Web traffic is defined as the amount of data sent and received by visitors to a web site. In order for a blog to make money, it needs people to visit the site. Your site’s visitors are your money makers. They are the ones who generates you your online income. Like the fans swooshing over Orlando Bloom or Brad Pitt, both wouldn’t make as much money as they do without them.
Bloggers should exert maximum effort for people to find their blogs. It could be through search engine optimization, comments on other people’s blog, organizing a contest, posting in forums, advertising, referrals and much more. But what among these methods helps you most to achieve your blogging goals and help you make money online.
Traffic Sources
The traffic sources that I will be discussing are paid traffic, search engines, traffic exchange, directory listing, social blog directory, social bookmarking sites, paid advertising and forums. Since this is a very long article, I would divide this case study into four posts.
1. Paid traffic (paid to surf)
I often see people in Digital Point offering x,xxx traffic for $$$ cash. I was quite confused how come this person could tell the precise amount of traffic hits. Then I came to realize that this person might own a paid-to-surf company wherein people are paid if they surf certain websites. But is your dime really worth traffic from paid to surf people? Chances are, you could end up with the following changes in your statistics:
- Your site will have a huge bounce rate. Bounce rate determines how interested your visitors are in your site
- Lower the average time of visits
- Returning visitors statistics would be extremely low
Worst, how can you be sure that this traffic hits comes from real people and not bots?
On the other hand, a traffic is a traffic. Some bloggers might use this method to attract private advertisers. Most of the private advertisers are only interested in the amount of traffic your site receives. In my experience of dealing with private advertisers, they rarely asks for the traffic sources. Only 1 of 10 of the advertisers that I’ve dealt with inquire about it. Note to private advertisers: ask for the traffic sources before considering buying an ad space.
If you want to avail this service, there is a huge difference between unique visits and page hits. Unique visit is the IP address of the visitors, so 1 unique IP address = 1 visitor. And page hits is counted as the number of web pages per person visits
2. Search engine traffic
These visitors came to your site with a purpose of knowing. The answers they are looking for can be found in your site. The popular search engines today are Google, Yahoo, MSN, Altavista and more. Too bad I don’t have the statistics to back this up. Anyway, it is a common knowledge to everyone that the most popular search engine today is Google. So why not concentrate your SEO with Google. If your site is doing well in Google, your rankings in Yahoo and MSN will follow.
Search engine traffic would end up generating most of your earnings online. If you have Adsense and the adverts shown complied to what they are looking for, there is a huge chance that they will click your ad. The same thing goes for the private advertisers.
However, some bloggers or website owners use SEO to trick people to visit their site. I am extremely annoyed when this happens and never ever returns to that site again.
If your site ranks well on a number of keywords, the next thing to focus is how to keep your visitors. The following list would certainly help you in order to do so
- No pop up advertisements or pop up installation or one page ads. Trust me, this annoys most of the visitors
- The site advertisements does not block the article itself
- High quality of content
- Original content
- Easy to read. Font is readable, colors are not eye sore.
- Proper layout of pages
- Attractive web theme or design
- Your article is truly helpful
The quality of search engines traffic is really high for the following reasons (1) real people (2) Increases average time in site (3) Decreases bounce rate (4) Target traffic (5) Increases online earnings (6) Unlimited opportunity
This is the first part of the Case Study: Quality Traffic. Next, I would be tackling traffic exchange, directory listing, social blog directory, social bookmarking sites, paid advertising and forums. Make sure to subscribe to my RSS feed to get the latest from Blogging from Scratch.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 26th, 2008 at 8:42 am and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
You are right to point out that paid traffic is usually worthless. Yes, it may help to improve your Alexa ranking but it is cheating. This kind of traffic do not look at the content of your blog at all.
And I like your tips on keeping blog visitors. Keep up the good work.
jeflins last blog post..Inflating Earnings By Capitalizing Expenses
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I really enjoyed your article.
I would never pay money to get hits for my website. Entrecard is a free tool for bloggers like me.
Danas last blog post..Mighty Cafepress or how I made 350$.
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You got a lovely blog around here, plus cool template and graphics. These are very important components of a successful blog. Got to admit, I don’t have such talents. How I wish I could design my own logo and graphics but I dont.
As for traffic, its something that a blogger really have to work hard. Its useless to pay for traffic. There’s no substitute with socializing with other bloggers, visiting their blogs, leave comments, write good contents (just like yours) and interact with your visitors. Over time you gonna build up relationships and its the best way to earn traffic and loyal visitors.
bloggistas last blog post..Why Ubuntu Is A Moneysaver for SME Businesses
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You are absolutely right about focusing not only on the quality of the website but also the quality of visitors. It really doesnt say much if no one is spending more than the time they have to on your website just to be paid. I find another great technique to build traffic is post exchanges - that is making a connection with a blog that either shares your interests or is completely different and then offering to do a short post on their blog and they post on your own. This way you get some cross traffic and people see you aren’t just obsessed in your own little world.
Another thing is definately interacting with commenters, Responding to emails, and constantly chaning the blog for the better.
Johnsons last blog post..Political Music Wars: Pop Liberals vs. Hip-Hop Republicans
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Now my personal blog is getting established and I am getting regular traffic from regular viewers I am starting a monthly contest so I am hoping to launch this contest on the first of September. I am really really excited and hope that it may take off with a bang. Let’s see if I can pull my first one off in good stead. I really like your blog layout by the way and the quality content
yanjiarens last blog post..My Dream House in Bhutan.
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Thank you everyone
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