Do You Believe Getting Traffic Is Difficult?

Getting targeted traffic makes the biggest difference as then the sales follow.

I would say participating in a community in your niche is a very effective way of getting targeted traffic.

Find where your potential customer hangs out and go there and participate.

Hi Andy

I think I'm sensing some frustration or at very least bemusement at your recognition that traffic generation is a recurring issue for a lot of folk.

I would like to offer some advice and it comes from my personal experience of being moderately successful with traffic generation and also being hopeless at it.

When it works it's because I've used what I know to work, the examples you've given previously Andy and the methods I've picked up along the way. Recently I've had some good success from article submissions and video marketing, but my successful methods are in relation to the niches I'm in, they might not work for everyone.

I believe there's more to learn from my lack of success.

When it doesn't work and traffic generation is poor I've discovered that there's a common factor every single time. Me.

For whatever reason I've not acted upon what I know works. Maybe I've tried to reinvent the wheel or allowed myself to get distracted or go onto another project without completing the first. But I've got to admit, the main reason that traffic generation doesn't work is because I get lazy and don't get off my backside to do the work it takes.

And surprise surprise, whenever I'm lazy I don't get the traffic and I don't earn any money.

Hey, but that's just me. Maybe if you're struggling to get traffic you feel that you're working real hard. Well, if that's the case then you're working real hard in the wrong areas or in the wrong way. Sit back and analyse what you're doing. Chances are you're over complicating something or maybe you're trying to do something that you're just not good at and you should be outsourcing or looking for another method.

It doesn't have to be difficult unless you make it so.

Peter

Hi Andy, I'm sure you know the answer already. Traffic is at least 90% of the problem for most people, if that wasn't the case, there would be little need for forums like this.

see its a common misatke made by most people that traffic is the sticking point. Once you have a system to convert it set up traffic is the easy bit... I can pay someone to generate traffic if I know my metrics.

Whats the cost of aquisition...

whats the average visitor worth

if i know I make an average of $3 per visitor
then paying $1000 for a 1000 visitors seems like a bargain.

gte your system and monetisation set up first

Robert

I'd have to say traffic generation is a little difficult? I mean I don't have major problems with it because I have gotten really good at getting very targeted traffic with great conversion rates but I would like to get MORE traffic.

I'm not sure if it was my article thread mentioned earlier or not but I definitely do a lot of article marketing. And then backlinking and SEO.

I've actually wanted to try PPC but I'm a little scared about just losing the money. I know I should be well educated on the subject before using it.

An quick formula to get traffic could be:

Find a searched-for keyword with low competition - create a page and optimize it for that keyword - go out and grab one way dofollow backlinks with your keyword as the anchor text.

Watch your rankings rise, and your highly targeted search engine visitors roll in!

Right on the nail there!

Right keywords make the internet go around and getting traffic with these is as easy as sipping coffee. Of course it takes some skill and time in deciphering such keywords but its well worth the effort

Just write some keyword optimized articles and watch the traffic roll in. That is why I'm selling Keyword Based PLR to help you with this
Bhupinder

I've heard some people complain about needing more traffic, when they are getting 50-100 uniques a day.

If that's trageted traffic, that's enough to make at least 1-2 sales a day - now just build a few more sites like it.

I think the problem is often more a matter of poor conversions, or else the person hoping to build just one 'grand' site that will make tons of sales for them.

It shouldn't be difficult if you've done your homework on what you are offering.

If you are selling your own product and know that it converts well than attracting affiliates that will bring in loads of traffic will not be a problem.

If you are an affiliate marketer and you are promoting high demand products...which it important, than it comes down to keyword reseach 101 if you are relying on free methods of traffic generation.

Andy,

Up until recently, my frustration was getting a statistically significant number of consistently targeted visitors so that I could then make sound decisions (i.e. visitor value) - and like many others, I wanted to reach these first visitors at no cost.

That's a much more specific hurdle than "traffic."


(And yes, I understand that the "no cost" choice really ties my hands and limits opportunity. Unfortunately, that's just where I am in life right now. Tight budgets lead to sacrifices, and sometimes it's opportunity that's being sacrificed.)

I admit , one of my biggest problem right now is getting a targeted traffic for my sites. Maybe I have close my self in a box, and believe that I can only get quality and targeted traffic from search engines.

The problem with depending only with search engine is that it requires lot of works, and the competition is hard.

I want to learn other ways to get quality and targeted traffic... and thanks for this thread I will watch it.

Andy,

sounds like a great post of yours but honestly to me it really doesn't seem so easy to get traffic to my sites.

So what have I done so far. Honestly not too much except for the standards like sigfiles letting my list know about it etc.. but I just don't seem to find the right source for this.
For one of my pages I started to contact all major blogs in the niche asking for a review on their blog for my product, many agreed, alle that agreed got the eBook but only one actually posted the review.

I think I'm somehow not ready to take major action in this field, most likely because I'm not sure what will bring results and what won't

Tino

My biggest frustration as a beginning web marketer is where do you start?

Assuming you mean free traffic, yes this is a big problem.

Honestly, there seems to be so many possible traffic sources that you end up not doing much. It often seems a little overwhelming to say the least.

I also thing one of the biggest problems is that one doesn't seem to see quick improvements in traffic increasing.

It seems to take ages and after not much happening, one can quickly get a bit disheartened.

I have a few websites and only one gets decent traffic, a couple of thousand visitors a day. All the rest seem to get about 20 to 30 visitors a day and it gets disheartening.

The site getting most of the traffic has been around for years and we can't seem to match it, no matter what we do (or think we are doing).

Cheers.

Traffic on a budget is difficult.

I think if you have money to get into some higher media areas, then no, it's not so hard.

I personally feel that getting traffic is a piece of cake, it's getting conversions that is harder.

So far it sounds like the people who have said they struggle to get traffic are also saying that they know there's more they could be doing - so it looks like most people really DO know how to get traffic and just aren't doing what they know they should.

Are there any warriors who have actually learned about traffic generation and are struggling after actually doing what they know they should?

It's my experience that if you actually put together a solid plan and consistently DO it - anyone can get good traffic.

I know it's easier said than done, but isn't that the point? The only reason you would actually struggle to get traffic is if you're not doing the things you know are needed.

Andy

Traffic is the easy part. Content is always the hard part for me.

until you get over the "I need more traffic" and get into the I need to optimise my system you will never get this.

Sending traffic to a site that doesnt convert is the real problem, doesnt matter how much traffic you send to a badly converting site it will never be enough.

Robert

Hi,

I'm a newbie and I find it hard to get target traffic to my websites. I've tried ppc at the beginning but it was getting too expensive so I switched to classified ads. I must say that it didn't work for me so I'm now writing articles. So far, I haven't attracted loads of traffic as I've just started but it's by far the best method for me.
Cheers,
Internote007

Andy,

Before you can ask if people are having problems getting traffic, wouldn't it be helpful to say what you mean by traffic?

Don't confuse traffic with conversions.
Don't confuse traffic with sales.
Don't confuse traffic with success.

Were you being serious when you suggested to for someone to put on a workshop to sell a $57 ebook?

Unless I am mistaken, your post is about people getting traffic, not business systems.

I do know there is a difference, however that wasn't what your opening post is about.

Its a little like telling people that its no problem to avoid bird flu, and giving the answer of "Don't get infected".

You're now saying that people are to think in terms of visitors, or customers, but you neglected to be that focused in your opening post.

It seems you change your point along the way.

You seem to be getting frustrated because you asked about traffic, and then saying traffic isn't a solution.

This is starting to look like a thread that is a fore runner to a WSO.

Chill dude its not that big of deal

Mark Riddle

For what it's worth, here are two examples of how I started getting traffic to two of my sites (both of them new sites and with different approaches to getting traffic):

Site #1: I started this site in May of last year. It's an affiliate site. I specifically chose a niche where I knew I would be able to get some good search engine rankings relatively quickly because the competition for the long term keywords in this niche was so low. So I launched a small site with eight pages, each page optimized for one of the long term keywords. In May, I got 20 visitors. In June, I received 1,339. All the visits were from organic search results -- mostly Google. Since then, I have added three more pages of optimized content, submitted two well written articles to various article directories, submitted two videos to YouTube, submitted the website to 500 directories (thru one of those submission services), and got 52 additional backlinks (not from the previos mentioned sources). I now average 211 visitors a day. The key for this site was that I chose an undeveloped niche where I knew people were looking for information, but there really wasn't a good site that was offering it all in one place.

Site #2: I just launched this site three weeks ago. Unlike the previous site, this site is in a more developed niche so I didn't want to rely as much on organic traffic at the start. Also, this site is a bit different because it offers my own product. My first bits of traffic actually came from affiliates on CB, shortly after it was listed there. In addition, I did the following to market the site in the month of April -- two squidoo pages (with good content) pointing back to my index pages; a blog submitted to feedage.com with 7 unique content posts; two well-written articles submitted to various directories; a video submitted to YouTube; and 8 additional backlinks on related websites. This past week I have been getting 20-25 visitors a day and have already had some sales. Virtually none of the visitors have come from direct organic search engine traffic. This month I plan on doing two more articles, some social bookmarking, a press release, another YouTube video, some more blog posts, and some more backlinks.

P.S. For all the newbies out there, I have a full-time job and it's not IM. I do all this work in the evening and on weekends. This is just to serve as a reminder that you have to take action to see any results!

I hope this helps!

but you need traffic to optimize your conversions...

I'm new in the internet marketing and I do like to have is a "HOW TO" in SEO, but something since the beging. How many keywords, description, keywords in the body of the web, back links and so on....

I haven't had an issue in generating traffic, my problem comes with getting that traffic to convert into sales. Therefore I have been tweaking my landing page here and there.

I don't know how to get traffic other than Articles, Videos, and PPC, yet I still make a decent amount each month.

You don't need to have insane amounts of traffic streams I think. Just ramp up what you have now.

If you're new to the business you will likely ask yourself, "How can I get my product or affiliate products I carry in front of tons of people who are interested in such things?" And yes, the people are out there, but you don't know their names or how to contact them. This is a dilemma.

Now, I would never recommend PPC for any newbie. Yes, it can work wickedly well once you get the hang of it, but it can also flatten your wallet in the blink of an eye--and when that happens to someone new to the business they are likely to give up and walk away. It happens every day.

Just a couple thoughts: As I said earlier, there are likely hundreds-of-thousands, or maybe millions of people out there interested in what you have. But--you don't know their names or how to contact them. There are, however, people out there who do know many of their names and they have their email addresses as well.

Anyone who has done even a medium-sized product launch of their own has a list of over 10k subscribers they got from their opt-in boxes. The guys who have had a few top Clickbank launches have over 100,000k names on their lists.

Look, a great CB product launch may sell 4,000 units in a few months, and a few sell many more than that. (Rob Benwell sold over 20,000 units of his Blogging To The Bank ebooks.) Okay, let's say a guru's sales page converts at 4%. With these numbers to work with, in order to get 4,000 sales they would need 100,000 visitors to their sales page. Suppose they get a 20% opt-in rate to a newsletter, mini-course, or report. This would grow their list by 20,000 names.

Now, these names can be gold. So what do they do with these names. Your first thought might be that they email them promos for their product. But you can only send a list so many offers for the same product before people either stop reading the emails, or they opt out of the list altogether.

This is why the gurus send out 2-4 emails a week promoting products of other gurus. You've seen their emails. 95% of them are nothing but dribble about how you need to get in on this limited deal--and it is jam-packed with affiliate links for their buddies' products.

The problem is that people get tired of seeing this "crap". They really do. I mean, the Frank Kerns of the world will tell you that having a list means nothing unless you build a great relationship with the people on your list. Mike Rasmussen's Get More Buyers addresses this fact at length. Jonny Andrews' Guru Assassin also has a great section on list building as well (probably one of the best I've seen anywhere).

This is an opportunity for you. The gurus need to give their subscribers something of perceived value from time to time. Develop 2-3 most excellent 20-page reports on a topic. Get a great cover graphic made for each. Subscribe to whatever the gurus in your niche offer as an opt-in on their sales page. Then, get their physical mailing addresses from the bottom of their mailings. (Many of the top auto-responders require they have that there.)

Now send a priority mail to the top 20-30 big dogs in your niche and offer to let them give away your report to their list as a free gift in their next mailing. Make sure at the end of your report you have an URL for your site where you offer them more free stuff--but make that link go to a squeeze page so they have to opt-in to your list to get more good stuff from you.

Alternatively, go to eZineArticles or another big directory and find authors who have at least a thousand articles related to your niche. These guys have lists too. Make them similar offers.

Some will say, "Wa, wa, wa--I tried this once and they didn't accept my offer. Hey dog, are you nuts? Try this a hundred times bud and then get back to me. If you can get just a handful of gurus to do this with you, you will have a list big enough to start doing some swap mailings with some big names in the business. Then your list will grow even more.

If you've got a thin skin and can't handle rejection--you're in the wrong business to begin with. Leverage the assets of some big players to enhance your own position. Read the previous sentence once more so you get it. Now, read it one more time--and just once again.

Some people will tell you this won't work. They have likely never tried this. This works. This works. This works. This works. This works. This works.

And, in addition to building your list, and generating cash for you--you will also build important relationships with some of the super-affiliates in your niche. Then, when you develop your own product to launch--bang, you dial them up, and, since you already have a working relationship with them, you tell them to get off their ass and do a mailing for you. That's how it works. Make it work for you.

The first weekend you get 2,000 opt-ins you are going to wet yourself. Get yourself a box of pampers because you can make this work time and time again. Lecture over. I return you to Andy's caring hands. Learn from him!

Being a newbie I find traffic to be a bit of a challenge...but that was because I wasn't sure who to target, where to target and how to target....

the who depends on the product....the where and how varies with budget and experience

I did find a new site that am trying and will see if it works....

if you want to check it out it is www.makecashtonite.com <--- not an affiliate link

Yes, I do.

It takes persistence and a little
SEO knowledge.

Igor

Great thread,

Thanks to everyone for sharing. I have learnt quite abit about
getting traffic from just reading vthis and similare threads.

Thanks

Andy. You've just crystalised something that hadn't occured to me until I read your post... that people actually BELIEVE that generating traffic is hard. So it's that whole perception thing, that if a person views a task as difficult then it will be difficult. See if you had asked me what I thought other peoples opinions were on the subject, I'd have told you straight up that it's either :

- people dont know how to generate traffic
- people dont want to do what is necessary to generate traffic

In my opinion, generating traffic isn't hard at all (Sometimes it easier than others, sometimes it's quicker than others)

But all in all, traffic should be viewed the same way as buying goods from the grocery store! Generally, a person doesnt realise they need bread and milk then go 'uurrrrgh, it's going to be SOOO hard getting those into my grasp. I think I'll just give up instead of trying!'. Because if you need bread and milk, you know that it is a simple process of walking or driving from your location to a store, walking to the fridge to get the milk, grabbing the loaf of bread off the shelf, paying at the register as you make small talk with the checkout chick and then going home with the goods. (for anyone wishing to object at this point with a comment like 'what if you have no money?' then go to plan B of walking to the bakery to ask for some old bread and borrow a pint of milk from your neighbour. The point is, if you put your mind to it you can obtain these things)

In my opinion, obtaining traffic is easy! (If you know what the process is)

I couldnt list all of the many rituals here, it would simply take me days and days. But my contribution to the thread isnt going to be a 'how to guide'... I'd simply like to impress on people that getting traffic is easy and it should be perceived as being easy. Like a wise man once said (I think it was a dirtbike mechanic on a crusty demons video)... if what you're doing is hard, then you're not doing it the right way!

I personally view traffic like breathing air (it's just something that is always there and is in endless supply)

So for everyone that thinks it is hard, time to reframe your perceptions and realise that if it's easy for some people then with the right education it can also be easy for you.

To quote another wise man... if you think you can do it, then you're right. If you think you can't do it, then you're also right.

Reality is subjective, simply change the way you think and you instantly change the world around you!

Ok, I've send the donation to Macy - Don't let that stop you from posting your thoughts in this thread, or for that matter from going and making a donation yourself - Even if you made one before, we're now in to a new month and I'm sure she'd appreciate whatever you can do.

Andy

I think generating traffic is a big problem for most newbies in the internet marketing game. They are really enthusiastic in the beginning but when the hits only trickle in, they lose momentum and give up. I believe getting organic traffic is the key to repeat customers.

Hi Andy,

The post is very nice and it seems like its been created just for me.

I started a blog in Jan 09. Its in the health niche. I have some really good original content and have used keywords that have very high advertiser competition. Some of my keywords are in top 10 Google searches.

In spite of all these, I get a maximum of 20-25 uniques per day. I am just not able to understand why!!

I do blog commenting, digg and use stumbleupon on a regular basis. But still, am not able to drive good amount of traffic. Any suggestions?

I don't think any of it is really that easy is it? A big part of it is the kind of site or the product also. As an example: we have a video based system that we develop at heroapps.com (please ignore the lame sales page, I have another going up soon). I've put up sites with this, posted to a few social based sites and am looking at 6,000 visitors a day within the first month. Now to me that's nuts! But here is the major difference, I can put one up for diet info and it converts like crazy, then one up for the swine-flu and it converts like crap . . . both getting the same amount of traffic. So yes, niche is huge.

But . . . I try the same traffic tactics with a diet review site (non video) and nothing, no sales, no traffic, nothing. The review site is diet based and the diet video site does crazy, and was indexed like crazy, so the issue isn't niche here.
So to me, technology used should also be a major part of the tactics used for getting traffic.

Garret

yes..traffic is actually still a problem. A few hundred uniques/day still wont make you an adsense millionaire.

IMHO, traffic is highly related to quality of content...so the question might perhaps not be "where/how to get traffic?" - but RATHER "how to make an interesting, unique site which will yield that traffic"

(Of course, there are other things like SEO to do in addition)

addendum:

Asking about "traffic" without worrying about content...guys, it is about the same as if someone has a store.

The person asks how to get customers and sales.
HOWEVER - he has the worst selection of goods and prices.

So..to get customers he first needs to look at his store and fix things, at the BASE.

It's difficult when you don't know anything about it. Once you know it, it changes from difficult to hard work. And hard work always costs money and time, no mater how you look at it. Just because there are dozens of ways to get traffic doesn't mean it is easy.

Gunter

I think getting free traffic is as easy as you want to be. The amount of traffic you can generate depends on the amout of work you put into it.

I think that its about taking a long term view and then doing the WORK .... yes it does require work and patience.

Without a doubt my most successful strategy for traffic has been to identify strong keywords and then create webpages, content and articles around them.

I do social bookmarking and some blogging ... the link wheel approach but this I consider to be additional and secondary ... I will change my view if after a number of months the traffic from this out strips keyword and article marketing.

John

I've shown in videos how to get a blog immediately indexed and 100 visitors a day from day one.

Getting traffic is as easy as having new pages indexed with content that people are searching for.

Many people reuse other peoples content and use PLR etc which is why they struggle to get traffic.

You may look at a niche and think you can't compete but the search engines love 'fresh' 'unique' content - so if that's what you're creating, you can get results quickly even in a competitive niche. But you need to keep doing it and build up authority as you go so that the effect is more pronounced each time you do.

Andy

Hello

This is a very good question, however, I think we have to separate "general traffic" from "targeted traffic".

From my point of view, getting traffic per se is not difficult... there are tones of ways to do it if we put our effort on it!

On the other hand, getting good, quality and targeted traffic is a little bit complicated! However, I believe that the secret relies on the amount of work we put on this or the amount of money we have to spend!

Meanwhile, if you have any good tips to increase the levels of targeted traffic, I would be very grateful to you!

Getting the traffic isn't nearly as difficult as converting the traffic that you get.

Getting traffic is hard as hell. It's the hardest thing I've ever tried to do. I spend hours of time a day and hundreds of dollars I don't have, researching and linking and advertising. Pissing away my unemployment checks as the bills and debts pile up, because I know that if I have to go back to a 9 to 5 job again, I will kill myself anyway.

I was an art prodigy at 5 years old. By 8 I was drawing at an adult level. I won awards for my work, and then by the time I was in high school the talent had faded. I was left with nothing but a hard realisation that I was never going to be what I had always believed I would be. Since then I have struggled through job after low paying job, having a hard time hanging onto any of them usually due to poor performance. This is my last effort at life, period.

the whole traffic generation revolution is to rely on the basics of internet marketing. Write articles, visit forums and make the necessary comments to get back links. internet marketing is a numbers game. The more time writing articles and publishing them on the various article sites in my opinion will eventually drive the traffic to your websites. We just need to figure it out and wait for the results.

I hope so...I'm not getting any younger and I don't think anyone else here is either

Thank you for posting inspirational replies in this thread. But I say no thank you for those persons who only wishes to get on the other side of the fence just to earn some attraction. Thank you for to the author of this thread for posting such matter.