Most webmasters focus on getting more traffic, but more traffic doesn’t always mean more income—it can even mean less income if your variable costs increase. This is not good news for webmaster who spend all day and night generating traffic that actually does nothing.
I am sad to see people writing about how to get more traffic without mentioning that this traffic needs to be targeted and your content needs to be awesome and highly relevant. You could say that would be it in a nut shell, but that would be too easy!
How More Traffic Costs You More Money
Every site has a combination of fixed and variable costs. A domain name is a fixed cost—it costs you the same whether one person visits your site or a million people visit your site.
Other costs are variable. If you run a small site, you can use cheap website hosting. Large sites with many visitors should use higher-priced top web hosting for its additional features.
The problem with more traffic is that it increases your variable costs without necessarily increasing your income. That’s because the more traffic you get, the lower the chance each individual visitor is your ideal customer.
High traffic websites need to supply quality content to their visitors but the more you get, the more content you need to supply. Some sites pay writers to create articles and having a growing demand for content can cost big dollars. It is a viscous circle so when you get more traffic, you need it to be the right traffic to make it all.
I am facing this problem now as I have three sites that require at least 4 fresh posts per week. Then I like to generate traffic for each new post to give it a flying chance to rank. This all either takes time or costs money. 🙂
How More Traffic Goes Horribly Wrong
The most common case where more traffic costs webmasters more money is when webmasters target link aggregators such as Reddit and the old Digg. Almost nobody who visits Reddit or other aggregators will be a likely customer for your site, but appearing on the front page will send your site so much traffic that your server may be unable to handle legitimate customers, so you’ll lose regular income and risk having to pay bandwidth or CPU overage penalties. It is not always the web hosting companies fault when this happens either.. It is yours for not doing your homework with your choice of hosting package and for attracting the wrong traffic that is totally useless.
More traffic to an Adsense site sounds good in theory but again you need the right traffic. If you get just any old traffic your CPC and click through rates drops which in turn kills your earnings. Many people wonder why they have not got high Adsense CPC rates and this is directly related to the traffic your site gets. Quality traffic means sales for Adsense advertisers obviously, but webmasters presume that any old traffic will do.
What Can You Do To Earn More Money With the Traffic You Have?
Ahh this is the million dollar question and the answer is not rocket science. Firstly stop generating the wrong traffic and wasting time and money. Then concentrate on making more sales with your real traffic.
Who Are Your Customers?
Who your customers are depends on what type of site you run. Advertising based sites want customers who click the ads. Affiliate and product based sites want customers who buy the products. Mailing list based sites want customers who subscribe to the list. Sometimes you have a mix of all three or maybe a different website business model all together.
Only the right type of person will be a customer on your site. For example, I’m unlikely to be a customer on an advertisement-based site because I tend to use AdBlock. More importantly, many of my peers—people like me—also tend to use AdBlock, so attracting traffic like me to an advertisement-based site is a gross waste of that site’s resources. I do buy tools and products for my websites though, so attracting me to an affiliate sales page is a good idea.
I have mentioned before that experienced bloggers are not necessarily my targeted customers for this site. This is because I am here teaching people how to build websites and make them successful, therefore experienced bloggers are not on my customer list. They usually have the knowledge I write about and they also usually have bought their blogging tools to work with.
How To Get More Traffic Of The Right Kind
What you want is more traffic containing customers. To get this traffic, the first thing you must do is figure out who your customers are in general and what appeals to them.
I recommend that you spend some time trying to increase the conversion rate on your pages with your existing traffic. See if you can get more ad clicks, more affiliate or product sales, or more mailing list subscriptions per 1,000 visitors. Knowing what sells will tell you a lot about your customers.
Then take what you know about your customers and try to attract more traffic containing your customers. For example, if your research indicates your ideal customer uses Apple products, start putting pages on your site about Apple products and Apple news to get the right kind of more traffic.
Another example is the old saying “trying to sell rice to the Chinese”. This famous saying tells us that finding targeted customers is absolutely nothing new.
Attract the Right Customers with the Right Content
This is a great tip that most ignore. You have chosen a niche topic for your website, so stick to it! Going off topic with your content does not earn you more sales or conversions. You whole website must be relevant to your niche because when your customer lands on your site they will see what they expected.
The following is an except from one of my own articles explaining what you need to create a successful WordPress website.
How I Make my WordPress Website Relevant:
- The main topic of the website is the root of your business. Everything grows from that point on.
- The navigation system is the stem that comes from the root of your business.
- The categories are the branches that veer off from the stem.
- The foliage on the branches is the content.
- The back links and promotion is the food. If you feed your website the wrong food you could kill it!
Now take note, you do not see leaves from a gum tree growing on a maple tree. If you do then it would look quite odd and you would know that it is not meant to be. Now this is a crazy way to explain what I mean but it works.
Stop Generating Worthless Traffic and Work On Conversions
If you stopped generating the wrong traffic and concentrated on making conversions and meeting your goals you would be shocked at the results you see. Webmasters spend 90% of their time trying to drum up traffic and 98% of that traffic is rubbish, while only %2 converts. Why not find out where these
Quick Tips to Increase Conversions
- Make your Customers Happy. Yes this is obvious but many webmasters get caught up in the whole blogging cycle to see what makes the customers happy or sad.
- Why have you built a website or blog? Always remember your goal and think about the direction you are taking. It is ok to change paths but you must stick to something. You cannot be an expert at everything!
- Compare content that makes money with your page bounce rates. This is a nice clue for me. I usually see that the pages with the highest bounce rates are not meant to be on the site. The ones with the lowest bounce rate means people like that content. If you have pages with a low bounce rate and they make sales you have hit on something special.
- Optimize pages that are proven money makers. People often have no clue which pages on their sites actually make the sales. I like to track my affiliate links so I know exactly which links were clicked to make the sales. Then I improve those pages and send more traffic there. It is as easy as that!
- Conversion Optimization. This is about improving the pages. You can move and change all sorts of things to improve conversions but make sure you keep track of what you do. It is easy to ruin your conversions altogether, so be careful. Split testing is a great way to get better ROI and you can use the free Google website optimization tool now located in Google analytics’s under the experiences section.
You mention bounce rates in your article. Do you have any specific standards for what is a good bounce rate or bad. Or is it all relative to the other pages on your site. I still have no idea what a good bounce rate for an individual page on my site is. Thanks in advance.
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There are so many variables. For example a visitor may come to the page, click on your adsesne ad and leave. Is this bad, no, because you make money. But if they press the back button or close the browser quickly they are gone for no reason other than the content was not what they were looking for..
If you have 10 people visit and 9 leave asap and 1 buys then you can say this is ok but improving bounce rate can improve sales. If you have a bad bounce rate and also get no goals completed then the bounce rate is bad.
Hey Mitz,
Awesome post with great information, I totally agree with you that our main focus is on to reply our readers because its help to make good relation with them and it also forces them to come back on our blog rather than traffic because most of them are simply come to our blog and then switch to another and only few of will read post but with conversation they will engage in our blog. Thanks for sharing this post.
Great questions all of us ask. The one that I liked the most is how to get the right traffic and not just any traffic that costs me money and causes troubles. Thank you for sharing this article 🙂
Sam recently posted..Chocolate french toast recipe and ingredients
You replied to a post – “Some keywords are worthless and bring rubbish traffic.” True, it may be rubbish, but when you have ads and are clicked, guess what – that rubbish turns into money!! But, I had one site that generated pretty good traffic, but still did not make me any money! Perhaps, it was the content.
So, before building a website – one must consider if the site is worth building to generate money, or simply to generate traffic.
No there is still rubbish traffic. I will give you an example because I used to think like that… If you have Adsense, people think any old traffic will do but it won’t.
1. Advertisers are not stupid. If they make sales from your site they will target you ads and pay you more.
2. If you only get clicks and nothing after that they will not advertise on your site and avoid it. Then you are left with junk un-targeted ads which pay hardly anything or low bid ads.
When you say you should consider if a site is worth generating money or traffic there is the difference above. Are you happy with dribbles of money or do you want to get paid properly for you work? I like to go all the way.
🙂
Hi Mitz,
Nice post, I just worry for how to get more traffic & I look for new trends & technique to get more traffic. well thanks for this wonderful article Mitz,
I was inspired and got my first affiliate product sale not too long ago. I got a challenge to increase my commissions from 25% to 50% and that sparked an idea about how to get more targeted traffic. Let me tell you, I’m doing my keyword research and really making sure I gear it to people who want what I’m offering. It may take some testing, tweaking, but let me tell you, I’m with you 100% on this. I want the one with their wallets at-the-ready! Thanks Mitz
D. Dixon recently posted..Doing Keyword Research: Finding Your Competition
Take the time to get your on page SEO spot on. So many people have the on page almost right, and their visitor finds almost what they are looking for, but not exactly.
As mentioned in the article you want them to find exactly what they are looking for, and the only way to do that is have your on page SEO focused so that the search engines can figure out exactly what the page is about.
This is the single most prevalent problem I see in my SEO clients.
Targeted traffic is essential for more conversion and earning from a website. Some of my blogs gets a lot of un targeted traffic so it is very difficult to monetize these traffic.
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Hi Plaban
Yes non-targeted traffic can make you unsure of your goals also. I would stop getting that kind of traffic because it is only the right traffic that brings in the sales and the signups. 🙂
Traffic is all about popularity of your links and site that doesn’t mean that if you trying to create traffic on your web page or web site also trying to create money.
Sometimes thats why a free solution like wordpress.com is better. You surely can’t do as much but you also don’t have to worry if your super popular post will cause your site to hit your limit.
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WordPress.com is only good for what WordPress.com thinks is ethical and right. Your site can get taken down for any small infringement. I had one site on there with original content and they banned it because they said it did not comply with their rules. there is no way my sites are spammy or over advertised! I would never put my business in someone else’s hands. 🙂 I was not impressed and I was just lucky this was not one of my main sites.
hi mitz,
thanks a lot mitz u change my mind setup completely,i am new in this field and i suppose by attracting the traffic i earn more money ,but now i get to know the difference between gd traffic and bad traffic.thanks 4 sharing such good think it really help me alot.
keep it up
Hi piyush joshi
Yes you can waste a lot of time trying to get the wrong traffic. That’s what most webmasters do.
I’m very much inspired to write quality contents to make my website drive more traffic. With high quality content, you can not only generate traffic but also inform your site visitors about what it is that you can do for them.Thanks for sharing it
It is targeted traffic that brings more money. If content and keywords that drive traffic are aligned, then blog becomes more profitable. However, attracting traffic that doesn’t convert is a waste of time for both blogger and visitors.
Frank Steiner recently posted..Vintage WordPress Themes
Hi MItz,
That was indeed a great article. You shared some good and helpful points 🙂
Gurwinder recently posted..Depositphotos Review
Good points, sometimes I was so busy in chasing traffic and forgotten why I need it.
Mohit Rajwani recently posted..Cross Browser Testing – Make your Web content User and Browser Friendly
Ha ha yes I did that too..until I realised that only a portion of my traffic actually completed my goals. 🙂
mitz recently posted..Website Traffic Checklist – 25 Concrete Ways to Get Website Traffic
you are lucky that you were able to achieve your goal and when I realize why I want traffic,that time was too late 🙁 🙁 🙁 My bad.. 🙁 🙁 🙁
Mohiy recently posted..Temple Run 2 Hits Android Market
You are right,Traffic doesn’t mean that the every one who is coming to your blog will surely going to click on your ads or going to purchase something from the affiliate advertising on your blog.
Mohit Rajwani recently posted..TricksTreat Launching Post
Making your customers happy is one of the reason why you\’re having a successful online business. You must know that they don\’t care about you as the owner what matters them only is the products you offer so make them feel how important they are in order to have a good business.
Yes that is one way of putting it… But I hope some do care about the website owner..:)
mitz recently posted..18 Ways to Turn Your Ordinary Blog into A Million Dollar Business
Removing the articles with low bounce rate is my pick from this article. For some other articles I will try to add some more fresh content with valuable information and then decide future action. Thanks for sharing your expetise on this topic.f
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Hi George
It is the high bounce rate that is not always good. If you can find a page with a low bounce rate and it also make sales then you have a great page to work on.
even if more traffic incurs cost, it reaps double or more profits… for me traffic is all money. isn’t not??
Good points, sometimes you are so busy chasing traffic you forget why you need it.
Thanks for reminding me 🙂
The secret key of success in online marketing is the conversion. If your conversion rate isn’t good enough, more followers or more traffic doesn’t mean more sales. You have to build up that trust in your visitors, to spend a couple of minutes on your page and buy something before leaving the site…
Dora recently posted..Esztétikai fogászati kezelések nem csak időseknek
Yes trust is very important and so are the right visitors because the wrong ones do not stick around long enough for you to gain trust. 🙂
Hi Mitz, Thanks for posting this article. This article has certainly gave me a new perspective with regards to generating traffic. I have also fell into the trap of generating useless traffic as my website has not been generating revenue. I will be working on conversions as what u suggest and hopefully it will work.
Anw thanks for sharing. Appreciate the effort! 🙂 Keep it up
Regards,
Joseph
Joseph Chua recently posted..5 Surefire Ways to Lose Your Money in Forex Trading
Yes you need to get the right people to the right offers. It is amazing when you have success.
mitz recently posted..18 Ways to Turn Your Ordinary Blog into A Million Dollar Business
Hi,
I think it is very important to put yourself in the position of your visitors and understand completely what they are looking for. Then you can deliver the content they are searching for and your conversions increase.
Anna recently posted..Moskitonetz
Yes that is very true. You should think about what your customers want or are searching for and supply the answer to their problems.
I agree that some traffic sources are better than others. But if you own a blog that revolves around people sharing the content, than you take what you can get. Traffic from Digg and Reddit means more people see your content and hopefully more people share it, which means more subscribers and more $ in the long run. If you are simply selling a product than it may be different because you want all traffic to your site to be as targeted as possible.
Shaun Rosenberg recently posted..Never Drive A Rolls Royce To Collect The Rent Money
Its all about bringing in targeted traffic, in my opinion. Traffic is useless. You could have 10,000 monthly visitors (which isnt very hard to get from what I’ve seen), but what good is it if it’s not targeted traffic?
In addition, I totally agree with one of the points made by Elena in the comments: traffic from social bookmarking websites is good, and you’ll probably get a lot of exposure by building backlinks on these websites. However the fact is that this traffic is pretty much useless from what I’ve seen, especially since it does not convert into subscriptions and revenue for the blogger, and at the end of the day, all you’re left with is just big traffic numbers.
KevinR recently posted..A Checklist of Things to Do Before Publishing a Post
I agree completely Kevin…QUALITY/TARGETED traffic is what is important. I have gotten tons of traffic to my site, doesn’t mean it’s targeted. I have since made changes to get quality/targeted traffic and the difference is amazing. It doesn’t take long to see that making sure you are giving people what they want will bring you the traffic and sales that you were looking for.
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Optimizing Posts and Pages with Right Keywords or Preferably with Long Tail Keywords can help to gather a right audience for the Blog. I have seen many Blogs which have Did copy Paste but they did not Survive Panda Hits
It’s important to know which keywords are going to bring more conversion, that’s how you can plan your SEO and marketing strategies. Visit niche blogs, forums and see what your visitors are looking for. Then create useful content for them and promote relevant product or service with that post.
Pankaj recently posted..MLM Software India
You can also test your keywords with buying some adwords ads. You will clearly see which keywords convert the best. Then you can do SEO for those keywords. 🙂
mitz recently posted..Get Started Blogging For Business – 7 Essential Tips To Make Your BOSS Happy
I am facing the same problem. My blog have a decent amount of traffic but i am not earning upto that level. Actually once i was running Adwords campaign, then my earnings were far less than my investment. You have chosen a great topic for discussion, thanks for the help.
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When doing Adwords you might need to try other keywords to see what converts or you need to optimize your landing page for conversions. 🙂 If you can find which keywords convert, you can target them with free SEO.
Great points, Mitz!
The best traffic is not always the most traffic. It’s like the folks who are always chasing more followers on Twitter. Who cares if you have thousands of followers if they don’t have anything meaningful to say or aren’t meaningful to your business. Spikes in traffic can be a good thing or a bad thing and webmasters and bloggers should be prepared to handle the occasional spike.
Cheers!
— Sean
Sean Nicholson recently posted..Three Words That Will Speed Up Your WordPress Blog
Ha ha funny you should say that about getting followers.. I hate when people gather thousands of followers, basically anyone they can muster up. There is no point! 🙂
What you said in your article is so true. The traffic that you can gain from Stumble upon, Digg or Reddit is ok, but it won’t get you any new users subscriptions or sales. Those people usually come and go as fast as they can. Building targeted search traffic is the key and it takes time. Thanks for your article!
Elena recently posted..Funny Joke: What is Couple Sex?
yes I am not very keen on this traffic. They are even immune to adversing! All they have to do is click an add but they do not even do that.. And if they do they do not buy. This cheapens your CPC because you have crap traffic.
I always thought the more traffic you had the better position you gain on SERPS. As I provide a Car Valeting Service its hard to attract potential sales without being near the top on page1
Richard recently posted..Debadging a Car
Ranking high is great and can bring you the right traffic but only if you are ranking for the right keywords. Some keywords are worthless and bring rubbish traffic.
Thanks for posting this I never knew that traffic is not always helpful.Please keep on posting such articles as I am a beginner.
Rahul recently posted..Blogging Goals of 2013 to Make More Money
Great article. Focusing on conversion is much more important than focusing on traffic. While a heavy increase in traffic might boost ones ego, a heavy increase in conversion will boost your business long term.
Soren Sjogren recently posted..Skideballen som ledelsesværktøj
Yes you are right..the high traffic can boost the ego but nothing else…:)
mitz recently posted..18 Ways to Turn Your Ordinary Blog into A Million Dollar Business
This is what I call it as un targeted traffic. If the website contains more categories, then there will be lot of traffic but there will not be any targeted keywords.
Kyle recently posted..DirectOn Headphone Design
Hmm interesting theory. Never thought about that one. 🙂
mitz recently posted..7 On Page Optimization Techniques – Keyword and Linking Relationships for Deep SEO
Publishing electronic books can provide you with an additional revenue stream (if you’re selling them) and a means of promoting your website (there’s nothing like a freebie to attract people to your site or business). In an era when millions of sites are competing for the same audience, every little bit helps.
Your comments are going onto the wrong posts so this is making it painfully obvious that you are using software to comment. ???
Hi MItz
Great article. I think many people just don’t realize that there are so many ways to “get the word out” as opposed to having the best product in the world. As an audio engineer/web guy, I knew that compared to a decade ago, the amount of marketing resources have increased dramatically, but people still fail to utilize more than 1 or 2 marketing avenues.
Thanks for post it.
Sofiya recently posted..Popular Alternative Fitness Trends for 2013
Yes I agree Sofiya
Some people concentrate on the wrong thing. 🙂
mitz recently posted..Website Traffic Checklist – 25 Concrete Ways to Get Website Traffic