Web Traffic – The Lifeblood of Your Website
Web traffic is without doubt the keystone in the entire structure of your online business.
Without website traffic you are dead in the water. It makes no difference how good your sales funnel is, how slick your graphics are, or indeed whether your product is a groundbreaking solution to world hunger.
The simple fact of the matter is – if nobody gets to see your site then nobody gets to buy your stuff.
The life-cycle of a website can be split into 2 logical parts – before the web site exists, and after the web site exists.
Before the website exists can be further split into, market research, and site design and implementation. The most important aspect during this phase is the market research one.
After the website exists can be further split into traffic generation, and day-to-day operation (support queries, some site tweaking, etc). Website traffic generation is what you are going to spend 99% of your time doing during this latter phase.
ALL web traffic fits into 1 of 3 types – bought traffic, borrowed traffic, earned traffic.
Bought traffic is all traffic you have had to pay for. It can come in a multitude of different ways. The most common methods being, Google Adwords, Yahoo Partner Network ads, banner ads, media buys, buying ads in other peoples newsletters, etc.
Borrowed traffic comes from joint venture agreements with other web site owners that are in your related niche, and that will send you some of their own traffic for their financial benefit. Running an affiliate program is a prime example of this type of traffic. Although you have not spent any money on acquiring this traffic, it does affect your bottom line profits, as you normally have to give away a percentage of each sale to your JV (affiliate) partner.
Earned traffic, is free traffic that comes as a result of your own hard labor. Organic traffic from search engines, that does not cost you any money at all, and that you get to keep 100% of the sale. This is the TOUGH traffic, because of the herculean effort involved in your part to get it. But, it is the key to the long term survival of your business. The added benefit is that it is free, a key consideration if you are starting out with a very small budget.
Earned (organic) traffic is also the one type of traffic that you can continue to rely on for years to come. Once you have turned on the tap the water just flows :-)
The purpose of this initial post is to just lay the basic platform, and you are going to hear a lot more detail from Kev and I on the subject of how to increase web traffic.
As of 1st October 2009, the metrics that EPN use to determine how much they pay to their affiliates has changed, dramatically in some cases. Before this date we knew exactly what we would be paid for and how much we would be paid. We could target our niches at appropriately priced products and earn a percentage of the auction fees associated with those products. And if a new member signed up to eBay to buy products through our sites, we received a nice little bonus. But now all that has changed because some “wizard” at EPN has come up with, what they term, Quality Click Pricing or QCP. A reward system supposedly based on the measurable quality of the clicks you send to eBay.