I know this blog has been dedicated to the pursuit of
showing you a whole variety of different methods to generate traffic to your
websites and businesses. Let’s face it,
without any traffic you won’t have much of a business and there really isn't a
reason to have a website at all.
Where I Initially
Went Wrong In My Business
Without the key element of intimately knowing what your
niche is you may be getting people to come to your site, BUT THEY WILL BE THE
WRONG PEOPLE! So, you need to establish
this key idea well before you jump on the Internet and start banging out
information that you think people will want to read.
Getting the Traffic
That You Want
So, step #1 in your traffic generating matrix should be:
1. Get a niche that you can focus on. I have written a rather extensive article on
this in an earlier blog post, that also has wonderful links to good resources
and you can read that here: Finding Your
Niche However, this is a most important step that you must consider because
this is the direction that your business is going to take. Without a focused
subject or core idea, your business is going to go elsewhere.
Personal story:
Years ago, I started an online embroidery business. I bought my self a $20,000 single head
machine, digitizing software, hoops, and a bunch of other stuff I needed, and
decided that I would run most of my services on the Internet. So, I set up a basic E-commerce site, and put
myself out there to get business and to make my fortune on the World Wide
Web.
Oh, I got business, alright. I got people that wanted gardening hats,
shirts with children’s pictures on them, jackets for Veterans and a whole slew
of other unassociated stuff. I set up
loads of pages of material and pretty soon, my site looked like a one man band
trying to spell out the name Mississippi on a parade field.
To make my point short,
it was chaos.
It wasn’t until I decided on a niche that every aspect of my
business got easier. I decided to create
apparel exclusively for musicians. Hats,
shirts and jackets for trumpet players, trombonists, guitarists, etc. Because I had picked a focused niche I didn't
have to digitize or sew out loads of unrelated garments either.
Which leads me to Step #2…
2. Promoting your site or business. Once you have a niche in place, you must have
a way to attract the people that you want there. In my case I started a light-hearted blog
about the craziness of musicians and I wrote a lot of parodies about different
instruments. I also used Photoshop to
create a bunch of really funny images based on them.
Not only do you need to get fresh content related to your
site on the Internet, but you will need to know where people in your niche hang
out. In my case, it was easy to figure
out where musicians were hanging out at, and how to get my marketing message in
front of them.
What I eventually learned was that musicians that were into
my musician’s apparel were mostly kids in school band programs and music
hobbyists that were in specific groups and clubs. For years there was a group of music
enthusiasts in Holland that wore my stuff to their weekly musician’s meetings,
no lie. I got a lot of orders from those
guys!
3. Selling your wares. This was where I failed for years. I did fairly well getting people to come to
my music embroidery site, but once they were there I didn’t sell them. Yeah, it’s great getting new prospects in
your door, but what are you going to do once they walk in? You need to have a method of selling them, which
is the reason why I decided to learn how to write advertising copy.
For years, I was intimidated by many of the awesome
copywriters that were on the Web. I
thought I’d never be able to even approach the level of copy that I saw on
websites and squeeze pages or stuff I got in the mail box. And it’s true, those guys are real, world
class, millionaire advertising copy writers.
However, in order to play a decent round of golf, you don’t
have to play as good as Tiger Woods. You
don’t need to be the next Bill Gates to use a computer or create a
program. You can aspire to be like them,
and put your back into your passion. It
will take you a long way. But to do
well, you don’t necessarily have to be THAT good.
So, if you are going to sell any product or service on the
Internet, you are going to have to learn to sell using words. That, or at least hire a copywriter that
knows what he or she is doing.
I have briefly touched on three very important facets of
grabbing traffic on the Web. To get a
more in –depth idea on how to implement these ideas, please refer to the
resources below. Most of the information
you can get from these sites are free but are high quality:
Finding a Niche:
The Warrior Forum. Just type in “niche” into the forums search
function to get a TON of information from seasoned online entrepreneurs.
Here’s an excellent video to get you started on finding a
niche:
Promoting Your
Site or Business:
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