Help me to understand IM traffic

Jason don't feel bad. :]

Traffic is where EVERYONE Fights.

There's something I always say...

And that's EVEN if you give away gold bricks... Without traffic nobody will ever see the offer right?

As far as tactics for getting traffic...

It looks like you're in the IM niche? One thing you can do is continue to post on the warriorforum.

It's possible to get a TON of traffic here, as long as you offer high quality content.

I know from personal experience, that when I help people here, my traffic gets a boost.

Another thing you might consider is building a following.

(I see you're into list building) - keep that going.

It's MUCH EASIER to command a bucketload of traffic if you have a social media following - so build one of your own.

Build a following EVERYWHERE.

(I build a following on Twitter, Facebook Group, Skype Group, LinkedIn, heck even Tumblr and WordPress).

Sorry for this long rant.

One more tip? - Create content that totally kicks ass.

I've noticed that my average blog gets shared OVER 30 times.

That's some of the best traffic I'll ever get - because it comes from real live humans, and it's free.

(Paid traffic is another discussion, and I believe you asked for FREE traffic methods... So this is my thesis).

Any more questions feel free to ask, and good luck.

Thanks Sarevok. when you talk about social media? ie facebook, twitter..... Does that mean i should use my existing facebook and twitter? or make a new facebook and twitter account for my niche? also i was asking about low cost traffic along with free traffic. how is fiverr for using peoples services for targeted traffic?

Sorry to hear about your divorce.

Internet Marketing and places like Warrior Forum can be a vicious cycle for starters. I think I spent over $5000 in useless products over the years. Each time I get sucked into that NEW SUPER POWERFUL METHOD THAT GENERATED $15,000 PER MONTH. It sounds good in theory, you sign up, you try it out, you suddenly realize you have to invest so much time and money than originally thought. You keep reading up on how this can work, you get too much information and end up having and information overload and by that stage you find yourself again on the Warrior Forum looking at other methods that advertise themselves as the next super hit. And then it starts all over.

Problem is, you gotta stick with something that can actually create you some sort of business and stay away from the get rich quick schemes, they never EVER work, and if they do, it's only for the original creator of that product. Once he sells off the information, it will become saturated immediately.

If you tell us a bit more about how exactly you are trying to create your online business, some might give you more specific help.

Instead of promoting to your own (quite limited) social media groups and other audiences or waiting until they are slowly built up over years you should be 'hacking' into other peoples audiences.

One of the best things any marketer can do is to network like mad with other in the niche and any influential people.

Get interacting on social media, chatting on email, blog commenting, participating in forums of those who have a big following already.

Get known to them. Share their stuff. Help them. Do something cool for them for free. Ego bait them. Send them a guest post. Comment on their posts with REALLY in-depth comments that break down their posts. Do something controversial to get their attention. Link to them. Interview them.

Over time you will build relationships with people (it takes less time than you might think tbh) and they will return the favor and share your stuff or link to you...

..BUT only IF your content / offer / whatever you are offering is REALLY good.

No matter what you do if your stuff is garbage they won't tarnish their reputation by sharing low quality content with their audience.

So firstly you need top notch content then secondly get networking like mad.

It's all well and good trying to build your own audience up naturally but that takes a lot of time. Tap into other peoples in the mean while.

Also make sure you are where your target audience is online - blogs, forums, social media hubs or wherever they hang out and get your ads and / or content in front of them in whatever way you can (without spamming of course).

Being a valued member in the forum and posting insightful posts and topics works well. Sharing content in freebie or download sections too.

Blog commenting when relevant works well too if you're one of the first to comment and leave solid replies with a link to something similar / opposing on your site - use Google Alerts and feedreader to stay up to date.

Interacting in big facebook groups works well and sharing your content from time to time.

Tweeting big names on Twitter to tell them you've written about them, linked to them or written a post they'd like can work great again IF you have solid content - I regularly get some of the biggest names re-tweeting my stuff by doing just this.

Mention authorities and influential people in all your posts - quote them, reference them, link to similar topics, ask them a Q and include the answer, round up their opinion on a particular topic and post about it.

Syndicate and share your content wherever you can - other blogs, Scoop It groups, Reddit, Inbound.org, InsideIM, Kingged, Digg etc etc.

Can do really well with these techniques.

So if I'm getting this right...you've got a site about list building but you don't actually have any success about list building and here you are posting in WF, which is presumably your target audience, telling us you've no idea what you are doing?

Do you see where you might be going wrong here?

Create sites on things you know and are passionate about or something that causes you a great pain / problem and other people suffer from too - like unwanted divorce for example!

You'll have more success.

Autoblogs are junk. People want HIGH QUALITY blog content not auto-generated nonsense.

You'll need to re-evaluate your whole plan here. You're way off tangent.

As far as niches go.. It doesn't matter what niche I pick I still have to learn how to market it and all the other good stuff about seo optimization and promoting and all. That's what I'm unclear on. When you say good content, that means writing useful posts and adding keywords? What does the long tail key word refer to?

If you're strapped for cash you need to become a Guerilla Marketer. Get on related forums and start offering advice to people. Start making videos on Youtube, start writing articles and distributing them to article directories.

Get on Facebook and Twitter and build your presence. Getting traffic is about getting people to know who you are and getting people to check out your website. You can even make business cards and hand them out to people that you think would be interested in your business.

If somebody put a gun to your head and said you have to ethically drive 100 targeted visitors to your site in the next 24 hours what would you do. I'm 100% sure that you would think of something.

Create a daily traffic schedule and follow it religiously.

Jason,

I'm just like you... I'm currently going through a divorce and it ain't easy.

It all started in August and the first few months were horrible. Then I decided it was time to grow and grow my internet business. Soaking up all the information I could to get my mind off things.

It's been a few months now and I haven't looked back. I started making sales in March and my traffic has been going up ever since.

You need to go where the money is. If you're marketing to pet owners then you need to find where the pet owners hang out.

Best of luck with everything, Jason!

Yes, traffic is the Holy Grail of IM... without it, nothing else is possible.

This All-in-one thread on traffic has lots of good advice from different people (me being one of them)

Good luck with your divorce. I "been there and done that and got the t-shirt" and it was tough... but it can get a lot better after some time passes, and most probably will... it did for me. Hang tough !