers, or just somebody you can sit in front of a computer screen and let them freely peruse through your site.
Create a list of questions you may want answers to:
Regardless of what your site is about, you are ultimately trying to funnel readers somewhere. Whether you want them to comments, sign-up for newsletter, or purchase your product? The idea is to see if whatever you are highlighting is being focused on by the tester you are using and not just if your site looks good.
When you really get into the business of making money online, you will always find yourself scouring the internet for new and fresh ideas. Many times I do this through visiting some of my favorite sites or check out make money online targeted message boards such as Digitalpoint.
Whether it is people trying to sell their site or just talking about revenue, I always see people blaming their low revenue on a lack of traffic. While it could definitely be a viable problem, poor traffic numbers alone is not the reason for low revenue.
For most of my personal sites, it is a rare sight to see 1000 plus unique visitors per day, yet I am still making more money than people see 2000 unique visitors on a consistent basis.
So does it really matter how much traffic you get as long as its quality traffic?
To really understand this debate, we need to look at some of the ways people try and drive visitors to their site:
Guest posting: One of the best free methods to increase your page rank is by probably posting on somebody else’s site. While that is all good, I can’t tell you the number of times I see people post on sites that have no relation to the niche of their own site. So yeah you may have guest posted on JohnChow.com and received hundreds of visitors, but what good is it if many of them are probably not interested in your unrelated niche?
Social networks: There are probably hundreds if not thousands of social article networks, and there are probably tons for any given niche. If your site is financial related, then would it make sense to submit your article to a network targeted for sport topics? Articles submitted through StumbleUpon will also bring lots of un-targeted traffic as well.
So we figured out some of the problems with the quality of traffic you may be bringing in, but, once you get them there, then its time to look at your monetization process:
Non-targeted ads: When it comes to which ads to display on your site it is extremely important to put up ads that are directly related to your site. If you run a site on how to buy and sell stocks, then you DO NOT want to put up an advertisement for an affiliate network. It just won’t covert. Many times people are blinded by who their real visitors are. Regular people that come across your site through searches and so on, have no interest in high ppc campaigns.
Low quality ads: The problem with many affiliate programs is that they usually contain a bunch of bogus or “rip off” products. If you are not prepared to use that specific service/good that you are advertisting, then what makes you think others will. When traffic is low, it is better to push quality, well-known products that people can trust. It would also help if that affiliate also dished out some deals or other free stuff.
So while a larger quanity of traffic is always a positive, what good is that traffic if you don’t have some proper monetization process or that traffic is not targeted at all?