Get 1530 Uniques | 2 Month Old Blog
Back-story
My name is Debbie Lattuga and I blog at BestSLRCamera.org. Like most of you, I have been attempting to make money online. I consider these last couple of years my graduate study. I love to learn new things, and I am good at it. But just learning stuff and not doing stuff, didn’t make me any money. And I wound up with Information Overload.
Here are the graduate courses I studied:
Semester I: Business Models
In order to pass this semester, you must take the following classes. In addition, you must make at least $5.00 in 4 of these classes.
* Blogging 101
Spam Blogs for Fast Money
Authority Site for Aspiring Probloggers
Site Flipping for Cash
Membership Sites for Content
* Pay-per-Click (Not for Thin Wallets)
* Pay-per-View to Make $1 at a Time
* affiliate marketing for Newbies
* product launches a la Jeff Walker
* Made some meager money in these classes.
The good thing is, I learned a lot. The bad thing is, I didn’t stick with one model. And by bouncing around to different business models, I didn’t give any one model enough effort to produce results.
And they are all good models. But I was looking for one that fit. I’m sure if any one of them had taken off – that one would have fit just fine.
It did appear that the blogging model was the one model that I could pursue that would be the best fit for my ability to learn quickly. And I love sharing what I learn.
Semester II: The Blogging Model
To pass this semester, you must take the following 4 classes and be able to produce a power point presentation on each of the core concepts.
1. Search Engine Optimization for Beginners
- linking
- remote blogs
- niche research
2. Advertising to Drive Traffic
- article marketing
- copy writing
- social media
- video production
3. List Building for Income Generation
- writing ebooks
- squeeze pages
4. Content Development for Ranking
- fast post writing
- private label rights
- rss feeds
- outsourcing
Now I passed these classes… but I had to translate what I learned into something profitable.
How I Got 1578 Uniques in One Day
So now you know my back-story, fast forward to starting my first blog BestSLRCamera.org on November 16, 2009. I decided to build several small blogs to generate a small amount of money daily. I did my niche research and determined it would be fairly easy to rank for the term ‘Best SLR Camera’. And I really view this as my test site.
Article Marketing
All the new stuff will get tested on this site. So one thing I’m doing is uploading my blog posts as articles to the article marketing sites. The post goes on my site on day 1, goes on Ezine Articles on day 7, and gets posted to 10 additional sites on day 14. Well, not exactly on that schedule, but close enough.
Around December 04, 2009 I wrote an article titled, “The Top 10 Best-Selling Photography Books on Amazon”. I figured it would be a good link-bait post and would generate some Christmas traffic. I then posted it to Ezine and the other article sites. I’m not sure it really got me any extra traffic before Christmas. My blog was too new.
Little did I know, a photography author that had 2 books on the list, discovered my post. And he gave me a shout out on his blog. BANG! 1578 uniques to my blog the next day. And since that day, I’ve received about 2500 visitors to my blog from his site.
And prior to his post I was averaging 30 uniques a day.
Analytics Stats
My Lesson to You
Write a Top 10 Book post for your blog. Post it to the article sites. Then send an email to each author letting them know how much you like their book. (you did like their book, didn’t you?) Mention that you noticed they were on the Top 10 at Amazon and you’ve written a blog post including them.
And make sure you are an Amazon Associate before you write the post. You want to make sure you get paid for any referrals.
Now use this tip and go drive some traffic. Your wallet will thank you.
Related Posts:
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- One lesser Known Tip that increased my Traffic by 150%
- Retain your Visitors or Fight an Uphill Battle
- Surviving in the Southamerican Jungle
- How I Got 609 Visits To My Website For 2 Hours Work – And You Can Do The Same
yeah
Interesting idea. I’m going to try it out on my own test blog. Let’s see if it works for others too.
Nice idea, I like it.
But… What I see from the Google Analytics graph is that the traffic went significantly down again. So what was the long-term effect?
The net effect was about 2500 visitors. And 6 weeks later, I see between 2 and 6 people a day.
Thank you, Debbie! I will definitely test your idea and if it will work I will repeat the whole process with some new articles again.
Wow. Isn’t it amazing what a little action will do. I have a bunch of blogs that also highly targeted product niche blogs, and it’s always nice to get traffic boosts “accidentally”.
i want to try this really i want it, thanks for advice
Wow.. realy nice… thanks for share..
Great story… nice to see that you had great results!!! I will try for sure
Great idea! I’m going to share this one with my blog readers ~ hey look at that, another way to get traffic.
People love linking..If you start linking firt, 99% people will link back to you. So don’t expect to receive before you give..
Traffic spikes are nice, but what was the value in $??
I gained 200 optins and made %175 in affiliate revenue.
Your method of getting traffic is one of the most unique I have seen in quite a while. I am going to test this on my IM blog and see what happens. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for sharing your story with us here. Truthfully, these things tend to happen a lot, so keep churning out that great content and good things will keep happening!
Very fresh and unique idea of driving traffic. I love it.
Thanks
Kat
My Blog is 5 days old right now, it was created on 13 Feb 10… I got 15 visitors in the second day… the busiest day was yesterday… it was almost 100 visitors. Hope will getting better in the next view days. Thanks for the tips…
Great tip Debbie. Will implement this on my blogs as well. Looking forward to more traffic on those blogs. Thanks : )
- Robert
Deserve to try
great idea, but for me language problem is still dominan
This is interesting.
Simple things one can do to get traffic online.
Thanks for share
this information is useful
My blog in Indonesia, how to drive traffic?
thanks
Followed link from Alexa toolbar. re: traffic spike; to get a steady flow of traffic, you need to keep promoting your site like this. Don’t forget to get your RSS followed by bloggers (links!), get an email address (don’t use it too much) and visit your trackbacks (leaving comments). It’s all about sociability.
Hi Daniel – It’s all about sociability. I love that. And I love your ‘how to get a steady flow of traffic’ comment. I will do that. I have a company http://www.perfectcustomers.com and we teach that marketing is developing relationship – sociability! I love the possibility of connecting and ‘socializing’ with all the new social networking technology.
However, sometimes I have a ‘technology block’. If you see this could you email me or tell me how to get my RSS followed by bloggers (links!) Is that what I am doing now by writing this comment and ‘socializing’ with you on this blog?
Attractively,
Alan Hickman
Thats is a very interesting way you have there. Will give it a try
Hi Debbie – Wow! I can totally relate to your story and back story. My wife and I have written a book subtitled ‘What Does Love Have To Do With Business And Marketing’ and we teach people that money follows value, and it is the exchange of value that creates wealth. We also emphasize that marketing is developing relationship.
I feel that is the “secret key” to your success in receiving ’1530 uniques’. It certainly has inspired me. I have seen it in my own efforts on ezinearticles. I have an ezine articles account http://www.articlesbyalan and much to my surprise one article I published titled The Number One Secret to Successful Selling Over the Phone received almost 2,000 views and 100 unique visitors to my site. Now I know I can repeat this success using your ‘secret’ and leverage that success doing what I love and connecting with, and serving people with my gift.
Thanks for this article. I am moved and inspired to multiply my results.
Attractively,
Alan Hickman
Alan,
A great plugin for RSS subscribers is What Would Seth Godin Do. It set a neat little optin box right above your post. The nice thing is, you can change the message when a visitor has returned a couple times.
Thanks for the idea! There is a lot of themes for writing articles as well
@Alan Hickman – The way to get RSS subscribers is to make it clear how to subscribe (big, not gaudy, rss button is great. I even saw one site (don’t remember where) that had an RSS tutorial, ensuring they were on their RSS list.) and ask for the subscription. Every page, every post, remind your visitor to subscribe.
I read that there is lots of to do list for promoting new blog, thanks for the sharing.
Hi Debbie,
I have to echo Jeff above, who asked about the effect on your bottom line from that nice traffic spike.
Was it targeted traffic, or were they just momentary lurkers who didn’t cause a spike in the success of your monetization efforts? Did they affect your bounce rate in either direction, or did that stay about the same?
These are the sorts of questions that are a truer measure of traffic-building success, IMHO. TARGETED traffic.
Hi Larry,
The visitors from that blog averaged 10 page views, opted in 200 times and generated $175 in Amazon commission. They bought other photography books. What a surprise.
I like your “course outline” – clever and funny; I’ve been taking those grad school courses too. And like any educational program, it’s one thing to learn the theory and another to put it into practice in a useful way. I hear you on information overload. Great idea, and I’ll give it try! Thanks.
From where I’m standing, it all seems to me as though the article marketing didn’t do jack to get you traffic. Rather it was getting mentioned on one of the authors blogs that did the magic.
That is one feat difficult to achieve as most top bloggers aren’t known to associate with or help newbies
Udegbunam,
I’m not sure the article marketing didn’t help me. I’m not sure where the photography author discovered my post. I’m sure it wasn’t on my blog.
And it took me like 15 minutes to distribute that article.
Wow, this is some useful information! I can’t wait to try it out tonight
Thanks
Awesome! Why didn’t I think of that?!?! I guess I have some work to do…
For me, reposting your content on article sites only serves to dilute your content by providing more versions of it on other sites that have more authority…I bet the Ezine article ranks higher in Google for the article title than your blog does?? This isn’t good. Other than that idea, there is nothing that interesting about your story, writing top 10 lists is great, but nothing new. Cheers.
Hi Simon,
Funny thing is, the article doesn’t rank at all while the blog has been hovering between ranking 3rd and 5th on google.
Wonderful! This is a great story…thank you very much. I too, have been spending money and time learning ways to monetize my blog..time to take action.
Best regards and keep up the good work
Luz
That was pretty nifty and it obviously worked very well in your favour. I wish you more success in the future.
Very interesting ideas, Thanks !
That’s one unique method I’ve never seen. It is true, people like getting compliments and it also work for anything.
As long as you compliment someone on something they’ve done, they are ready to hook you up as well.
Good reading, and nice of you for sharing it…
This technique seems to be an interesting one. But there is a slight glitch in what the author has written. Once an article is published anywhere, the same article cannot be published in ezinearticles. They are very strict inn their editing and reviewing. I wonder how the author could do that.
Hi R Kumar,
Ezine only accepts original article authored by you. They can be published on your blog. All of my blog posts are original and authored by me.
Hello Debbie,
You are a genius with an abundance mentality.
Your article rocks!Am heading to your blog right away for more content,
I hope to find great value there.About your idea.I will implement it today – success comes by doing.
Regards
Morris
Network Marketing Coach.
it’s interesting..!
thanks for your information, it’s good for me, i am new in link building
can you visits my web site, thanks
best regard
Andrew
Thanks for sharing, I think this post is really useful for me
$175.00 is better than nothing, but it seams like you need a better affiliate program.
Brilliant idea! Definitely will give it a try.
Excellent method of getting traffic definitely will give it a try…
You are a genius
Nice idea. Let me try to get more traffic on my blog.
I think the real lesson here isn’t mentioned in the blog post. The real lesson is “wash, rinse, repeat.” Yes, I got that off of a shampoo bottle!
Now that you have that author’s attention. What else can you do to build on that relationship?
And, since you have a formula that works. Why not duplicate it over and over again?
There’s more than books on amazon. There’s Kindle, DVD’s, Audio CD’s and much more.
Tony Darrick Baker
Does getting this many uniques result in targeted traffic that converts? What was the conversion rate? Just trying to see if it’s worth the time and effort.
Hi Eric,
The blog that referred traffic is in my niche. I had 17% conversion on my subscriber list which was a little higher. Most of them are still subscribed 2 months later.
I tripled my Amazon earnings and quadrupled my Adsense earnings. The conversion doubled on Amazon and tripled on Adsense.
For a 20 minute link bait post, it was worth it in my eye.
Debbie,
Good results and great metrics. Thanks for the Info