Web Empire

In my earlier post on Getting Traffic I described some of the elements that go into getting visitors without having to pay for them. Here I will discuss briefly paying for visitors.

First let me say that free traffic is better. This is a new blog in a very competitive market — I haven’t even posted 40 messages yet (this is the 39th). I started in mid-November, and averaged 10 visits per day for the last two weeks of that month. In December I averaged 30 visits per day, averaged over the month. Now, three weeks into January, I’m averaging 50 visits per day for this month. I have not paid for any traffic to this site — the cost is too high for this market, and as of yet I haven’t even offered anything for sale, it would be wasted money. So long as the stats keep moving in the right direction I will be satisfied with natural traffic.

However, for some sites, it is worthwhile to pay for traffic. I am not talking about paying those cheesy 10,000 visitors for $10 junk sites. I’m talking about advertising. People talk about buying ads, but the ads themselves have no value — we aren’t promoting brand recognition here, we are promoting websites. Ads are only worth the profitable traffic they generate.

To know which ads are generating profitable traffic, you need to know:

1. How much traffic comes from that ad
2. How many of those visitors buy your product
3. The average lifetime value of your customers

For #1, simply look at your stats, and see how many have the referrer from the site and page you are advertising on. Some ad sellers providing tracking information (especially if it is pay-per-click) as well.

#2 is a bit more difficult, you need good tracking software to keep tabs on the conversion rate. You can make your own tracking software by adding a simple random variable to the ad URL (e.g. www.mysite.com?t=1263) then pass that $t value through to your order form. That will only track immediate sales, not those who bookmark your site and return later to buy, but it is much cheaper than the tracking software.

The third value, average lifetime value per customer, is something that changes over time, and needs to be tracked with good accounting records. At first, when you only have one product, the lifetime value is equal to the sales price of that product. But you need to develop more ‘back end’ or related products, to really make money. Once you have established a relationship with a customer through their first purchase, they will be like gold in the bank for future purchases, so long as they are highly satisfied with their first purchase.

Once you have gathered the above information, simply look at the cost of the ad, divide by the number of paying customers it generates and subtract that from the average lifetime value of your customers. The higher the value in the lifetime value - ad cost equation the better. If that value is negative, the ad costs more than it is worth.

I have just added a sign-up form for update notices, please sign up. Right now I’m thinking there will one email per month, with descriptions of what I consider the most important posts in the preceding month, and perhaps an occasional product announcement (list members will get a discount offer). I will not be flogging affiliate products on that list.

No matter if you have a single site, or hundreds, they are all useless unless you can get some traffic, or better yet, qualified traffic. By traffic, I mean real visitors of course — even the worst of sites can get search engines to visit, just by linking to the site from one of your other sites. Considering that Google has more than half the search engine market in their pocket, it is amazing that there are still hundreds of other search engine bots scooping up site data as fast as they can.

Being included in the search engine’s database is just a start; unless you rank well within their search results, there won’t be much traffic coming your way from that source. That is why SEO is so important; optimize your page to get the best placement you can, and get all the incoming links possible. Buying links (i.e. paid advertising) is a reasonable option if your money site is profitable enough to support the cost.

Search engine traffic is self-qualified, they are by definition interested in what you have to offer, they typed in the keyword phrase to find your site. To make sure your other traffic is also going to consist of people interested in what you have on your site, make sure you describe your content accurately, and make sure any incoming links you control use relevant (but varied) terms for the link text.

The other way to get good, qualified, traffic is to use article marketing. By providing content for other websites, you gain exposure as well as incoming links. Even if nobody uses the article, you have a link from the article directory site or sites you submit to. Most likely your article will be picked up by automated reprint sites — those tend to be spammy, but  since it is an incoming link, it won’t hurt.

Another source of traffic is links from blog comments and forum posts. Be sure you have something relevant to say, no one will follow a spam link, even if you manage to get past the filters and moderators.

Link bait is a great technique for getting traffic and incoming links. Simply offer something free on your site that people will want to link to, or that they can use on their own sites with a link back to yours. Watch your traffic stats to see what parts of your site attract the most natural (non-bot) traffic, and build a free offer around that.

The opt-in mailing list is another source of regular traffic. Many websites using this technique don’t even bother to create content for an ezine, they just send notices with the linked title of new blog posts or articles as they are added to the site. Basically, these are like RSS feeds for the (rather large) group of technophobes who have no idea what to do with an RSS feed. They remind occasional readers that you exist, and they should visit and see what’s new.

The great advantage of having a Web Empire, rather than a single site, is that you can send yourself traffic — from one of your sites to another. Create sites that have no other purpose than to funnel qualified traffic to your monetary sites. Place ads and text links on your own sites, promoting your products or services, and/or the affiliate products you support. This is traffic partly under your control — by controlling the choices they have on your site, you have a large degree of control over where they go next.