Ely Shemer

{EAV:f062ea34d9f336ee} A few days after I started actively promoting my new blog I was already able to see the effect of my activities. Check out the graph below: There are two things which are evident at first sight:

1. I am not yet at my target of 100 new visitors a day, however I get an average of 50 a day, which is not that bad for starters 🙂
2. Following an initial surge, the traffic dropped a bit.

Where did my traffic go to? The traffic generation methods I was using (blog and forum commenting, social media posting, email promotions) are all anecdotal. They mostly bring traffic at the time of posting and then a little trickle, further down the line, until it stops all together. At first, this realization may be discouraging – will I need to do this forever? I have not signed up to being a slave to traffic generation… However, if you consider the long run, a few things will happen:

• My “brand” (in this instance, my name) will get known and people will start seeking it out.
• Some of the old posts will become “a must read” in my niche and be shared continuously (sometimes referred to as viral traffic).
• The search engines will pick up the “buz” or “signature” of my online presence and associate my name with various keywords (or key phrases).

All those are, however, going to happen in the future and require consistent effort over a long period of time. It requires commitment for the long run which is not easy for most people. This is where being a member of a group of like minded individuals who are supporting each other, could help. Not only will you be supported by your peers, you will also feel obligated to keep it up, as you have pledged to others to do so. These are still early days and results are still to be seen. No instant magic buttons here 🙂 Next, I’m going to share with you other activities I’m starting this week. It’s important to do the basics (and I will continue to do so) yet I’m in an urgent need of some income. To that end I’m going to be using some of my skills and acquired tools and set up a quick stream of income. So you see – there is much to look for 🙂 Come visit again to learn all about it!

It was fun – writing the first post for my new personal blog and reading all the comments people were leaving on these pages. Oh, sorry – I’m jumping the gun here… 🙂 OK, so I have a new blog and I wrote the first chapter of my story. Now what? Well, obviously it’s not enough putting yourself out there – you need to actually have people visiting the blog and reading the posts. In “web jargon” we call this traffic. There are millions of people surfing the web at any given moment but none of them will be visiting your site unless they know about it and are curious to see it. Basically, there are two ways of letting people know about your site: paid methods (paid advertising) and free methods (free advertising). Paid advertising is an excellent way of getting large amount of traffic (and targeted traffic, if you do it right) but it is also a great way to spend a lot of money, fast. At the beginning of our journey, it’s best to avoid paid traffic and concentrate on free traffic methods. It maybe slower to get it started but it is a lot cheaper and safer. Generating free traffic to your site can be further divided into 2 general categories: direct (invitation traffic) and indirect. With direct methods of generating traffic you simply invite everyone you know to come and visit your new site. I have some email subscribers so I sent them an invitation. some of them have already got to know, like and trust me so they stopped by to see what my new site is all about. More significant for me was my social media connections, namely: Twitter, Facebook, Empire Avenue and others (like Pinterest, Stumbleupon, Linkedin, etc.) I sent invitations or posted about the site, as appropriate, on all those channels. Reading the comments I got to my first post you can see those efforts were fruitful. Next I’m working on some indirect methods of generating free traffic to my site. There are many methods at my disposal, among them are: Blog commenting – I have a great advantage being part of the community built around Dean Holland’s Quick Start Challenge, where we all support each other’s blog. You can look for blogs in your niche (or area of expertise), join and participate as a valuable member. Forum posting – where you contribute as a community member by participating in discussions both on other people posts and by starting your own threads. By adding the URL of my blog in my signature, I make it visible to all that read my posts. If they like what I have to say, they may find it interesting visiting my blog. Other content distribution methods (such as articles, reports, presentations, videos, etc.) are also great ways of showcasing your strength and getting people to be interested in what you have to say. Those methods require a little bit more skills, knowledge and effort but are great for the long term. Adding the blog URL to everything you do – add it to your social profiles on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, etc. Adding your blog URL to your email signature is another simple but effective method. I’m sure you are getting the idea – associate your blog address with you and whatever it is you are doing on and off line. Using the domain of your blog in other activities. If you have other online activities that involve setting up web pages, use the same domain for hosting these pages (in a sub-directory). This will help spread awareness to your domain and if that domain is your name the effect will even be stronger. People are curios and some may just go and check the main domain when they see a webpage under an interesting domain. As an initial goal I’m looking to getting around 100 new visitors to my blog every day. This brings me to another important issue you need to take care of and that is tracking. How would I know I’m getting 100 new visitors to my site if I’m not tracking my site’s traffic? the same principal is valid for all your business activities: track it so you’ll know what’s working and what’s not. That way you know where to focus your efforts, where you need to improve and what venues to abandon. The most commonly used tracking service out there has to be Google Analytics. I’m not going to go into the debate of whether it’s good or not to give all your information to Google. That fact of the matter is, this service work and works well. This post is already rather long as it is so I’ll leave the discussion on Google Analytics to another post. Thanks again for visiting my blog and reading my posts 🙂 See you soon!