Making Money From Traffic

[stephen todd]

I got this email and think it's very relevant:

BACKLINKS ARE ONLY AS POWERFUL AS THE CONTENT THEY PROMOTE

You can build a massive site with 500 pages of content. You can then
go to town building hundreds, or even thousands of backlinks - maybe
even having the site eventually "score" a PageRank of 5 or 6 in
Google's little toolbar.

And what can you expect in terms of traffic if you do that?

Anywhere from "next to nothing" to "holy crap, I need a bigger server!".

Because it DOESN'T MATTER how many links you build. Or how optimized
your site happens to be.

The key factor in determining your site's traffic is the CONTENT you
publish. And you will see this clearly as you build sites across
a number of different markets.

Some topics, keyword categories and markets in general are literally
bursting with traffic. As an example, if you build sites about mass-market
stuff like public records, TV channels, popular songs, pc games - whatever -
you will get crap loads of traffic very easily.

Just get the content indexed (not even "ranked" - just indexed), and
your stats will spike up within a matter of days.

Why?

Because the OVERALL TOPIC has a ton of demand.

Therefore ANY content related to it will, to some degree, act as a
small "piece of the pie" in that overall market. You're tapping into
a certain fraction of the market's demand.

More demand = more traffic.

Now - in some markets, such as weight loss and "making money" - the
amount of content is similarly staggering, and kind of dilutes the
effect of demand.

Even so - it is STILL easier to get traffic by creating content in
crazy competiive, yet high-demand markets, than it is to go after
obscure ones.

However, in saying that, it's also important to realize that not
every market (or visitor) is born equal. Traffic itself isn't worth
anything. It's how that traffic responds to offers that truly matters.

I have sites getting 1000+ visitors a day that earn the same as ones
getting 50 visitors/day. It all comes down to the "serious buyer
quotient" of the topic, as well as other factors like conversion,
commission amounts, etc.

But the bottom line is this (and this is VERY important):


BUILDING LINKS DOES NOT EQUAL TRAFFIC

BUILDING LINKS ONLY GETS YOUR CONTENT "QUEUED". INDEXED. AVAILABLE.

TOPIC = TRAFFIC


It's the TOPIC itself that determines how much traffic, response
and potential profit you'll see.

[Captured Ink]

Very true. Nice post

[klutze]

Interesting read.

Thanks!