“Your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person-a real person you know, or an imagined person-and write to that one.”
– John Steinbeck
While you can make money without having 100,000 daily visitors,* site traffic is the most important thing in the world. Without it you’ll greatly reduce your earning potential. Even if you own an ice cream parlor in the Sahara Desert, you’ll never have the same earning potential as a Dippin Dots in some suburban mall. Your heat exhausted customers might all buy something, but having a 100% visitor to purchase ratio on five clients isn’t exactly something to brag about. Business isn’t baseball, there’s no reason to nerd out over statistics.
How to increase site traffic
There are, roughly, three really easy ways to increase site traffic. I’m going to list them in order of least to greatest:
- Commenting
With Amazon For A Penny, I tried to drum up my initial content by leaving comments on every blog I could find. I posted on cooking sites, a British anarchy blog, and Star Wars Fan Pages. While I didn’t get a whole ton of hits, I was ensured at least a few visitors per comment. Even writing generic stuff like “Great recipe, I’ll have to try that” earned page views.
- eBook
I actually made a free little eBook for Amazon For A Penny and released it on Kindle. Unfortunately, I couldn’t use the word “Amazon” in the title, so I had to give it a less exciting name. While I couldn’t see how many people were referred to the site through the book, traffic did jump.
- Social media
Reddit actually got me a lot of hits. Instead of doing the typical shameless plug post, I decided to make my promotional material a little more interesting. I did a brief AMA type deal that drove of traffic, and I posted a few of the funnier items from my site to specific subreddits that would appreciate them.
* Number is made up.