“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.”

– Warren Buffett

On Friday morning I got paid $85 to copy and paste comments onto a blog post. It took me two minutes to do and I ended up getting a $15 tip. While this isn’t something that’s ever happened before, and probably won’t happen again, it serves as a great example for why  you need to invest in yourself.

If I had a job, an opportunity like this would never pop up. While I might eventually get a promotion, or an end of the year bonus, there would be no random goldmines for me to stumble into. getting a hundred dollars to copy and paste half a dozen messages is great work if you can find it. However, it’s hard to look for opportunities when you’re on another person’s clock.

People will spend eight dollars to sit through a two hour movie, they’ll blow a hundred bucks for a night of drinking in some lame bar, and they’ll sacrifice their lives to an electronic screen and some imaginary accolades from people they rarely see. Yet very few people are ever willing to spend an hour or two a day investing in themselves. Reading books, going to the gym, starting a small business, learning a new language. Those are things that actually pay off. In the two hours that it takes to watch the latest James Franco movie you could build a fully operational website. In the time it takes to watch a funny YouTube video you could send out a few job applications on oDesk.It won’t be that hard for someone with a part time freelancing gig to make a couple hundred dollars a month. You could sit on the couch and watch TV while writing articles and pay for your rent within a week or two of casual effort.

Take some time to read books, start a web business, find a hobby. While you might not get an immediate or guaranteed payoff like you would from the television or your job, there’s room for infinite rewards. When you invest in yourself you’ll see huge returns. They might be instantaneous or occur like you had imagined, but they’ll be there.

“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.

“A million guys walk into a Silicon Valley bar. None of them buy anything. The bar is declared a rousing success.”

– Internet joke

Amazon For A Penny had 30 page views when I sold over a hundred dollars worth of products. 30 Days To X had 6,000 before I ever made a single cent. While getting people to visit your site is important, having a lot of traffic doesn’t mean much. While drawing in visitors and building a following is important, it isn’t the be-all end-all.

I’ve built several dozen little websites and run a slew of online hustles. Last year alone I made four or five separate websites and blogs. Some of my biggest money makers have actually gotten the least amount of traffic. In today’s post I’m going to debunk the old “more visitors equals more money” myth.

Do site hits mean more customers?

30 Days To X gets more traffic in a day than all my other sites combined. However, it makes way less money. When people come here they show up to be entertained or to learn something. Readers aren’t showing up to buy washing machines or purchase the latest iPhone.

In contrast, I have a very simple website about xylitol. It has a handful of posts, some affiliate links, and an eBook. While it doesn’t get a whole ton of traffic, the people who visit tend to buy something. They’re looking for information on a product, it’s only natural for them to click through an Amazon link and order what they had wanted. Although the site doesn’t make a lot, it earns enough to pay for hosting and cover the occasional impulse purchase. I also only update it once a month.

Another site, built when I tried to make and market a cheesy eBook, hasn’t been touched since January. While I took the eBook off the shelves, it didn’t sell well, I replaced it with a few affiliate likes to other books. I usually make a couple bucks a month from random visitors who stumble onto the old posts.

While getting traffic is import, it isn’t something to beat yourself up over. Structuring your site to make money, and creating great content should be your two biggest priorities. There are thousands of blogs and websites that get millions of hits, but never earn a dime. Reddit, one of the biggest websites in the world, is notorious for hemorrhaging money. People go to the site to look at cat pictures and look for sleazy sex stuff, they aren’t there to spend money.

The next time you ask yourself if site hits mean more customers, remember that a site’s structure is more important than the size of its audience. You could have ten million unique readers and it won’t mean anything if you don’t have an effective way to monetize them.

While I’ve talked a lot about how overrated page views can be for making money online, there are a few exceptions. I’m going to detail them later this week. I’ll also explain some of the less obvious ways that a website can be monetized.

“I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst thing you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.”

– Samuel Johnson

I started getting search hits for Amazon For A Penny. This was exciting. I rushed to Google and decided to look up my site. I couldn’t find it. Instead I saw an article by James Patterson, and a couple lists about phones. I couldn’t figure it out.

Going back to my site, I decided to look at which search engines had been used. It turned out that Yahoo had brought the visitors in. Doing another search, I discovered that I was one of the top results. The only thing above me was an actual Amazon page.

While Yahoo didn’t bring me a lot of hits, six people came through, it still gave me some traffic. I decided to look around a little more and see what other search engines had me on the front page. Bing had me on the front page as well. I also appeared on within the first 10 results on Dogpile.

Although none of these sites are as big a deal as Google, I still got traffic from most of them. A couple of people have already arrived at the site through Bing, and I’m guessing that someone will eventually find me through Dogpile. Like David Hasselhoff’s singing career, I’ve found success in an unlikely place.

While I still want to get Google hits, I am pretty happy with what I have now. It’s been less than a month I made the front page of Yahoo. If I can get a steady stream of visitors off some lesser search engines and rank a few long tail keywords on Google, I’ll have some decent traffic. I’ve already made a couple bucks off the new site so I’m hoping that it becomes a steady source of passive income.

“20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before”

– Udi Manber, Google VP of Engineering

Until a few weeks ago I had no idea what long tail keywords were. I had merely assumed that they were lengthy phrases that people searched. As with almost every assumption that I’ve ever made, I was wrong.

Long tail keywords were named by a Chris Anderson, a a guy who wrote both an article and an entire book about them. His discovery made quite a stir back in 2004. I was 11 at the time and missed out on all the excitement.

I recently read through his old article and picked up a copy of the book as well. What I learned is that long tail keywords have nothing to do with actual length, but refer to the obscurity of the search. In the book they are compared to an obscure musician. While a band like Garvis might never have been a chart topper, they still sold albums and had a following. They had their own style and didn’t have to worry about constantly competing with others in order to stay relevant.

In layman’s terms, long tail keywords are micro niches. Realizing this, I decided to go back through 30 Days To X and look for any obscure keywords that I used. While the most common search I get is for Christy Mack, it brings in hundreds of people a day, most of the searchers don’t stay for long. On the other hand How to Write Action Adventure Novels, a review I wrote in 20 minutes before work one day, only gets a few searchers a week. However, that book is one of my most consistent sellers. While the audience is smaller, it draws in people who want to buy the product anyway. It’s the difference between a store with 10,000 window shoppers, and one with 100 paying customers.

If you have a blog or a website it’s tempting to make clickbait articles. You can write posts about Kim Kardashian smelling like old cheese or 10 reasons that you hate Justin Bieber, but it’s a flash in the pan. You’ll attract the BuzzFeed crowd who’ll look at the page for 30 seconds before wandering off to find kitten videos or some other drivel.

While I have my current week’s supply of Amazon For A Penny articles already written, I plan on choosing more obscure items in the future. There’s less competition and it’s easier to rank on Google.