3 Ways to Drive Visitors to Your Blog & Increase Blog Traffic
August 31, 2009
Want to drive more visitors to your blog? Want to increase your blog traffic? One of the best ways to do this is to find out what your audience is thinking. But, how do you do that?
Following are three methods you can use to find out what your customers are thinking so you can increase your blog traffic.
1. Poll: With free online software offered by sites like CoolSurveys.com and PollDaddy.com, all you have to do to poll your readers is cut and paste a snippet of code into your site and you’re done.
Polling Tip: Don’t get carried away. Ask maybe one or two questions – tops. This will force you to really think about what area of your business you want/need to know more about. Hint, hint: the area that leads customers to take action (ie, purchase your product service).
2. Comments Section: The comments section of your blog will yield a lot of information. Have some posts garnered more comments than others? Was there a particular posts that generated more heat than others?
Even when your readers disagree with you (perhaps especially when), you should pay attention to them. Dig deep into negative feedback to see if you can find the kernel that can be turned to your marketing advantage.
For example, a reader visited my site from an article of mine posted to a social bookmarking site. The reader had some unkind words about the design of my site. While the comment rankled, I knew that the foundation of what they were saying was correct. A new design was something I’d been putting off for a while.
And, while it took another year to get around to redesigning my site, that comment stuck with me because it was, in essence true.
3. Reader Feedback: Are your readers constantly asking you for things you don’t have? Then maybe it’s time you provide it.
How One Website Owner Listened to Reader Feedback & Literally Had a List of Customers Anxiously Waiting to Buyer Her New Ebook — Before She Ever Wrote It!
A Prime Example: A friend of mine who is a realtor started a very successful side business. Realtors and professionals from other states were emailing and calling her practically every other day wanting to know how to start the same kind of business in their state.
Instead of trying to dispense information to each one individually and/or simply not responding, I advised her to write an ebook about it and sell it on her site. (The business included a lot detail that couldn’t be dispensed in a 2-minute or even a 2-hour phone conversation).
She now has a waiting list of people who are lining up to buy it once she’s done. She plans to sell it for between $39.95 and $49.95. I advised her to charge much more because what’s she’s really selling is a “business in a box” to a niche market (realtors) who are looking for other ways to make money in an economy that is slumping. I think this deserves a premium. But, that’s her call.
My point here is, if you go back over three months to a year of reader feedback – whether it was a question, a congratulations or a not-so-nice comment, you will get a handle on what your readers want more of. Then, all you have to do is figure out how to give it to them.
If you take the time to find out what your customers want, driving more traffic to your blog is not difficult.
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Creating a Blog: How to Publish a Profitable, Popular Freelance Writing Blog
September 14, 2008
An In-depth Look at 8 Components Every Freelance Writing Blog
Needs to Make Money & Build a Large Subscriber List
An E-Book Excerpt
[See all Inkwell Editorial Work-from-Home Titles Here]
If you’re a freelance writer who already has a blog or is thinking about starting one, this 24-page ebook covers 8 components that will make it profitable and popular.
Did you know? 51% of Bloggers Make $0 from Their Blogs!
That’s right – nothing! Less than 20% earn $1,000. Not even shooting for a grand? How about this? Only 14% earn even $200-$500/month. Read more on how much bloggers make. I cover 8 blog components that deal with such particulars as:
Freelance Writer Blog Questions This Ebook Answers
Should You Register Your Own Domain Name, Or Not (and why the wrong decision could cost you for years to come) (Found in Blog Success Component #1)
Which Blogging Platform to Use
The #1 tool to Use to Write Traffic-Generating Posts (Blog Success Component #7)
The Passive Way to Drive Massive Traffic to Any Freelance Writing Blog (Blog Success Component #3)
Industry Widgets to Consider Adding to Your Blog
How to Get Found in Search Engines (Blog Success Component #7)
How Long Your Posts Should Be
How Often You Should Post
The Article Marketing Trick I Use to Drive Short-term and Long-term Readers to My Blog
How to Build Reader Trust & Loyalty (Blog Success Component #1)
My blog is an integral part of marketing my freelance writing services, ebooks and telecourses. Without it, I don’t think I’d be where I am today. But, it took me a couple of years before I finally started seeing some real traffic – which is the key to marketing anything online.
3 Ways My Blog Has Benefited My Freelance Writing Business
My blog has benefited me directly and indirectly.
Indirectly, it has done much — on a personal and professional level. Some indirect benefits right off the top of my head though are: connected me with fellow freelancers, served as an avenue to vent my frustrations, given me invaluable feedback from readers and sparked ideas for new ebook and report titles.
Directly, in has benefited me in the following three ways. Yours can too!
1. Get Clients: Potential clients read it to get a handle on my writing style. Although it’s not written for them (it’s written for other freelancers), at least they can tell I know what I’m talking about – ie, I know my industry.
A number of clients have hired me based on their reading my blog alone. How cool is that!
2. Sell Products: I’ve sold a few thousand ebooks via blog marketing. A blog builds credibility, which leads to trust, then sales. Without it, I don’t think my ebook sales would be anywhere near what they are.
3. Ad Revenue: I’ve been approached at least half a dozen times over the last year or so by advertisers who want to buy space on my blog, and also by other niche ebook publishers. I haven’t taken advantage of this yet. I’ve stuck to large, mainstream ad revenue generators like Amazon and AdSense.
I didn’t feel I was set up to take advantage of these offers in a way that would benefit me long-term, or that I could charge what I wanted. But, that’s going to change as soon as I can get this blog where I want it to be aesthetically (still quite a bit of work to do).
One of the reasons for doing this is to capitalize on private ad sales, which I think is the way to go long term. For more on this, read successful blogger John Chow’s take in this very illuminative post on how to sell private ads on your blog.
Make Money From Your Blog: A Blog Can Be a Profit Machine!
As you can see, a blog can serve as a profit-producing machine in a number of ways. But, all of the components that make it profitable – and popular – must be in place.
This blogging ebook on freelance writing lists them, and for only $4.95.
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Freelance Writers: How to Use Technology to Make Real Money Online
November 6, 2007
[Want to start a successful career as a freelance writer?]
I’ve dubbed November Freelance Writer Technology Month. What’s this all about?
You may want to grab a cup of joe. This article is kind of long, but I hope to shed some light on the changes coming forth for InkwellEditorialcom and InkwellEditorial.blogspot.com.
A Solid Week of Research into How to Make Real Money Online as a Freelance Writer
Recently, I spent a solid week – 50-60 hours – researching how people make “real” money online. I’m talking long-term, sustainable, pay for healthcare and retirement money. To do this, I went back to basics. I forced myself to forget what I thought I knew and approach everything fresh.
As I wrote about in this article, Why Freelance Writers May Be the Poorest Internet Entrepreneurs. As freelance writers, we’re not very good at embracing technology – which is how the real money is made online.
Sure, we may get as far as learning a little HTML code, scan and upload images, and even create simple logos, but we don’t get much beyond that. Once I started reading, practically all of my searches took me to some internet marketing guru’s site.
Invariably, I’d find a discussion about some piece of technology that would give me a eureka moment. That’s when I knew that I had to change the way I went about my business.
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POST CONTINUED BELOW
Read here how I routinely make $250+/day as an SEO writer – and how you can too!
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What Made Me Declare November Freelance Writer’s Technology Month
I want to digress for a minute to explain what made me want to start this series. Simply put, I wanted to increase my online income. I’ve explained before, but as I’m starting up this new series, I wanted us all to be on the same page.
I’ve been a freelance writer since 1993. I make a good living at it, but the last couple of years I’ve been kind of restless in my career. I want to work less and, perhaps more importantly, create passive streams of income that will sustain me into my golden years. At 41, these things weigh heavily on me.
As a freelance writer actually writing for a living, time is my commodity. If I don’t work, I don’t make any money. That’s why I started publishing ebooks and doing freelance writing seminars a few years ago. These added income streams (passive, in the case of the ebooks), which supplemented my writing work nicely.
I liked it. Logging on and seeing money in my account for a product I produced five years ago can’t be beat. This is the direction I decided I wanted to take my career in, and I started to “turn the ship,” so to speak, in that direction a little over a year ago. What does this mean?
How to Change the Direction of Your Freelance Writing Career
I started to cut back on client projects and focus more in producing income from my own projects. This has caused me some financial pangs, but I’m thinking long-term here, as I hope you do too when it comes to your freelance career.
I mean, ostensibly, you can work as a freelance writer forever. As I say in my sales copy on FreelanceWritingWebsite.com, age is not a barrier, income is not a barrier and education is not a barrier. BUT, do you really want to have to write for a living well into retirement?
Sure, you may accept projects here and there for a little extra income from time to time, but do you really want to have to work on client projects full-time at 65, 70 or 75? Having a passive stream of income to add to any social security and/or pension benefits would be nice — if social security is still around, and are there companies that still pay pensions?
So, this is what brings me to this point.
What’s Coming Up in “Freelance Writer Technology Month”
Over the next month, I will be talking about what I’ve learned. I will introduce you to some online techniques to drive traffic to your site, to increase your online marketing strategies and to increasing your online income overall.
As I said in last Friday’s post, I’m always trying to get freelance writers to think beyond “writing for a living,” to “creating a stable income – for life.” This goes way beyond simply writing.
It will be a systematic approach, which means that I will cover a lot of basics – not from the “this is how you do this” viewpoint. But, from the “this is why you do this and the results you can expect” viewpoint.
A lot of it I’ll go out on a limb and say many freelancer writers don’t know about, or don’t understand, as evidenced by the comments left in this article I recently wrote.
One More Thing: I will be posting 2-3 times a week during this series, as opposed to the 4-5 times/week I usually post. Why?
This will be my trend moving forward. Many bloggers post daily (in some cases, numerous times a day) in hopes of driving traffic to their blogs. I’ve always believed in quality over quantity, even though I’ve pretty much adhered to the “you must post frequently to drive traffic” mentality.
My research revealed that this is not necessarily the case. So, I’m already starting to implement some of the information I’ve learned into my daily practices.
Furthermore, I’m working on several projects that will push me towards making more money online from passive income streams. As with anything in the beginning, this takes time.
Over the coming months, I will be revealing my success, failures (let’s hope these are minimal), and mishaps along the way. I’ll hope you’ll chime in so we can all learn together – and hopefully experience success that much sooner.
I hope you will find this series informative – and most of all useful enough to apply to your income goals.
Don’t Forget: Tomorrow’s newsletter features an interview with ghostwriter Amanda Evans at GhostWritingUncovered. A preview:
Question #2: From your blog, I see that you have been freelancing full-time for over two years. How long did it take you to get to that point?
When my daughter was born in 2003 I stopped working full time and went part time. I also got the internet at home and this opened up a whole new world for me. I had always loved writing and I started looking at writers websites and I joined a number of writing groups. These groups were mostly poetry based as this was my passion.
During 2004 I began looking for ways to get paid to write. Most of the information I came across regarding freelance writing was about query letters and how to approach editors. This wasn’t what I was looking for. I wanted a guaranteed payment for my writing. I wanted someone to tell me what to write so that I could just do it and get paid.
Subscribe to read the full interview.
Sincerely,
Yuwanda
P.S.: Start a Freelance Writing Career – Today!
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UPDATE 11/30/07: Following is a link to every post in the Freelance Writer’s Technology Month series.
Intro Post: New Series – Freelance Writer’s Technology Month
Post #1: The 4 Fundamentals of Making Money Online
Post #2: SEO Content Development: How to Drive More Traffic to Your Website
Post #3: Niche Marketing: How to Choose a Profitable Niche
Post #4: Software Tools for Niche Websites
Post #5: Turn $1/Day into an Online Empire: How to Make Money with Minisites
Post #6: 4 Controversial Ways to Get More Traffic for Your Website
Post #7: 5 Ways to Get a Job Writing SEO Articles
Post #8: How to Determine What to Charge as an SEO Article Writer
Post #9: How to Optimize Your Website to Get More Traffic
Post #10: Social Bookmarking Software & 9 Money-Making Conclusions from Freelance Writer’s Technology Month
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