Traffic is the lifeblood of any website. Without it, your online business can’t produce sustainable profit.

But not all traffic is created equally.

To grow consistently and predictably, we need traffic that takes the desirable action that we want them to, and engage with our brands in a meaningful way.

And for that, we need targeted traffic.

Targeted traffic will share your content, subscribe to your email list, and buy your products.

It’s traffic that’s made up of people who are interested into your message, or your solution, that a sizable percentage feel compelled to take action.

Targeted traffic is the most profitable commodity your website can have.

So today you’re going to learn how I got almost 1,000 visitors per day of laser targeted traffic, to a brand new website, for free.

And you’ll see how I did it all from scratch, during a two-week experiment.

The Rules

To make this experiment the fairest that I could, I started a brand new website in a brand new niche - one that I knew little about.

I had zero experience, I didn’t have friends or know anybody in the niche, and besides the cost of a domain name and shared hosting, I has a heavily limited budget.

In all, I couldn’t:

  • Advertise or use paid traffic.
  • Build an email list.
  • Leverage any existing contacts.

I decided to impose these restrictions on myself to see if anyone just starting a website or blog for the first time could drive targeted traffic, without a budget, email list, or industry contacts.

And to make sure that I learned as much as I could about my new niche, every piece of content on the blog also had to be created by me personally - so outsourcing was also against the rules.

The good news is, it means that you can do this too, regardless of your budget or experience.

You can replicate my results.

And to prove the point even further, I recently did something similar with The 90 day Youtube Challenge, where I built a small following for free, with content marketing.

The Results

Let’s take a look that the results I achieved when I ran this experiment on a brand new website, over the two-week period.

This is a screenshot from Google Analytics.


Google Analytics statistics from the experiment

As you can see, the website received little to no traffic on the first two days.

This is because I spent the first two days on outreach, which I’ll explain in more detail in a minute.

Nothing really happened until the third day, when the traffic increased to around 500 visitors.

Hitting 500 visitors in a single day, from nothing, felt like a major achievement - but it was just the beginning.

In fact it actually became one of the slowest days for traffic, of the entire experiment.

On the next day - the fourth day, the traffic climbs to almost 800 visitors.

But on the fifth day the traffic begins to decline and then level out, dropping towards 600 visitors a day.

It’s a bit of a rollercoaster.

Interestingly, towards the end of two-week experiment I received another big traffic spike.

To my surprise the site received almost 1,500 visitors on that day.

So what is causing these large spikes in traffic?

The Strategy

I’m going to give you the exact strategy, step by step.

It’s easy to replicate, and anyone can do it.

As I mentioned earlier, this strategy is all around outreach.

And for that reason, it requires a little bit of planning but the results are worth the small effort.

So let’s rewind back to the start and find out exactly what I did.

Before I published a single piece of content, I found bloggers and influencers on Twitter who’ve previously shared content that is niche-relevant.

To find the right kind of bloggers and influencers I searched for keywords and hashtags.

Then I looked for Tweets that had a reasonable number of Retweets and comments. What you consider a ‘reasonable’ amount will vary from niche to niche.

Next, I sent each blogger and influencer a polite and professional email telling them how useful I found the piece of content that they shared, and that I’m working on a similar article.

Finally, I asked them if they would be willing to take a look at my article when it’s published.

Here is a template to help you get started.

Notice that the email is personalised and it includes a phone number.

While I waited for a response I approached more bloggers and influencers.

Most ignored my emails and DMs, that was to be expected - people are busy and receive multiple requests every day.

But of the ones who did reply, everyone of them agreed to look at my article.

And when I got the ‘OK’, I published my article and sent the link.

Thankfully, most shared my article with their followers.

Why Did This Work?

This worked because I only approached bloggers and influencers that had previously shared the type of content I intended to create.

That meant I only approached people who I already knew were interested in that exact topic.

This increased the likelihood that they would:

  1. Open and read my email
  2. Reply with a positive response
  3. Share my content with their followers

Not only did I receive exposure from my content being shared, but I also made valuable contacts in a new niche.

Important Things To Consider

Notice that at no stage did I ever directly ask for promotion.

This is important; the decision to share content must be their own choice.

I only asked bloggers and influencers to look at my article, nothing more.

This makes the entire process low-pressure and chilled out. It also opens the door to continue the conversation some time in the future, irrespective of what they decide to do.

But realistically, if your content is good enough there is a high probability it’s going to get shared.

To make share-worthy content, think about creating articles that promise ‘the ultimate guide to X’, or ‘everything you need to know about X’.

The key is to spend your time producing original, high quality content that delivers maximum value to your audience.

Now that you have this simple strategy, it has the potential to deliver enormous rewards to your website, and help your business grow at a consistent and predictable rate.