Content + Traffic + Pre-Sell = Monetize
Written by: Don Miller
Posted on December 12, 2007
Filed Under Starting your Online Business
Originally I had planned to make this series a 6 part post. I have decided to combine traffic and monetization into one. Why? Because you won’t have one without the other. Your online business, and niche, simply will not function as a business without them working in tandem.
If you were opening a restaurant or retail store of some sort, your first priority would be location, location, location. When you start your online business, for the first time in your business life you will be at least the start, on equal footing with everyone else. The Internet.
Your main priority is traffic. The question is how do you get it.? Remember when the internet was known as the information super highway? It has evolved into something quite different today. Now it’s more of a digital billboard. How many times do you search for information and click from site to site because the ads plastered about the page made it difficult for you to find the information? My guess is more often than not.
At the risk of being contrary to what most think a website or blog should be, you need to provide quality information about your chosen niche. The opportunity to provide quality content exist online today like never before. Why? Because that doesn’t exist anymore. The new mentality is, attract a visitor to your site and pound them with more ads, banners and links than they can choose. The hope is they will click on one and they might make a few bucks.
Before we go much further answer this question. Do you want traffic or do you want quality traffic? Traffic can be had easily. Are you willing to pay for it? You surely can, if your budget is limitless. Mine is not, and I suspect most reading this post don’t have their pockets splitting at the seams with 100 dollar bills.
You can add a very fancy little widget to your site in hopes that you might get a unique visitor or two a day. Perhaps one of those will stick, and come back. Honestly, what are the odds on that? P.T Barnum clones can and often do suggest products that are guaranteed to attract visitors. The truth is you are so far down their down line you will never make any significant progress. Remember what old P.T. said? There’s a sucker born every minute.
Following every move one of the big blogs makes you a follower. That is not what you want. Is it?
Is your blog a business or a hobby? If it is a hobby have fun. If it is a business it must be run like a business. The 2 ways cannot be blended. As some know, I was in the sports cards and memorabilia business in the 80’s and 90’s. What happened to that business? Hobbyist became business persons or so they thought. EBay gave everyone a store and everyone was a dealer. So these dealers sold to each other, back and forth until they realized the retail customer was gone. So then everyone lowered their prices and became wholesalers. Still they sold back and forth to each other. The demand for their products faded and the stores closed up. The market has never recovered.
The same could happen to blogs. You cannot sell to each other back and forth and expect to sustain a business. Eventually the demand will dry up. You have to try and reach outside the blogosphere. Folks, there are profits to be made out there too.
You can and will attract traffic with quality content. Why? Because the world is starving for information. They consume it as fast as it’s produced. However, understand most of the world is very smart about navigating their way through all the junk to find it. That is why I think we should just provide them easy access to it, but that isn’t what most do is it?
Nope, most would rather take a visitor straight to the cash register, gather their credit card number and move on to the next victim, oh did I say victim? I meant visitor.
I personally would rather build organic traffic and that takes time. Bloggers by their very nature are not patient. Heck the world isn’t patient. What seems like forever ago I posted an article about Choosing your Attitude. I just finished a keyword activity search of the last few days. 36 phrases were used to find my site and 19 of those had the word attitude in them. That’s the kind of traffic I want. It may take 2-3 months, but your efforts will pay off if you have followed this method.
Blogging Zoom, Stumble
I like to tell the truth. The truth is Blogging Zoom provides this site with a flow of daily traffic, some of which link to the site, and produce more traffic. Subsequently someone Stumbles an article and produces more traffic. Perhaps out of that rush of new visitors, someone comes back, subscribes to my feed or offers a comment. Now my job is to produce enough quality content for them to stay. My chance to build a solid relationship with each and every one, my chance to Pre-sell that visitor
There is simple formula Content=Traffic=Pre-Sell +Monetization. How many times do you see that formula reversed?
When I started this business my goals and aspirations were simple. I wanted to make money. That’s everyone’s goal for business right?
Adsense
Adsense is great for specific niche sites and a waste of your time if your niche is Make Money Online. How many times can one see the ad about being scammed 37 times? However, if your niche is specific and in your research you narrowed it down properly, Adsense can pay off nicely for you. Remember the Handyman site I have mentioned before. Adsense pulls 6 figures a year out for him. I could live on that. Take a look at that site. All content and lots of it.
Private Ads
There is hardly a site or blog that doesn’t contain a private ad. The reason? It provides steady income for the publisher and traffic for the advertisers. Both win and that’s a good thing. Selling your ad space depends on how much traffic you have. Its best to wait until your traffic stream builds enough to warrant the expense for your advertiser. I only recently started making ad space on my site available. The reason? I wanted to focus on adding content. I still do.
Affiliates
The problem I see with affiliates is most new blogs and websites add as many as can fit on a page without regard to their own site niche. Everything on your site should in some fashion match its products to your own. Would it make sense for me to have ads that promoted power saws or video cameras? Not to me.
Promote products you use yourself
Nothing can help sell a product like a testimonial. Nothing will help your sales more than using the products you promote. I am a Site Sell Affiliate. That income stream has provided me with more income than anything I have on my site. Why? Because I am a Site Sell Owner. I have 2 sites actually that are in development as I have mentioned. Blue Host has also been good to me. I use BlueHost. I can speak from a position of authority about its products
As you build a trust with your visitors you can grow your e-mail list and market your information through newsletters. E-Books provide another income stream that you can tap. Your ambition should be to establish your niche, your community with your visitors.
Adding these and other products should be done over time, gradually, so as not to take away from the reason your site visitor came in the first place, information.. You can build a business around being THE expert information-provider for your particular niche.
Remember you are an infopreneur. You are in the business of providing information. Nothing more, nothing less.
It will not be get rich quick. You will not make 1000’s in your first month, but you will have a viable home based business.
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Tags:affiliate, blog, blog monetization, blogging, blogging zoom, bz news, content, learn to blog, monetization, Niche Blogging, seo, Site Sell, traffic
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Content + Traffic + Pre-Sell = Monetize…
The final in a series on becoming an infopreneur. Content + Traffic + Pre-sell = Monetize. Most do it backwards, or in some other order. Follow the plan and not the herd and it will work for you too. Are you a follower? Do you provide quality content? …
Good points, Don!
Success on the internet does take time and it’s nice to see that you haven’t filled your blog with too many ads.
And yes, as a Site Build It owner you have a distinct advantage compared to those affiliates who don’t own the product.
Once you know SBI from the inside, the passion for it shines through every post you write about it.
And passion like that is contagious.
Your comments about taking the time to build content and letting the traffic grow is right on the money. Too many bloggers seem to have a “get rich quick” mentality where they throw together a bunch of crap and try to make some money off it in the first three days. Maybe it works for some people, I don’t know. That’s definitely not my thing, though.
[…] MakingSalesMakingMoney wrote an excellent post covering a lot of things I was planning to write about as well. You’ll definitely want to read this article as it addresses everything from building traffic to monetization for your site. […]
I like what you say about promoting products that you use yourself. So many blogs out there are so full of ads … and even on some of the big popular blogs, it’s obvious that the owner probably doesn’t use the product/service … that Ty Coughlin reverse funnel on example that comes to mind.
I’m still trying to figure out the traffic equation. Most of mine right now is from StumbleUpon … lol, my stats graph is series of big peaks and valleys. It’s cool to see those big spikes, but I’m not sure how “sticky” it really is.
I’ve enjoyed your series … look forward to reading your future posts.
[…] Making Sales Making Money talks about the formula for monetization […]
Todd my current favorite is “Ive was scammed 37 times” Stay the course my friend, Stumbles, Blogging Zoom and all the rest are all part of the process.
“Do you want traffic or do you want quality traffic?”
This is one of the fundamental aspects of the internet that most people do not understand. The common assumption is that traffic = money, which is only true for old-fashioned advertising based on viewership numbers.
For websites that make money from PPC and PPA ads, the only thing that matters is getting traffic that converts to clicks, leads, and sales. So, a more appropriate equation would be:
traffic that converts = money
Great post! You hit the nail on the head here. When I first introduced blogs to my marketing team I heard that first grumble, they couldn’t see how blogs would help their business.
Some followed it others developed a hobby and sadly some did nothing. Statistics showed the ones who followed it for their business got more traffic which in turn got more sales.
Great post
MEGAN
[…] Content + Traffic + Pre-Sell = Monetize Take a look at the word monetize. It naturally draws the eye. This post is looked at through the Stumble link daily weeks after it was posted. […]
Traffic for me comes only when my content is valuable. Really evident yet simple equation
[…] track of your work in one place will help you to pre-sell your services to potential clients. Whether you provide your samples on a custom built blog/site, or make them part of your about page […]