Introduction
I want to outline a simple business model that I am currently implementing to make money online. This is the same business model that other successful bloggers have use to create a full time income working from home.
It takes a lot of work and effort. And it will require some creativity on your part. But if you’re not afraid of hard work then you can make money online.
Start a blog
The first step is to start a blog about something you are knowledgeable about. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as you are knowledgeable about the subject. Just about everybody has some specialized knowledge or experience that could benefit other people. You are going to use this knowledge to help others online.
Once you have your blog you need to write 5 to 10 informative blog posts about your particular topic. It’s usually best to have each post answer 1 question i.e. How to build biceps, How to stop snoring, How to save money on taxes, etc.
Build a community
You are going to build a community of people that will look to you for information and answers about your topic. Everything you do will be geared towards building a community.
This means you should not have any advertising when you’re first starting out. Advertising makes people think that your sole purpose is to make money and that you don’t care about them.
As your community grows you can slowly introduce advertising into your blog. (I will go over this in more detail later.)
Choose your medium
There are several different ways for you to present information and answer questions on your blog. These include
- written blog posts (by far the most common method)
- podcasts
- video
It’s important that you pick a medium that you are most comfortable with. It’s quite possible that you’re a decent writer and would never be willing to make a video of yourself. In that case your content would be mostly written.
Others are far more comfortable sitting and talking in front of a camera. These people may find it difficult to craft a well written blog post. For them video is a better medium.
Other people that don’t like writing or having videos recorded of them and may choose to do a voice recording in the form of a podcast.
It doesn’t matter what medium you choose. Just use the one that you are most comfortable with.
I am probably most comfortable doing videos in the form of screen casts. You don’t usually see my face but you see my computer screen and I walk you through a tutorial of something.
Start a twitter account
You will need to have a twitter account for your blog. This is only for things related to your blog or your topic; keep it separate from your personal twitter account if you have.
You want to make sure that your twitter account looks professional. I wrote a post titled: 7 Ways To Create A Professional Twitter Presence
Tweet stuff
You want to tweet your 5 to 10 blog posts to your twitter account. And in the future whenever you have a new blog post you want to make sure that you tweet it so your followers can know about it.
Comments on your blog
The first few comments on your blog are very important. Be sure to respond to any and all comments that people have. Invite them to ask questions.
When someone asks a question you can almost guarantee that they will come back to see if you have answered their question. This is a very important step in building your community.
I try to respond to every comment and especially the questions that people have.
Social proof
When people come to a blog that has few or no comments they are likely to think that the blog owner is not engaged and are less likely to leave a comment themselves.
On the other hand, if they come to a site that has lots of comments and the blog owner has responded to each one then they are far more likely to leave a comment or ask a question.
This phenomenon is known as social proof. If we see that lots of other people are doing something then it’s probably a good thing to do.
People will have questions
At the core of building a community is providing content that answers peoples questions. In the beginning you don’t really know what their questions are. You may have some vague inclination as to what their questions are, but a lot of it is just guessing.
So it’s very important that you keep track of the questions people ask. If you see two or more people ask the same question and it’s very likely that many people have that same question. For every person that asked the question there could be 10 people with that same question.
Once you know what peoples’ questions are you can create better content for your blog. This will make people more likely to come back and ask more questions and leave additional comments.
Go easy on the advertising
Once you have people leaving comments and asking questions you can start advertising. I would start very small and simple. May be one or two small advertisements.
Make sure your advertisements are targeted toward your blog and your visitors. If people are asking questions like, “How to why stop snoring using natural supplements” and make sure your advertisements are targeted to this. The reason for doing this is twofold. First, you’ll make more money by advertising things that your visitors are actually interested in. Second, you are less likely to annoy your visitors with things that aren’t relevant.
Build a community on twitter
Once you started to build a community on your website you want to do the same thing on twitter. You should are ready be tweeting new blog posts and you want to find out who else is tweeting your blog posts. I generally like to send a thank you tweet to anyone who has tweeted or re-tweeted one of my blog posts.
It’s also good to follow people in your niche. If you have a bodybuilding blog then it would be good to find other people interested in bodybuilding on twitter and follow them. If you come across a tweet that is useful and relevant to your topic then you should re-tweet it.
Just like on your blog, you want to invite people to ask questions on twitter about your topic.
More social media
Right now twitter is pretty popular but there are several other social media websites and services you should check out. These include stumble upon which has sent me more traffic than any other social media service. (If you want I will stumble some of your URLs)
Another service to check out is onlywire. Only wire will submit your blog post to 30 different social networks which will help boost your traffic.
Get on a schedule
If you’re going to be successful online then you need to get on the schedule. A schedule will help you stay focused and make sure you spend the time you need to make your blog a success.
I personally get up early every day so that I have some time to work on my blog before I go to work each morning. From 6 AM to 7:30 AM I work on my blogs and online business.
You don’t have to get up early to work on your business but you do need to be consistent. And this means getting on the schedule so that every day you have in hour set aside to work.
You need to spend a minimum of 5 hours a week if you’re going to be successful.
5 Website Design Ideas That Will Help You Get More Traffic
1. Make it easy to search
It is important that visitors are able to search your website for specific keywords and phrases that they are looking for.
Most websites have a search box for this. Unfortunately many websites have hidden the search box in some corner of the page and this makes it difficult for a visitor to find.
Put your search box in an easy to locate place on each page. Make it easy for a visitor to locate the search box and they will use it more. This means more page views for you.
And the more pages they visit the more likely they are to bookmark your site and come back.
2. Choose a good background color and text color
This should go without saying but it is important to choose a good background color and text color that is easy on the eyes. If you really want to have a black background with white text then that it’s okay. Just be sure that your visitors aren’t distracted by your colors and layout.
And please stay away from backgrounds with the words or multicolored images. You don’t want your website looking like the average myspace profile!
If people can’t stand the fonts and colors and background of your blog then they won’t visit many pages, they certainly won’t come back, and they definitely won’t tell their friends about your website.
Ask yourself, “Would I want to spend hours getting information from this site with these colors and layout?”
Then ask the same question of three friends.
3. Limit your advertising
If you have a website then you’re probably looking to make money from it. But this is not something you want to broadcast to every visitor.
Your advertising should be subtle. It should fit with the colors and the look and feel of your website.
For example if you have a white background with dark gray text then you don’t want to put florescent yellow and limegreen advertisements on each page.
Instead make your advertisements blend in. Try to camouflage them.
And let’s avoid any animated advertisements.
The reason you want to do these things is that having too many advertisements annoys visitors and makes them want to leave and never return.
The best websites have advertising but put a limit on it. The advertising is there but it doesn’t get in the way of the content.
4. Links should look like links
Traditionally hyperlinks are a rich blue color and are underlined.
So do yourself a favor and have your links be some sort of blue color and have them underlined. This makes it easier for your visitors to identify links and click on them.
Wouldn’t it be a shame if you had a wonderful website with lots of content and links to additional resources on your site but your links were not blue and underlined and so your visitors did not click on them because they didn’t realize they were links?
5. Display recent posts
If you have a blog then it’s likely you are posting new content every so often.
If this is the case be sure you display a list of your most recent posts on your homepage. When I visit the homepage of my favorite blogs I am looking to see what their newest posts are.
Doing this makes it easier for your visitors to find out what’s new and makes them more likely to return.
Make your own product
At some point it will probably be worthwhile for you to make your own product. You could be as simple as a 10 page PDF that answers the most common questions people have about your topic.
And because people know you and trust you they will be far more likely to buy something that you have created.
Another direction you could go with this is to do consulting. Because you have specialized expertise in your topic you can charge people to consult with them. You can charge for your time or for your service.
Build an e-mail list
Another way that you can help build a community is to build an e-mail list of people interested in your topic. Just give away a short report the answers questions people have when they join your e-mail list.
Then send out e-mails every so often that have information that your subscribers want. Every time you publish a new blog post you can send a message to your e-mail list and get instant traffic.
You can also put a small advertisement in the e-mails you send.
Go where the traffic is
This may sound like a strange idea but bear with me as I believe it to be a worthwhile concept.
This concept was originally introduced to me by Willie Crawford and basically states that if you want to increase traffic to your site then find related sites and look for ways to leverage their traffic.
For example if you want to get more traffic to your Poodle Manicures site then go find the most popular sites about Poodle Manicures and look for ways to leverage their traffic.
Examples
There are numerous ways do this. Here a few of the common ones:
- If they have a blog you can:
- Post meaningful comments and get a link back to your site
- Write an informative guest post and get a link back to your site
- Request a link exchange with their blogroll
- If they have a forum there are several ways to use this get traffic.
- Ask them if you could buy some ad space to advertise your site
- If they have an email list offer to write an informative email to be sent to their list and get a link to your site in return. This is similar to the guest posting idea for blogging.
- Post a funny video on youtube with a link to your site
Get traffic from online forums
One great way to drive quality traffic to your website, although you might find it to be a small amount on a daily basis is by forum marketing.
Remember that one hit of quality traffic is often worth as much as a few hundred hits from a non-quality source. What makes it of quality is you’re getting traffic based on what you say in forum replies (you’ve already sold yourself to a degree).
Join a forum on your site’s niche.
Login and edit your profile.
In your signature, provide a link to your site along with a tasty blurb.
Another huge benefit of forum marketing is that you’re talking with others in your niche. At the same time you’re driving traffic to your site, you’re market researching. You’re finding out the biggest problems in your niche, so that you can provide solutions in the form of an info products or website content.
Tips & Tricks
- Start by finding a forum related to your niche and make sure signatures are allowed.
- Build your reputation as an expert in your niche. Provide quality information in your posts and replies. Users of a forum will only click on the link in your signature if you’ve enlightened them. One tactic you can use is by creating a new thread with pure information in your niche, almost like a blog post.
- Never link to your own site within content of threads. Only place a link to your site within your signature.
- Be sure to read forum rules and regulations before joining any forum. Nearly all forums don’t allow affiliate links in your signature or within threads.
- Don’t spam forums!!!
Traffic Checklist
I don’t have a photographic memory. In fact some people may say that I can be a little absent-minded at times. So to help me to stay organized I make checklists.
Whenever I post something new on my blog or upload a new video I have a checklist of things to do to maximize the traffic I get. Each item on the list is a simple yes or no question.
New Blog Post Checklist
- Does it have a good title?
- Does it have good tags & categories?
- Does the actual post show up correctly?
- Does a description and link to it show up on the home page?
- Did I submit it to StumbleUpon?
- Did I submit it to Digg.com?
- Did I tweet a link to it to my twitter account: http://twitter.com/nickstraffic and did I use good hashtags?
- Did I submit it to OnlyWire.com? (What’s OnlyWire.com?)
- Did I send a link out to my email list?
10 Ways To Get More Traffic From Twitter
There has been a lot of buzz about the growth of twitter and many people are looking to use twitter to get traffic to their website.
Here are 10 simple ways to get more traffic from twitter.
1. Tweet about new posts to your blog
Whenever you post something new to your blog or website you should Tweet about it. For me this results in instant traffic to my website.
2. Use great titles to get more clicks
Having a great title will result in more of your followers clicking on your link.
One of the simplest ways to make a good title is to have it start with a number. For example:
3 Ways To…
5 Reasons Why…
7 Strategies For…
Numbered headlines get your attention and give you a preview of the content.
It is also a good idea to have your title promise to solve a problem that the reader has. If it promises real benefit to the reader they are far more likely to click on the link.
For example the title of this blog post promised to show you how to get traffic to your website using twitter. Getting traffic to your website is a difficult task and a common problem that people have. The title promise real value.
Putting these two concepts together (using numbered headlines and solving readers problems) you can create great titles that will get more clicks on twitter.
3. Only tweet about things of value
We live in a age of information overload and one of the ways of coping with this is to ignore stuff. In fact we ignore most of the information out there.
So if you don’t want your tweets should be ignored by your followers and make sure they have real value.
And don’t try to sell something via twitter. A lot of people have lost their followers because they tried to make a quick buck.
Remember that people follow you because of the value you provide to them. The minute you stop doing this is the minute that you lose followers.
4. Tweet about old blog posts
There will be some days when you don’t have any new blog posts to tweet about.
When this happens simply find an old blog post with good value and tweet about that. Chances are that many of your followers have never seen it.
5. Use Google Analytics to track the best days & times to tweet
Some days a week and sometimes the day are better than others for tweeting about your new blog posts and getting traffic.
I recommend trying different times to see what works best. I use Google analytics to help me determine how much traffic I get from different tweets.
Gary McCaffrey has gathered data that suggests that 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. (Pacific Standard Time) are the best times to tweet and get traffic.
This is probably a good place to start. But you need to test and discover what works best for you.
6. Make it easy for visitors to tweet about your site
If you use WordPress there is a simple plug-in that puts a “ReTweet This” button on every blog post. It allows visitors to retweet your post with a click of button. It also displays how many people have tweeted about it.
It’s called the Tweetcount Plugin and you can download it here for free:
http://www.backtype.com/plugins/tweetcount
7. Use url shorteners
On twitter you only have 140 characters and it would be a shame to waste it with some long and ugly URL. So I recommend using a URL shortening or like tinyurl.com.
This allows you to devote more characters to an eye-catching title and description and fewer characters to your URL.
8. Keep your Tweets less than 120 characters
I want people to be able to easily retweet my stuff and so I try to have all of my tweets be 120 characters or less. Then when someone retweets something of mine there is plenty of room for the “RT @NicksTraffic” which is placed at the front of the retweet.
And having more retweets results in more traffic for me.
9. Get more followers
Obviously if you have more followers then each tweet get more attention and result in more traffic to your website. Here are a couple ways to get more followers:
- Place an invitation to follow you on twitter on your homepage. I recommend putting it above the fold where people can see it without having to scroll down.
- After your main content block on every page post a link to your twitter account that says something like “Follow @NicksTraffic on twitter and great tips on X”
10. If you tweet with a link to a video or audio make sure you mention it in your tweet
Sometimes I’ll find a great YouTube video that I want to share with my followers. I know that some of them are at work and may not appreciate having a video come onto their screen alerting their boss that they are watching videos and not working.
So whenever I tweet a link to a YouTube video I always begin the tweet with the word Video so that my followers know it’s a video and can choose whether to watch it at that time.
For example: “Video: 11 ways to get more traffic for free”
Doing this builds a level of trust with my followers. They trust that if I tweet about a video they will know before hand and not be caught off guard. And this results in more traffic for me.
Search engine optimization
Did you notice that I haven’t said a word about search engine optimization? I don’t think search engine optimization matters very much when it comes to building a community. And most blogging platforms, like WordPress or blogger, already do most it for you.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks so much for this post. I’ve got a Dutch blog and these kind of posts help me so much. It inspires and motivates me to keep blogging.
Thanks and I’m looking forward to your next newsletter!
Excellent post as always, Nick! Since a few months ago I really try to do all the things you mentioned to get traffic to my site. There are a few things, like Twitter for instance, that I can spend more time on, but I will eventually get there as well.
One question I have and also have been wondering about since I started my first Blogger blog in late 2006… I think/feel/know that I do provide good information in my blogs, I go to a lot of trouble to create products or items I talk about, (actually make it, take photos of it, give step by step instructions… sometimes not so easy as my home language is not English, so I literally “translate” everything I write in my brain before typing it…)
I try to talk to visitors as I would to a friend telling them about how to do things/share thoughts, etc.etc. (like all the successful internet marketers always tell us to do…)
I started my new Wordpress site in June 2009 and I can see that I do get traffic to this site, there are even a few posts that are popular BUT! and this has been my question since 2006, WHY do people not leave comments on my site? In my last few posts I actually started to invite them to tell me what they think or share their ideas with my other visitors, but nothing!
When I visit blogs in the same or related niches as mine, there are normally so many comments and oohs! and aahhh!!!’s about many of the same things I blog about. So why don’t my visitors comment on what I show them? What am I doing wrong? Can it be that they see the same things on other blogs/sites even though I present it in quite another way and then just click away from the posts because they have seen it all before?
I always try to add my own, unique touch to every post, even when I sometimes use PLR articles in my niche – rewrite them as much as possible and add my own experiences to it.
When somebody does comment on a post, I do answer… I even follow the link to their blogs and leave a comment there.
What more can I put into my posts/articles to let people leave a comment/tell me what they think? Even when I offer freebies, I don’t get any comments! Sometimes I really feel that I am wasting my time going to all the trouble to spend time to design or come up with the freebies! sometimes I even feel that I am wasting my time altogether!!!
To me it seems that when people comment on your posts, it means that all the things you do to get traffic to your site, are not a waste of time and that they like what they get from your blog or site!
If visitors do not even make an effort to comment on posts, how on earth am I going to get them to buy my e-books and other products/services I want to sell on my site in a few weeks from now?
Thanks Hugo.
This is the hardest step. For every comment you receive there are possibly 100 people that visited your site and did not leave a comment. Once you start getting comments it’s a little easier. When people see comments are more likely to leave comments themselves.
Do you have a twitter account? Do you submit your blog posts to social media?
Hi Nick
Yes, I do have Twitter and Facebook, Zimbio, I use Socialmarker.com to submit my blog posts, have articles on EzineArticles and GoArticles, there are a few press releases, I comment on blogs, I get quite a lot of visitors from Google and other Image searches, etc. etc. so in a way I am doing a lot to have my site out there, I guess I will just have to do more to get more traffic and hopefully one day the comments will become a part of my site. At least I do get visitors even if they do not leave comments…lol.
Who are the people that are most interested in your blog? I’m guessing it might be mothers of young children.
One thing you could do is find forums where mothers of young children are likely to go and look for people asking questions about birthday parties and other children’s celebrations. You could answer their questions and in the signature have a link to your website.
I see now what I’ve been doing wrong. Thanks Nick! Something related to this is putting a link in to stumble this or tweet about reading your blog. You do this in your other blog and I tried it. I don’t know how much this helped but I just realized that if people don’t comment on your posts they’re unlikely to click on a link to do you a favor.
Very true. The good idea to try to build a community. I found the best way to do this is to answer peoples questions.