Is more traffic REALLY the Solution?
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Is Traffic REALLY the Solution?
I'm sometimes accused of being too blunt and that, by not sugar-coating my comments, I alienate my audience. To which I usually reply, "What a complete load of utter rubbish!"
The late English writer, Sir Malcolm Bradbury, said "The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth." I may be British but, if that statement is true, then in this instance I would have to say that the US has a clear advantage. In this part of the world is seems that many prefer a comfortable ignorance over an awkward truth.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that, although you may often find my column outspoken, you can be assured that I won't hold something back out of a misguided sense of propriety.
For example: I have to be honest and say that when someone asks how they can drive more traffic to their website, I can't help but think that what they're REALLY saying is that their website is unprofitable, they have no idea how to fix it, and they're hoping that if they flood their site with enough traffic this will magically fill their PayPal account.
I reach this conclusion because there are dozens and dozens of different ways to drive a virtually unlimited stream of traffic to a website, providing you don't mind paying for it. If you know that for every $1 you spend on advertising you make $3 in sales, are you going to worry about generating free traffic or are you going to spend more dollars and get it instantly?
Getting free traffic is certainly desirable but if you're unwilling to pay for at least some of it, this strongly suggests that your online business isn't profitable and you're looking for a quick fix.
Sending traffic to a site that doesn't convert isn't going to solve your problems, if anything it will add to them. No matter how much traffic you send to a badly converting site it will never be enough. Until you get over the "I need more traffic" mindset and get into the "I need to optimise my system" mindset, you are always going to struggle.
The rationale behind this warped thinking is the idea that you can drive free traffic to a website until it starts making money, and then use that money to purchase more traffic. It's a nice idea in theory, but this approach is too slow and the sources of free traffic can skew your results.
What you need is a strong burst of targeted traffic over a relatively short space of time, so you can tweak and improve your sales process. Paying for traffic to do test runs is not that expensive and in the long run is much more cost-effective. Even small off-line businesses will spend $1000+ a year to be listed in the Yellow Pages or to distribute fliers. If you can't afford to spend $100 on Pay-Per-Click traffic to get your metrics then I would question your commitment to your online business.
Times may be tight, but cutting back on a few luxuries or selling a few household items on eBay will give you the budget you need to get started. If even that proves to be too much of a struggle, find one or two people with a moderately sized mailing list in your niche and offer then 100% commissions for directing some of their readers to your site. You won't find it too difficult to find people agreeable to those terms and it's worth giving away some of your short-term profits if you can use that traffic to perfect your system.
Let's walk through the process using the example of a lead-capture page offering a free gift in exchange for a name and email address, with a one-time-offer on the back-end.
You want to start by improving the conversion rate of your lead-capture page. Even if your one-time-offer is converting slowly, by getting the lead-capture page right to begin with, you're at least building a mailing list that can be monetised in other ways later on.
Split-testing a lead capture page is far easier than most people realise. All you have to do is create a duplicate of your page, changing just one item, such as the headline, the bullet points, the images, etc. Open a free account at www.google.com/websiteoptimizer and follow the simple instructions for setting up your test. It basically involves pasting a couple of lines of code into the two versions of the page that you want to compare, and also into the "thank you" page.
Drive traffic to your lead-capture page until you have a clear winner and then create a duplicate of this page, making sure you change something different this time. Keep testing until the conversion rate of your lead-capture page is satisfactory and then work on improving the conversion rate of your one-time-offer.
Once you know how much profit each visitor is worth on average, then you know how much you can afford to pay for traffic, and still turn a profit. You can still work on building up some free traffic sources as well but once you have that nailed down, deciding to spend $1000 on traffic, knowing you're going to make $3000, isn't a difficult choice.
The really scary thing about this exercise? You only have to do it a couple of times and you'll have a mailing list that can drive enough traffic on its own to test the conversions of your next website.
These days I use my time to find ways to squeeze another 1% conversion rate out of my existing traffic, and my credit card to increase the traffic when I achieve that.
It seems strange that traffic generation is one of the most sought after skills in the IM industry, when you can open an account with Google Adwords and start driving targeted traffic within a few minutes. For the most part, people are simply asking the wrong question. Traffic generation is only restricted by one thing: your willingness to pay for it.
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I'm sometimes accused of being too blunt and that, by not sugar-coating my comments, I alienate my audience. To which I usually reply, "What a complete load of utter rubbish!"
The late English writer, Sir Malcolm Bradbury, said "The English are polite by telling lies. The Americans are polite by telling the truth." I may be British but, if that statement is true, then in this instance I would have to say that the US has a clear advantage. In this part of the world is seems that many prefer a comfortable ignorance over an awkward truth.
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that, although you may often find my column outspoken, you can be assured that I won't hold something back out of a misguided sense of propriety.
For example: I have to be honest and say that when someone asks how they can drive more traffic to their website, I can't help but think that what they're REALLY saying is that their website is unprofitable, they have no idea how to fix it, and they're hoping that if they flood their site with enough traffic this will magically fill their PayPal account.
I reach this conclusion because there are dozens and dozens of different ways to drive a virtually unlimited stream of traffic to a website, providing you don't mind paying for it. If you know that for every $1 you spend on advertising you make $3 in sales, are you going to worry about generating free traffic or are you going to spend more dollars and get it instantly?
Getting free traffic is certainly desirable but if you're unwilling to pay for at least some of it, this strongly suggests that your online business isn't profitable and you're looking for a quick fix.
Sending traffic to a site that doesn't convert isn't going to solve your problems, if anything it will add to them. No matter how much traffic you send to a badly converting site it will never be enough. Until you get over the "I need more traffic" mindset and get into the "I need to optimise my system" mindset, you are always going to struggle.
The rationale behind this warped thinking is the idea that you can drive free traffic to a website until it starts making money, and then use that money to purchase more traffic. It's a nice idea in theory, but this approach is too slow and the sources of free traffic can skew your results.
What you need is a strong burst of targeted traffic over a relatively short space of time, so you can tweak and improve your sales process. Paying for traffic to do test runs is not that expensive and in the long run is much more cost-effective. Even small off-line businesses will spend $1000+ a year to be listed in the Yellow Pages or to distribute fliers. If you can't afford to spend $100 on Pay-Per-Click traffic to get your metrics then I would question your commitment to your online business.
Times may be tight, but cutting back on a few luxuries or selling a few household items on eBay will give you the budget you need to get started. If even that proves to be too much of a struggle, find one or two people with a moderately sized mailing list in your niche and offer then 100% commissions for directing some of their readers to your site. You won't find it too difficult to find people agreeable to those terms and it's worth giving away some of your short-term profits if you can use that traffic to perfect your system.
Let's walk through the process using the example of a lead-capture page offering a free gift in exchange for a name and email address, with a one-time-offer on the back-end.
You want to start by improving the conversion rate of your lead-capture page. Even if your one-time-offer is converting slowly, by getting the lead-capture page right to begin with, you're at least building a mailing list that can be monetised in other ways later on.
Split-testing a lead capture page is far easier than most people realise. All you have to do is create a duplicate of your page, changing just one item, such as the headline, the bullet points, the images, etc. Open a free account at www.google.com/websiteoptimizer and follow the simple instructions for setting up your test. It basically involves pasting a couple of lines of code into the two versions of the page that you want to compare, and also into the "thank you" page.
Drive traffic to your lead-capture page until you have a clear winner and then create a duplicate of this page, making sure you change something different this time. Keep testing until the conversion rate of your lead-capture page is satisfactory and then work on improving the conversion rate of your one-time-offer.
Once you know how much profit each visitor is worth on average, then you know how much you can afford to pay for traffic, and still turn a profit. You can still work on building up some free traffic sources as well but once you have that nailed down, deciding to spend $1000 on traffic, knowing you're going to make $3000, isn't a difficult choice.
The really scary thing about this exercise? You only have to do it a couple of times and you'll have a mailing list that can drive enough traffic on its own to test the conversions of your next website.
These days I use my time to find ways to squeeze another 1% conversion rate out of my existing traffic, and my credit card to increase the traffic when I achieve that.
It seems strange that traffic generation is one of the most sought after skills in the IM industry, when you can open an account with Google Adwords and start driving targeted traffic within a few minutes. For the most part, people are simply asking the wrong question. Traffic generation is only restricted by one thing: your willingness to pay for it.
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