To Improve Readership Will Requires Traffic

List Building for your website

You’ve heard me say it so many times — build a list with everything you do. You really do have to put list building at the top of your list of priorities.

You don’t want to get a customer just one time and then never again — you want to have a customer for life. You want to be able to build a relationship with that person and make many more sales from that person over a lifetime.

Traffic and list building go hand in hand. You’re spending all this time, effort, and money driving traffic, so you definitely want to make the most of it. You don’t want that traffic to pay off for you once (or never at all), never to be seen again.

The following techniques are recommended for website landing page , or blog and even for new product launch . The concept are similar for creators who will want to apply the list building method to attract traffic to their blog post and especially for their websites

Drive your traffic to your squeeze page. Get people to sign up to your list. Give them something free so they’ll do so.

Many people want to drive traffic directly to a sales page or a buy button because they want to make that sale immediately. This might especially be true if they’re paying for traffic. They want to earn their investment back right away, and understandably so. I know what it’s like to pay for traffic and to have no idea when, or if, it will pay off.

But that’s shortsighted thinking. You might get a sale by directing people right to a sales page or buy button. The problem is that this is cold traffic. They don’t know you from Adam. They’ve seen your ad and are intrigued… but are they intrigued enough to pull their credit card out? Maybe not.

But they might be intrigued enough to click your ad, enter their email address, and download something you’re giving them for free. They now like you enough to open your emails or take a look at the offer you present after they’re on your list. They like you enough to buy something from you and start to listen to you.

That’s a much better use of your traffic.

Capture your traffic- don’t let it go. Think in the long term instead of the short term.

Setting Up a List Building Funnel

Set up a list building funnel to make best use of your traffic. I recommend you set up a squeeze page with an opt-in form that gives away a freebie offer. Have an autoresponder series ready and loaded that will help new subscribers get to know you and what you have to offer. You can even show an offer right after someone signs up.

You’ll then drive traffic to your squeeze page. You won’t drive people directly to that paid offer.

You’ll pay for ads that you drive to your squeeze page.

You’ll write articles, guest posts, and social media posts that drive people to your squeeze page.

You’ll release podcasts and videos on YouTube that direct people to this squeeze page.

Set up free and paid traffic that’s all going to your squeeze page. That way, you’ll have people signing up for your list day and night.

Make sure your freebie offer and the text on your squeeze page is very tightly focused and that the people who have seen your ads or your free traffic efforts will be very intrigued. Focus on a sub-topic or a specific problem you know people who’ve seen your ads and articles, etc. will be interested in.

You can set up additional list building funnels as well. Each one should be very tightly focused. Don’t present an ad and then show people a completely unrelated squeeze page — you won’t have good conversions. Set up specific list building funnels that are tightly focused instead.

Use a Variety of Methods to Drive Traffic

Remember to use a variety of methods to drive traffic to your squeeze page. I’ve mentioned this already but hopefully it will really start to sink in.

Paying for traffic is often the fastest way to test to see how well your squeeze page is working. You might be surprised to find how inexpensively you can buy ads. You can buy ads on Facebook, Google Adwords, etc.

You can use ads long term or just use them as a way to test how well your squeeze page will convert.

You’ll probably also want to use free traffic methods so you can build your list day and night, without paying for it and without lifting another finger.

Write articles and submit them to directories and newsletters.

Write guest posts for blogs in your niche.

Use video, podcasts, Google hangouts, social media, and every other traffic method there is.

Every day, you should work on building your list and driving traffic. If you do this every day, the effects will be cumulative.

That’s how you build a big list.

These traffic and list building funnels should be up all over the web. Wherever people in your niche go online, they should see your name and business. They should run into opportunities to join your list and get real, free value wherever they go.

Get Affiliates to Help Build Your List

Remember that you can (and should) set it up so that every person who buys a product from you gets added to your list.

Get affiliates on board promoting your products. They can be a fantastic source of traffic. Think about it — they’ve spend time, effort, and money building their lists. If they direct that traffic to your products, you can get those people on your list, too!

They’ll buy your products and get added to your list. This is a great way to get people on your list without having to lift a finger to get traffic yourself.

Put List Building at the Top of Your List

When you put list building at the top of your list, your business will take off. Your list will grow and grow and then you’ll have your own highly targeted traffic source.

Every time you have something to promote or sell, all you’ll have to do is send an email to your list. That’s so much easier than struggling to make sales from a sales page using cold traffic.

Build your list and use your traffic to grow that list even more. That’s how you find true success in business.

Affiliate Traffic

If you have affiliates on your side, driving traffic for you, it can really grow your business.

It’s hard to drive traffic on your own. Every day, you have to work really hard to drive traffic, using both free and paid methods.

What if you could tap into the targeted traffic people already have?

People aren’t just going to hand their traffic over to you, of course. You have to make it worth it for them.

There are a few different ways to make this happen. Remember — you always have to answer the question, “what’s in it for me?” when you’re working with other people. Your affiliates care about themselves and their business. If you want their traffic, make it clear that there’s something really incredible in it for them.

Getting Affiliate Traffic with Rebrandable Reports

One way you can get affiliates to drive traffic for you is to make rebrandable reports available to them.

You can write a report or an ebook that perfectly leads into a product you have for sale. You can either manually rebrand the links that lead to that product for the affiliate. Or, you can make use of a rebranding tool that allows them to automatically add their affiliate link to your book.

Now, affiliates have a freebie they can give away to the people on their list, social media accounts, and so on.

Their list and contacts will love it because they’re getting something for free. Affiliates will love it because all they have to do is give this report away for free and they can make sales.

They know that their contacts like to get things for free, so this is good for their business. They didn’t have to work for this freebie or do anything at all except give it away. So, you might find that you get some great affiliates who are happy to pass these reports around, giving you great, free traffic.

How to Drive Traffic Using Affiliates

Probably the main way you can drive traffic using affiliates is to get a product up for sale. Set it up so affiliates can promote that product. It’s important to make it really enticing for people to go ahead and promote your product.

Affiliates will promote that product, sending their traffic to it. They’ll get a commission. You get great traffic that goes right to your list. The affiliate gets paid without having to do the work of product creation themselves. Everyone wins.

Of course, it’s important to note that there may be a ton of different things out there that these affiliates could be promoting. Why would they choose yours over others?

Hopefully, you really pay attention to creating products on really hot topics. You’re creating products that are unique, profitable, and really high in demand. You also produce products that are great quality. Having these things in place can help to assure the affiliate that it’s a great idea to promote your products.

You can also win by offering an incredible commission to these affiliates. In some cases, you might even choose to offer them 100% commission. That might seem crazy… but think about the benefits in the long term.

For one thing, you’ll probably get many more affiliates promoting for you than you would have gotten otherwise. They’ll push the promotion harder because they’re getting ALL of the money without having to do the work themselves.

You won’t get paid upfront, but you will get the people on your list who bought the product. This is traffic you can then upsell right away, build relationships with, and make money from for years to come.

This isn’t one and done traffic. This is targeted buying traffic — the very best kind. So, when you look at it that way, it’s very clearly a great strategy. You get great traffic without having to lift a finger to get it.

Enticing Affiliates

Let’s revisit the fact that you have to get affiliates on your side in the first place. This strategy for driving traffic will go nowhere if you can’t get affiliates promoting for you.

Make sure you have a great offer and that affiliates are getting a good commission. It can also be a good idea to have a higher priced upsell in place so affiliates have another chance to earn money from the traffic they drive.

Make sure every single buyer will be added to your list — that’s important or all this is lost.

You may have to actively get affiliates on board — recruit them. Make it clear that this is perfect for your list and that they can make some excellent money with it.

It can really help if you make affiliate materials available to these affiliates. Give them autoresponder swipe copy they can use, graphics, and whatever else they might need. Support your affiliates in every way you can.

Try to recruit newer affiliates as well as more experienced affiliates. Don’t discount those with smaller lists — all that traffic really adds up.

You want to get many affiliates on board who love to promote for you. I enjoy using Nanacast for product sales and affiliate promotions because my affiliates get tagged on every product their customers buy. Affiliates find that they tend to get paid more from promoting my products than they would elsewhere.

Treat your affiliates right and make it a real treat to promote for you.

Hands Off Traffic With Affiliates

This really is a genius method that’s fantastic to focus on. You get hands off traffic. You get people reviewing and talking about your product to their lists and via social media. That social proof is there that you need to make more sales.

You get product sales — from warm traffic vs. cold traffic.

You get people on your list — hands off.

You’ll get affiliates who promote for you over and over again. They have the traffic and they’re giving it right to you.

This is definitely a great strategy for driving traffic that can really pay off. Focus on getting more affiliates and you’ll have a bigger list and more product sales.

Press Releases

Press releases are a time-honored way to generate traffic for businesses. They’re used in offline business to alert the media and the public about a new business, new product or service, etc.

Press releases are also very widely used in the online world. Again, they can be designed to alert the media and the public about a new business, new product, new service, some point of success the business has had, etc.

Press releases are essentially statements put out to alert people to something — in this case, business related.

They generally contain information about the company, its founders, top products, statistics, response, product specifics, company quotes, etc.

If you’re curious as to what a real-time press release looks like, head to Google and type in “your niche press release.” You’re sure to find several great examples.

Why Is a Press Release Useful?

Well, no one is going to know about your new business, product, or service, unless you tell them. There are often niche journals, newspapers, and individuals who are looking out for the latest happenings. Many of them look to press releases to find this exact information.

Press releases are also a good traffic strategy. You can get others picking up the announcement, linking to your business as a result.

Depending on where you submit your press release, you can get links and some traffic directly from the press release site as well. Some people, journalists, bloggers, newspapers, and more subscribe to services like http://prweb.com, so your press release can potentially get you in front of a lot of people. If you want to get traffic, then you need to get in front of newsmakers and thought leaders.

There are certain services out there that will mass-distribute your press release for you.

It has to be said that many in online business have blindly written and submitted a press release, only to have little to no results.

You have to ask yourself WHY you’re writing a press release and why people will be interested in what you have to say with your press release.

Are you going to be able to get people talking? How can you shake things up? Will you be able to rank in the search engines for the press release you create?

Sure, there’s a typical way to write a press release and all that, but you also have to think out of the box. Find ways to stand out in your niche.

Hiring Someone to Write Your Press Release For You

If you take a look at the press releases out there and are really unsure if you can write one yourself, know that there are definitely people out there who will write them for you.

Find a service provider who has a lot of experience writing press releases. That can work well for you and can be more effective than trying to write one yourself but having it turn out to be a waste of time.

There have even been former newspaper editors and reporters offering their press release writing services on sites like Fiverr.com and Upwork.com.

You might be surprised at how little you can pay for a really high quality press release.

What to Include In a Press Release

Remember — you don’t want your press release to be boring. You should only write and release a press release that is exciting and newsworthy to your audience. A new business launch or a new product is an example. But what will the people of your niche really care about? What innovations have you made?

Make sure you have a great, catchy press release title or headline. Try to include a benefit, a newsworthy event or action, etc.

Try to slip in benefits and features. Try to make the press release relatable to your audience.

Your press release should be written very professionally. Try to include facts, statistics, and quotes that are relevant to the reason you’re writing the press release in the first place.

There’s a certain way you should format your press release as well — consult with the PR distribution services you’re using for their rules and guidelines on this. Again, you can get some great clues by researching effective press releases from others in your niche.

Press Release Distributors

There are some free options and some paid options for submitting press releases.

There are also mass distributors out there, that focus on the freebie options. You can use Fiverr.com to hire someone to distribute to the free sites for you. Note that paid sites are generally much more effective. While they obviously cost more, you don’t want to waste your time on sites that don’t have any real distribution.

Examples of sites to check out for submission:

http://PRWeb.com

http://PRNewswire.com

http://Send2Press.com

There are sites like this in abundance, but these are some of the top to check out.

Consider the pros and cons of the distribution service you use. Consider what you’re willing to spend.

Do Press Releases the Right Way

I also urge you to really study and learn what you can about press releases specifically for your niche.

This is one of the lesser known and lesser practiced traffic generation strategies in the Internet marketing space. I believe it’s that way because there are, honestly, easier ways of getting traffic and this works better in some niches and with some projects better than others.

Still, submitting press releases is such a time honored tradition that has worked so well for so many businesses over the years that it’s a strategy that just can’t be ignored.

Research press releases in your niche. Spend time writing (or hiring someone to write) a great press release on a newsworthy topic related to your niche. Then, pay for distribution from a reputable PR distribution source. You want to get your press release in front of as many people as you can.

If you do those things, then you just might be able to generate a lot of chatter, links, and interest in your business, product, service, or project. That can generate you some great traffic.