Getting traffic to my nutrition/exercise blog

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So I've been blogging since November and I'm still not getting nowhere near "enough" traffic to get some sales. My main problem is that I have a full time job that's taking up 11 hours of my day, so I can only dedicate 2 hours of my day to my online business (+ 10h per weekend, I already have no life, lol).

Basically what I do is:
I have a main blog mostly about nutrition and exercise (also self-improvement and 'awesomeness' in general - we post some videos of awesome skills on our social pages). I realized this is a bit broad of a niche, so I created a website specifically for health/weight loss - this one has a newsletter with a little ebook that comes with the sign-up.
Once a week I post a blog post closely related to this topic on my main blog and try to get some people to sign up to the newsletter. I'm trying to make both websites drive traffic to each other, because they are closely related.

Right now I'm trying to increase the traffic to the main blog and I'm looking for some new ways to do this.

what I've tried so far:
- ezinearticles: posted 2 articles, got very poor results
- G+ communities - promoting new posts - this works to a degree (maybe up to 2 hours after posting)
- Facebook - I promote my post to my fans, but there are very few, so obviously this doesn't drive much traffic. I recently started using FB post promotions, which worked out 'quite good' with the last post (got around 10-15 new fans for 4 pounds, lol)

quora - answered a few questions. Didn't work too well, but I'm planning to try again.

Currently I'm trying to get into guest blogging, so I'm looking around for some friendly bloggers with similar views.

I don't really have time for forums. Should I try and cram some forum time to my daily schedule ? Is it worth the time ?

I really want to try ezine ads, I don't have so much money to invest (couldn't possibly pay $600 for a solo ad). I'm willing to put 200$ a month into this (that's how much I can afford).

Any ideas ?
#main internet marketing discussion forum #blog #exercise #nutrition #nutrition or exercise #traffic
  • Banned
    It sounds "critical" (sorry! ) but I think you're lacking a realistic traffic-generation plan, really?

    Don't try to get potential customer traffic from article directories: that isn't how they work. Posts #2 and #6 in this thread explain: http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post5068872

    I don't know what "quora" is but I wouldn't expect the rest of that to have any realistic chance of attracting the floods of highly targeted traffic you clearly need, in this ultra-competitive market.

    This sounds much more hopeful, to me. Guest blogging is certainly a way of attracting some targeted traffic. A very time-consuming business, mind you, and one that typically depends for its success on highly accurate targeting.

    I'm not in your niche/market, so I perhaps shouldn't comment, but if I had to guess, I'd say that nearly all the people there will have seen what you're doing, and maybe even the products you're promoting, hundreds/thousands of times before, and it's not going to be easy.

    I think that part of your problem may be the combination of the fact that you have very limited time to build an IM business but have apparently chosen something very ambitious and time-consuming indeed, to get started?

    And the other part, I suspect, is that you're dealing with huge markets, rather than a "niche".

    It isn't "a bit of a broad niche": it's a combination of multiple enormous markets.

    That also isn't a broad niche. It isn't even two broad niches. It's still a combination of huge mega-markets. Call me a skepchick, but it makes me suspect that you have little-to-no targeting at all?

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...ml#post7755115
  • How about social bookmarking and create pdf and submit to document sharing?
  • The key to traffic generation is really consistency. You have to be patient and you have to be aggressive. Posting just two articles on ezinearticles is not going to get you the results you are after. You should be posting new content on your blog several times a week. You should also start posting videos on youtube. Two hours a day is plenty of time to write a great article for your blog and then turn that article into a video and post it on youtube.

    Use a free service like twitterfeed to automatically have all of your blog posts sent to your social media sites. Ezinearticles also has a plugin you can use to send all of your blog posts to their site. Try to automate as much as you can so you can get more done in those two hours. If you post a new article to your blog and a new video to youtube everyday for the next 30 days you will start to get a steady flow of traffic.

    And while it might not be thousands and thousands of visitors, it will be enough to start building a list and make money from that list.
  • I would look into Pinterest and Pinterest Communities for driving traffic to the nutrition side of things. I am not going to spell it out for you and you will have to do your own research but a fair amount of traffic can be generated there.
  • I am in the the exercise niche and I do very well with Youtube, Slideshare, and forum posting. It takes consistent effort though.

    At this point you have a very small sample size to base any results off of.

    If you promote consistenly on Youtube you will start to see results very quickly.


    Steve
  • Whatever you decide to get traffic you've just got to stick with it and keep pushing. (make sure it works though) For example if you can get 1 person to visit your website doing one thing. Trying to upscale that to more. You have to keep going at it.
  • Thanks for all the answers. I'm planning to start a video series (weekly exercise tips) on Youtube, which could potentially brings some traffic.

    I'm definitely not going to post a blog every day, mainly because that wouldn't be realistic time wise. Also, quality over quantity. Plus I have other things to do, like website maintenance, newsletter posts for my other site and most importantly my book, which I want to write.

    Currently I'm posting one own blog post per week + 1 post with curated content (3-5 links + short commentary). I want to add my uploaded videos as one post/week. Then I'd be looking for 3 posts a week, which could work, no ?

    I was using twitterfeed for some time, but I dropped it because it didn't generate proper descriptions/thumbnails. Also, I use G+ and Facebook. I ditched twitter a while ago.

    I'll look into ezinearticles automation. If anyone has any experience with that, please share.

    Pinterest could work for recipes... thanks for the idea.
    • [1] reply
    • I would seriously consider an easier niche if you are not willing to market the exercise/fitness market heavily. You will be putting the effort in all to be outdone by marketers who are doing it full time. Something to atleast consider.
  • Guest blogging is a great idea, you should do that.

    Forum marketing is another good way to get some really targeted traffic from signatures or even threads. You don't have enough time, but why would you miss this opportunity? Hire someone to do forum posting instead of you.

    Just some ideas for forum marketing:

    - Lets say we are talking about a fat loss product, then you can post a workout plan on your blog and post threads on forum like these:

    "My journey to lose x pounds in 6 months"

    You can link back to your blog post saying: I follow these plans, this is the guy who wrote this workout plan and inspired me, etc... just make sure it doesn't look like an advertisement, check similar "journey" threads before you or your VA write yours.

    You can write product reviews and submit threads using thread names like: "Anyone tried "product name"

    You can ask people if they used your product so it doesn't looks like an advertisement, so you can link to your review page...

    You have to be creative.
  • My first traffic source machine would be Facebook, then would go for YouTube and Forum posting and then finally guest blogging. Body building is the most searched keyword on Google search engine. So, obviously there would be many people around the world who are in the hunt of good body building articles.

    Posting blog links on Facebook and Forum posting would be the best idea of getting traffic to your blogl
  • The sense I am getting from your initial post is that you are already getting some traffic (how much??) and not making sales...that is the first problem.

    Also, from what we know of helping other bloggers is that a) Your message to market match may be off given the broad perspective of your blog...what that means is that you get 100 people to your blog, but they are coming with too many different interests to convert adequately. If you are trying to make the best use of limited time, hone in more on your market and keyword focus. b) Your sales funnel may need to be refined...how you convert traffic to leads and leads to customers is critical, especially for blogs.

    If your conversion is broken, you can waste a TON of time and money ramping up traffic with little or no return.

    If you are seeing good results on conversion and THEN need to ramp up traffic, I would first focus on getting better at consistent posts that are both intriguing/interesting AND that target specific keywords that have high commercial value to your customers. I would also be sure to bookmark and share my blog posts across Twitter, Facebook, Google + and even on SlideShare, various other social networking directories.


    Jeff
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    Getting traffic to my nutrition/exercise blog

    So I've been blogging since November and I'm still not getting nowhere near "enough" traffic to get some sales. My main problem is that I have a full time job that's taking up 11 hours of my day, so I can only dedicate 2 hours of my day to my online business (+ 10h per weekend, I already have no life, lol). Basically what I do is: