How to Build a High-Traffic Web Site (or Blog)

comboy Well-Known Member

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I have find a post which related to build high traffic web site. I want to share them with you. Some of them is still useful now.

Regard,

Since posting my 2005 traffic figures recently, Iâ€™ve received many questions about how I was able to start this web site from scratch and build its traffic to over 700,000 visitors per month (Jan 2006 projection) in about 15 months â€” without spending any money on marketing or promotion. Building a high-traffic web site was my intention from the very beginning, so I donâ€™t think this result was accidental.

My traffic-building strategy isnâ€™t based on tricks or techniques that will go out of style. Itâ€™s mainly about providing genuine value and letting word of mouth do the rest. Sadly, this makes me something of a contrarian today, since I happen to disagree with much of what Iâ€™ve seen written about traffic-building elsewhere. I do virtually no marketing for this site at all. My visitors do it for me, not because I trick them into doing it but simply because they want to.

Here are 10 of my best suggestions for building a high traffic web site:

1. Create valuable content.

Is your content worthy of being read by millions of people? Remember that the purpose of content is to provide value to others. Do you provide genuine value, and is it the best youâ€™re capable of providing?

When I sit down to write, I sometimes imagine myself standing on an outdoor concert stage before an audience of a million people. Then I ask myself, â€œWhat shall I say to this audience of fellow human beings?â€ If a million people each spend five minutes on this site, thatâ€™s nearly 10 person-years total. I do my best to make my writing worthy of this differential. I donâ€™t always succeed, but this is the mindset that helps me create strong content.

Think about the effect you want your writing to have on people. Since I write about personal growth, I want my writing to change people for the better. I want to expand peopleâ€™s thinking, to raise their consciousness, and to help them eliminate fear from their lives. If my writing doesnâ€™t change peopleâ€™s thinking, actions, or awareness, then my value isnâ€™t being transferred well enough.

When you focus on providing real value instead of churning out disposable content, your readers will notice. And theyâ€™ll refer others to your site â€” in droves. I typically see at least 10 new links to my site appearing each day (mostly via trackbacks but also via vanity feeds). Iâ€™m not going out and requesting those links â€” other bloggers just provide them, usually because theyâ€™re commenting on something Iâ€™ve written. Many fellow bloggers have also honored StevePavlina.com with a general recommendation for the entire site, not just links to my individual blog posts. Itâ€™s wonderful to see that kind of feedback.

Strong content is universally valued. Itâ€™s hard work to create it, but in the long run it generates lots of long-term referral traffic. Iâ€™d rather write one article Iâ€™m really proud of than 25 smaller posts. Itâ€™s been my experience that the best articles I write will outperform all the forgettable little posts Iâ€™ve made. Quality is more important than quantity. Quantity without quality, however, is easier, which is one reason so many people use that strategy. Ultimately, however, the Internet already contains more quantity than any one of us can absorb in our lifetimes, but there will always be a place for good quality content that stands out from the crowd.

If you have nothing of genuine value to offer to a large audience, then you have no need of a high-traffic web site. And if thereâ€™s no need for it, you probably wonâ€™t get it. Each time you write, focus on creating the best content you can. Youâ€™ll get better as you go along, but always do your best. Iâ€™ve written some 2000â€“word articles and then deleted them without posting them because I didnâ€™t feel they were good enough.

2. Create original content.

Virtually everything on this site is my own original content. I rarely post blog entries that merely link to what others are writing. It takes more effort to produce original content, but itâ€™s my preferred long-term strategy. I have no interest in creating a personal development portal to other sites. I want this site to be a final destination, not a middleman.

Consequently, when people arrive here, they often stick around for a while. Chances are good that if you like one of my articles, you may enjoy others. This site now has hundreds of them to choose from. You can visit the articles section to read my (longer) feature articles or the blog archives to see an easy-to-navigate list of all my blog entries since the site launched.

Yes, thereâ€™s a lot to read on this site, more than most people can read in a day, but thereâ€™s also a lot of value (see rule #1). Some people have told me theyâ€™ve read for many hours straight, and they leave as different people. I think anyone who reads my work for several hours straight is going to experience a shift in awareness. When you read a lot of dense, original content from a single person, itâ€™s going to have an impact on you. And this content is written with the intention that it help you grow.

Although Iâ€™m not big on competing with others, itâ€™s hard to compete with an original content site. Anyone can start their own personal development web site, but the flavor of this site is unique simply because no one else has had the exact same experiences as me.

While I think sites that mainly post content from others have the potential to build traffic faster in the beginning, I think original content sites have an easier time keeping their traffic, which makes for a more solid, long-term foundation. Not everyone is going to like my work, but for those that do, thereâ€™s no substitute.

3. Create timeless content.

While I do occasionally write about time-bound events, the majority of my content is intended to be timeless. Iâ€™m aware that anything I write today may still be read by people even after Iâ€™m dead. People still quote Aristotle today because his ideas have timeless value, even though heâ€™s been dead for about 2300 years. I think about how my work might influence future generations in addition to my own. What advice shall I pass on to my great grandchildren?

I tend to ignore fads and current events in my writing. Wars, natural disasters, and corrupt politicians have been with us for thousands of years. There are plenty of others who are compelled to write about those things, so Iâ€™ll leave that coverage to them.

Will the content youâ€™re creating today still be providing real value in the year 2010? 2100? 4000?

Writing for future generations helps me cut through the fluff and stay focused on the core of my message, which is to help people grow. As long as there are people (even if our bodies are no longer strictly biological), there will be the opportunity for growth, so thereâ€™s a chance that at least some of what Iâ€™m creating today will still have relevance. And if I can write something that will be relevant to future generations, then it will certainly be relevant and meaningful today.

In terms of traffic building, timeless content connects with people at a deeper level than time-bound content. The latter is meant to be forgotten, while the former is meant to be remembered. We forget yesterdayâ€™s news, but we remember those things that have meaning to us. So I strive to write about meanings instead of happenings.

Even though weâ€™re conditioned to believe that news and current events are important, in the grand scheme of things, most of whatâ€™s covered by the media is trivial and irrelevant. Very little of todayâ€™s news will even be remembered next week, let alone a hundred years from now. Certainly some events are important, but at least 99% of what the media covers is irrelevant fluff when viewed against the backdrop of human history.

Ignore the fluff, and focus on building something with the potential to endure. Write for your children and grandchildren.

4. Write for human beings first, computers second.

A lot has been written about the optimal strategies for strong search engine rankings in terms of posting frequency and post length. But I largely ignore that advice because I write for human beings, not computers.

I write when I have something meaningful to say, and I write as much as it takes to say it. On average I post about five times per week, but I have no set quota. I also write much longer entries than most bloggers. No one has ever accused me of being too brief. My typical blog entry is about 1500â€“2000 words, and some (like this one) are much longer. Many successful bloggers would recommend I write shorter entries (250â€“750 words) and post more frequently (20x per week), since that creates more search engine seeds for the same amount of writing. And while I agree with them that such a strategy would generate more search engine traffic, Iâ€™m not going to take their advice. To do so would interfere too much with my strategy of delivering genuine value and creating timeless content. I have no interest in cranking out small chunks of disposable content just to please a computer. Anyone can print out an article to read later if they donâ€™t have time to read it now and if the subject is of genuine interest to them. Part of the reason I write longer articles is that even though fewer people will take the time to read them, for those that do the articles are usually much more impactful.

Because of these decisions, my search engine traffic is fairly low compared to other bloggers. Google is my #1 referrer, but it accounts for less than 1.5% of my total traffic. My traffic is extremely decentralized. The vast majority of it comes from links on thousands of other web sites and from direct requests. Ultimately, my traffic grows because people tell other people about this site, either online or offline. Iâ€™ve also done very well with social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us, digg.com, and reddit.com because theyâ€™re based on personal recommendations. Iâ€™ve probably had about a dozen articles hit the del.icio.us popular list within the past year, definitely more than my fair share.

I prefer this traffic-building strategy because it leaves me less vulnerable to shifts in technology. I figure that Google ultimately wants to make it easy for its visitors to find valuable content, so my current strategy should be in alignment with Googleâ€™s long-term strategy. My feeling is that Google would be well-served by sending more of its traffic here. But that alignment simply arises from my focus on providing value first and foremost.

5. Know why you want a high-traffic site.

I write because my purpose in life is to help people become more conscious and aware â€” to grow as human beings. I donâ€™t have a separate job or career other than this. Because my work is driven by this purpose, I have a compelling reason to build a high-traffic web site, one that aligns with my deepest personal values. More web traffic means I can have a bigger impact by reaching more people. And over the course of the next few decades, this influence has the potential to create a positive change that might alter the future direction of human civilization. Most significantly, I want to help humanity move past fear and for us to stop relating to each other through the mechanisms of fear. If I fail, I fail. But Iâ€™m not giving up no matter how tough it gets.

Those are big stakes, and it might sound like Iâ€™m exaggerating, but this is the level at which I think about my work today. Everything else I do, including building a high traffic web site, is simply a means to that end. Today Iâ€™m just planting seeds, and most of them havenâ€™t even sprouted yet. A high traffic web site is just one of the sprouts that came about as a result of pursuing the purpose that drives me. But it is not an end in itself.

What will you do if you succeed in building a high-traffic web site? If you someday find yourself in the privileged position of being able to influence millions of people, what will you say to them? Will you honor and respect this position by using it as a channel to serve the highest good of all, or will you throw that opportunity away to pursue your own fleeting fame and fortune while feeding your audience disposable drivel?

Although I launched this web site in October 2004, Iâ€™ve been writing articles since 1999, and feedback has allowed me to understand how small slices of my writing have affected certain people in the long run. After reading something Iâ€™ve written, people have quit their jobs, started their own businesses, changed religions, and ended relationships. While some people might find this level of impact ego-gratifying, for me it intensifies my feeling of personal responsibility for my writing. Iâ€™ve seen that Iâ€™m able to have an impact on people, so I damned well better make it a good one.

This â€œwhyâ€ is what drives me. Itâ€™s what compels me to go to my computer and write something at 3am and not stop until 10am. I get inspired often. The #1 reason I want more traffic is that it will allow me to help more people. Thatâ€™s where I direct my ambition for this site, and consequently Iâ€™m extremely motivated, which certainly plays a key role in taking action.

6. Let your audience see the real you.

My life and my writing are intricately intertwined, such that itâ€™s impossible to separate the two. When someone reads this web site, theyâ€™ll eventually come to know a great deal about me as a person. Usually this creates a skewed and inaccurate impression of who I am today because I change a lot over time â€” Iâ€™m not the same person I was last year â€” but itâ€™s close enough. Getting to know me makes it easier for people to understand the context of what I write, which means that more value can be transferred in less time.

Iâ€™ve told many personal stories on this site, including my most painful and difficult experiences. I donâ€™t do this to be gratuitous but rather because those stories help make a point â€” that no matter where you find yourself today, you always have the opportunity to grow in some small way, and no matter how small those changes are, theyâ€™re going to add up over time to create massive lifelong growth. Thatâ€™s a lesson we all need to remember.

When I find ways to turn some of my darkest experiences into lessons that might help others in similar situations, it actually transforms those painful memories into joyful ones. They take on new meaning for me, and I can see that there was a positive reason I had to endure such experiences, one that ultimately serves the highest good of all. Oddly, I now find that it was my darkest times that help create the most light for others.

With respect to privacy, I donâ€™t really care much for it. I do respect other peopleâ€™s right to privacy, so when people tell me personal stories via email, I donâ€™t turn around and re-post them to my blog. But Iâ€™m OK with being rather un-private myself. The need for privacy comes from the desire to protect the ego, which is a fear-driven desire, and fear is something I just donâ€™t need in my life. My attitude is that itâ€™s perfectly OK to fail or to be rejected publicly. Trying to appear perfect is nothing but a house of cards that will eventually collapse.

I think allowing people to know the real me makes it possible to build a relationship with my audience thatâ€™s based on intimacy and friendship. I dislike seeing people putting me on too much of a pedestal and using labels like â€œguruâ€ or â€œoverachiever.â€ Such labels create distance which makes communication harder. They emphasize our differences instead of our similarities. Communication between equals â€” between friends â€” is more effective.

More genuine communication means better connections with your audience, which means more repeat traffic and more referral traffic. This isnâ€™t a manipulative game though, and excessive or overly dramatic self-disclosure for the purpose of linkbaiting will only backfire. Your reasons for storytelling must be to benefit your audience. The traffic benefits are a positive side effect.
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comboy, Sep 13, 2007 IP

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comboy Well-Known Member

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7. Write what is true for you, and learn to live with the consequences.

If the stuff Iâ€™ve written on this site means Iâ€™ll never be able to run for a political office, I can live with that. Iâ€™m willing to write what is true for me, even if it goes against my social conditioning. Being honest is more important to me than being popular. But the irony is that because bold honesty is so rare among civilized humans, in the long run this may be the best traffic-building strategy of all.

People often warn me not to write things that might alienate a portion of my visitors. But somehow I keep doing the opposite and seeing traffic go up, not down. I donâ€™t treat any subjects as taboo or sacred if theyâ€™re relevant to personal growth, and that includes diet and religion. Itâ€™s no secret that Iâ€™m a vegan ex-Catholic. Do I alienate people when I say that torturing and killing defenseless animals for food is wrong? Perhaps. But truth is truth. I happen to think itâ€™s a bad idea to feed cows cement dust and bovine growth hormone, to pack live chickens into warehouses where the ammonia from their feces is strong enough to burn their skin off, and to feed 70% of our grain to livestock while tens of thousands of people die of hunger each day. I also think itâ€™s a bad idea to pay people to perform these actions on my behalf. It really doesnâ€™t matter to me that 999 people out of 1000 disagree with me. Your disagreement with me doesnâ€™t change what went into producing your burger. Itâ€™s still a diseased, tortured, chemical-injected cow, one that was doomed to a very life because of a decision you made. And youâ€™re still responsible for your role in that cowâ€™s suffering whether you like it or not.

That last paragraph is a good example of the kind of stuff I write that makes people want to put me in a cage, inject me with hormones, and feed me cement dust. It wouldnâ€™t surprise me terribly if that ends up being my fate.

I write what is true for me, regardless of public opinion. Sometimes Iâ€™m in the majority; sometimes Iâ€™m not. Iâ€™m fully aware that some of my opinions are unpopular, and Iâ€™m absolutely fine with that. What Iâ€™m not fine with is putting truth to a vote.

I take the time to form my own opinions instead of simply regurgitating what I was taught as a child. And Iâ€™m also well aware that there are people spending billions of dollars to make you think that a burger is not a very , diseased, tortured, chemical-injected cow. But Iâ€™m going to keep writing to help you remain aware of things like that, even though you may hate me for it. That defensiveness eventually leads to doubt, which leads to change and growth, so itâ€™s perfectly fine. Iâ€™m good at dealing with defensiveness.

I donâ€™t worry too much about hurting peopleâ€™s feelings. Hurt feelings are a step in the right direction for many people. If Iâ€™m able to offend you so easily, to me that means you already recognize some truth in what Iâ€™ve written, but you arenâ€™t ready to face it consciously yet. If you read something from me that provokes an emotional reaction, then a seed has already been planted. In other words, itâ€™s already too late for you.

My goal isnâ€™t to convince anyone of anything in particular. Iâ€™m not an animal rights activist, and I donâ€™t have a religion to promote. My goal is to awaken people to living more consciously. This requires raising peopleâ€™s awareness across all facets of their lives, so they can make the big decisions for themselves. It requires breaking social conditioning and replacing it with conscious awareness and intention. Thatâ€™s a big job, but someone has to do it. And if I donâ€™t do it, then I have to admit Iâ€™m just part of the problem like all the other hibernating bears.

A lot has been written about the importance of transparency in blogging, and truth is the best transparency of all. Truth creates trust, and trust builds traffic. No games, no gimmicksâ€¦ just plain old brutal honesty. Even the people that say they hate you will still come back, and eventually those people will become your most ardent supporters. Even if they donâ€™t agree with you, theyâ€™ll learn they can trust you and that your intentions are honorable, and trust is more important than agreement.

8. Treat your visitors like real human beings.

Even though Iâ€™m sitting at my computer writing this, seemingly alone, I know youâ€™re a real human being reading it on the other end. My apologies to sentient androids who may be reading this years after itâ€™s been written. You arenâ€™t just a number in my web stats. Despite the technology involved and the time-space differential between my writing and your reading, thereâ€™s still a human-to-human connection between us that transcends time and space. And that connection matters to me. I feel its presence whenever I do my best writing.

While I imagine being on a stage in front of a million people when deciding which topic to write about, once I actually get going, I imagine having a one-on-one conversation with a friend. This means revealing some of myself and being honest, as the last two points already addressed, but it also means genuinely caring about you as a person. And thatâ€™s perhaps one of the best kept secrets of my success as a blogger. I actually care about helping you grow. I want you to become more conscious and aware. I want you to experience less fear in your life. And my concern for your well-being isnâ€™t conditional upon you liking me.

I happen to think we have a lot more similarities than differences. Based on what I know about myself, I imagine youâ€™d like your life to be better tomorrow than it was yesterday. I imagine youâ€™d like to be happier, more fulfilled, and more at peace with yourself. I also imagine youâ€™re living below your potential and could use some help overcoming fear and solving certain problems to enable you to tap more of that potential. And finally, I imagine you wouldnâ€™t believe me if I said you can have it all for only $19.95 (as well you shouldnâ€™t).

The reason I work so hard to create original content and then give it away for free is because I want to help as many people as possible. I genuinely care what happens to this beautiful planet and to the people who live here. Itâ€™s possible I actually value your life even more than you do. This is the kind of motivation that never wanes. I sometimes lose sight of it when I get caught up in the details, but the connection is always there, waiting for me to tap into it whenever I want. This provides me with a wellspring of creative ideas and an inexhaustible passion for contribution.

I donâ€™t need to play stupid marketing and sales games with you. Thereâ€™s nothing for you to buy here. Even if I add some products in the future, Iâ€™m not going to try to manipulate you into buying something you donâ€™t need with a slew of false promises. I might make more money in the short-term by doing that, but it would sever our genuine connection, create a wall between us, and reduce the level of impact Iâ€™m able to have. Ultimately, that approach would lead to failure for me, at least in terms of how I define success. I canâ€™t help you grow if I violate your trust.

I cannot force anyone to grow who doesnâ€™t want to. But there are a lot of people on this planet who are now ready to let go of low-awareness living and start pushing themselves to the next level of human existence. And they need help to get there because itâ€™s a difficult journey, and there are strong forces working against it.

Real human beings helping real human beings is ultimately what traffic growth is all about. Thatâ€™s precisely what a link or a referral is. If you align yourself with the intention of genuinely helping people because you care, youâ€™ll soon find yourself with an abundance of traffic.

9. Keep money in its proper place.

Money is important. Obviously I have bills to pay. Money pays for my computer, my high-speed internet connection, my house, and my food. I just returned yesterday from a vacation that money paid for. My wife and I had a great time partly because we didnâ€™t have to worry about money at all on the trip. We did everything we wanted to do without being hampered by a lack of funds. And this web site paid for it.

Itâ€™s important that I generate some money from my work, but itâ€™s not necessary that I extract every possible dollar. In fact, relative to its traffic levels, Iâ€™m seriously under-monetizing this site. But money is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. Making a positive contribution to the world is a lot more important to me than money. Money can be useful in achieving this objective, but human relationships are far more important. The funny thing is that the less I rely on money, the more of it I seem to have.

Iâ€™m already making more money than I need to pay my bills, and my income from this site keeps going up each month. If I simply keep doing what Iâ€™m doing, Iâ€™ll probably end up becoming fairly wealthy. But money is an extremely weak motivator for me. Very little of what I do today has a profit motive behind it except to the extent that money will fuel more important goals. That tends to confuse certain people because some of my decisions align with earning money, but many donâ€™t. While I do consider myself an entrepreneur (at least itâ€™s less isolating than â€œguruâ€), I only see money as a tool for enhancing and expanding my contribution.

While many entrepreneurs pursue money for the purpose of becoming wealthy, I chose a different route. I sought to earn money for the purpose of increasing my freedom. I donâ€™t want to get myself stuck in a pattern of working for money, so Iâ€™m constantly turning down opportunities to make money that would restrict my freedom. For example, I donâ€™t do any consulting or coaching. Consequently, my calendar contains very few fixed appointments. This doesnâ€™t mean Iâ€™m idle. It just means I spend my time doing what I freely choose to do instead of what others would have me do. I require this level of flexibility to do my best work.

By paying close attention to how I earn money and not just how much I earn, I keep money in its proper place. This allows me to stay focused on my purpose without getting wrapped up in less important concerns like building a brand, closing sales, or doing phony marketing.

I dislike it when other people use one-dimensional sales and marketing tactics on me, so I avoid using these techniques on this site. Iâ€™ve sort of unplugged myself from the current capitalistic system and set up a side system of my own that I find much more congruent with conscious living. I would love for other people to have the same level of freedom I enjoy each day. Iâ€™m sure Iâ€™ll continue to improve my approach over time, but itâ€™s working wonderfully so far. Imagine having a business with no products, no inventory, no sales, and no customers, but still generating an abundant positive cashflow.

Since the income generation is largely on autopilot, I can focus my time and energy on creating content instead of on doing marketing or trying to sell something. And being able to devote so much time to content creation without worrying how Iâ€™ll pay my bills makes it a lot easier to build high traffic.

Some business models make it very challenging to build traffic. You have to spend a lot of time and energy just on lead generation, and then maybe you try to monetize those leads by selling a product or service. Itâ€™s always an uphill struggle.

I give all my best content away for free. Word of mouth does the rest. So my traffic building strategy is more like flowing downstream. It hasnâ€™t been a struggle for me at all. And once you have sufficient traffic, it isnâ€™t that hard to monetize it without becoming an ogre.

Weâ€™ve all heard the expression, â€œBuild a better mousetrap, and theyâ€™ll come.â€ And weâ€™ve also heard marketing and sales people say that this is just plain wrong â€” you have to market and sell that mousetrap effectively too. I say theyâ€™re all wrong. My approach is the equivalent of, â€œBuild a better mousetrap and give it away for free, and theyâ€™ll come â€” and theyâ€™ll bring friends too.â€

10. If you forget the first nine suggestions, just focus on genuinely helping people, and the rest will take care of itself.

One thing that turns me off about typical self-help marketing is that authors and speakers often position themselves as if theyâ€™re the opposite of their audience. Iâ€™m successful and youâ€™re not. Iâ€™m rich and youâ€™re not. Iâ€™m fit and youâ€™re not. You need me because something is lacking in your life, I have exactly what you lack, and if you pay me (and make me even richer and you poorer), Iâ€™ll show you how you can have it too. And if it doesnâ€™t work for you, it just means youâ€™re even more of an idiot than the people who provided my testimonials.

Iâ€™m sure youâ€™ve heard this sort of nonsense many times before.

All of this Iâ€™ve-arrived-and-you-havenâ€™t stuff is stupid. It suggests that life is about destinations and that once youâ€™ve arrived, youâ€™re done growing and can just relax and sip fruity drinks for the rest of your life. But thereâ€™s more to life than border crossings. If you go from single to married or from non-millionaire to millionaire, thatâ€™s fine and dandy. Crossing the border into parenthood was a big one for me. But thatâ€™s only one day of my life, and to be honest, I didnâ€™t have much control over it except for a decision made nine-months earlier (and it seemed like a pretty attractive idea at the time). What about all those other days though?

Growing as a human being is something I work on daily. Iâ€™m deeply passionate about my own growth, so naturally I want to share this part of the journey with others. If I start marketing myself with the â€œIâ€™m successful and youâ€™re not approach,â€ I hope someone will come put me out of my misery, since that would mean Iâ€™m done growing and ready to die. I donâ€™t expect to ever be done growing as long as I exist as a human being. There are always new distinctions to be made and new experiences to enjoy. And yesâ€¦ plenty of mistakes to be made as well.

One of the great benefits of focusing on helping others is that it gets fear out of the way. Without fear you become free to just be yourself. Youâ€™re able to take intelligent risks and remain detached from any specific outcome because the journey is more important to you than the specific stops along the way. Personally itâ€™s not the destinations that excite me but rather the unfolding process of discovery. I love the anticipation of wondering what lies around each new bend.

If we are to help each other, we need to be partners in the pursuit of growth, not opponents. So it makes no sense to put up fake walls between us. The ego needs walls to protect it, but if we can get past the fear-based needs of the ego, weâ€™ll make a lot more progress.

There are plenty of things I could do with this site that would make me more money or grow traffic faster in the short-term, but I wonâ€™t do them because theyâ€™ll just put more distance between us. Iâ€™ll be on my side, youâ€™ll be on your side, and weâ€™ll each be slightly afraid of the other. Iâ€™ll be worried that maybe you wonâ€™t buy what Iâ€™m selling, and youâ€™ll be worried about getting ripped off or taken advantage of. Weâ€™ll just be drinking yet another round of fear, which is exactly the opposite of what we need to grow.

One of my biggest challenges in life right now is figuring out how to help enough people switch their primary polarization from fear to love. Our emotions are an energy source for us (they drive our actions), and most of the world is still driven by fear energy. Watching TV news is a good example; we can actually feel energized by watching others suffer. Hurting animals is another example; we eat their fear for breakfast. But thereâ€™s another fuel for human consciousness, and perhaps the best way to describe it is unconditional love. This isnâ€™t the squishy emotion of romantic love â€” itâ€™s a sense of connection to everything that exists and a desire to serve the highest good of all. Unconditional love, when it becomes oneâ€™s primary fuel, cultivates fearlessness. In this state you still have the biological fight-or-flight response, but you arenâ€™t driven by emotional worries like fear of failure or fear of rejection. You feel perfectly safe regardless of external circumstances. And when you have this feeling of unconditional safety, youâ€™re truly free to be yourself, to embrace new experiences, and to grow at a very fast pace.

Personal growth is not a zero-sum game. If you grow as a human being, it doesnâ€™t harm me. In fact, ultimately if all of us grow as individuals, itâ€™s going to make this whole planet better for everyone. When enough people switch their primary polarization from fear to unconditional love, this planet will become a true paradise. Thatâ€™s a good thing for all of us, one thatâ€™s more important than all the money in the world.

Perhaps you have a less ambitious goal for building web traffic than raising human consciousness and working towards world peace. That doesnâ€™t matter. You can still make helping others your primary focus, and if you do that, youâ€™ll find it relatively easy to build a high-traffic web site. If you align yourself with serving the highest good of all, youâ€™ll receive plenty of help along the way, and best of all, youâ€™ll deserve it.

Do your best to help your visitors out of genuine concern for their well-being, and theyâ€™ll help you build your traffic and even generate a nice income from it. Itâ€™s as simple as that.
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comboy, Sep 13, 2007 IP

digitalduke Notable Member

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#3

Thanks for the well explained article. I havent read it all but I will tonite..

digitalduke, Sep 13, 2007 IP

COBSolutions Well-Known Member

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#4

Well.....
let us search some soul.....
nice one......
who wrote it.....
can you give the link......

COBSolutions, Sep 14, 2007 IP

comboy Well-Known Member

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#5

I am sorry. I don't remember where i find this post. I save it in my document folder. Today i find it in this folder and post to DP forum. Hope it useful for all of us.

comboy, Sep 14, 2007 IP

zexy Guest

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#6

This is a very long article, I will have to save it and read it later on.
Thanks nonetheless!

zexy, Sep 14, 2007 IP

neysyah Active Member

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#7

thank you this article realy usefull

neysyah, Sep 14, 2007 IP

sogastic Peon

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#8

Oh my ! Im not going to read this article with one eye closed and the other closing for sleep. But it sure looks serious article to read.

Thanks for that !

sogastic, Sep 14, 2007 IP

tennisplayer89 Peon

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#9

Great article, but it has nothing to do with getting traffic. It doesn't matter how great your content is if nobody sees it.

tennisplayer89, Sep 14, 2007 IP

janneke Well-Known Member

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#10

Thanks verry usefull!

janneke, Sep 14, 2007 IP

Teunel Guest

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#11

Thanks, saved it

Teunel, Sep 14, 2007 IP

comboy Well-Known Member

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#12

Here is some tips to get traffic:

HOW DO I GET TRAFFIC TO MY SITE?
1.Submit your site to as many search engines as you can. Here are some of the popular ones you can start with
Google, AltaVista, Yahoo, Alexa, AllTheWeb, AOL, Euroseek, Exactseek, ,xcite Inktomi, Kanoodle , Lycos, Moteurderecherche, National Directory, SearchIt, Teoma, What-U-Seek, DMOZ
2.Use a favicon.ico
3.If you have a Christian Website, be sure to submit it to all the Christian Directories. We have a list of about 50 of the most popular Christian Directories here http://bibledatabase.com/submit.html
4.Have Dynamic content on your site - Message Board, Links Directory, Guest Book, Online Search, Picture Gallery, Quote of the day, News items, Site Search, Links Engine ... It all makes for a more enjoyable experience for your visitors ... and happy visitors come back.
5.Make sure you don't have broken links on your site! There is nothing more annoying when one clicks a link and it does not work. There are hundreds of places you can go on the internet that will check your link validity. Use them.
6.Make sure your META TAGS are done right.
7.Submit your site to as many privately run Link Directories/Search Engines as you can find. These will not generally boost your traffic in any major way but will help to maintain steady stream of qualified visitors.
8.Use Banners with care
9.Subscribe to the Usenet groups and advertise there. A good place to start is Google Groups
* Be sure to submit your site in appropriate groups!
* Be sure to signup with a backup email or you will get onto every spammers database!
* Be sure you don't SPAM -- only submit a write up of your site once to any given group.

I. Chose keyword:
+ Think "phrases" instead of "words". U dont have change with keyword( 1 word)
+ A search engine cannot read pictures on your site. Even if they are very descriptive. Your text must say it all. Search engines index text.
+ Your page rank is critical.

II. Use FAVICON.ICO to bookmark your site.

III.Do not use AUTOMATED SUBMISSION SOFTWARE and Advertise company because you have to submit your site into right category in Search Engine.

IV. BUY TRAFFIC TO YOUR WEBSITE
Beware, some are good and some are outright crooks! Be very careful! It will cost so much to show ads on top.
Some should avoid:
+ pop-under and pop-up advertising
+ redirected traffic

PS: I am busy now. So i will continue in next times

comboy, Sep 14, 2007 IP

comboy Well-Known Member

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#13

Now we continue
+ Becareful when buy traffic, because some traffic is from one IPs --> very easy to be banned.
So the best to do is:
==> Fixed text link and fixed banner advertising are always the best because you can check this link or banner is on the seller site and it can also boost your PR site.

V.Reciprocal links are great and work very well because of the way search engines rank sites. However, they open to abuse. Use with caution. Some other will scam you like remove link after 2 week for example.

VI.Do not submit so much on Search Engine. Some of them will ban you because of this.

VII. Word/ Grammar should be targeted to common people(intended audience). You should use a word which everyone can understand easily.

VIII. Use sentence which contain words people usually use when search.

IX. Dead link cause people think your site worse. Remove it at all costs.

X. The link color and other should be the same and stable. You can learn from google, altavista ...

XI. Do not spam or you will be banned.

XII. Use IMAGES AND FLASH very carefully. They should has small size.

comboy, Sep 15, 2007 IP

comboy Well-Known Member

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#14

Hope all tips will help you to promote your site

comboy, Sep 15, 2007 IP

tushardhoot1 Active Member

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#15

Wow!

Awesome read, rep added.

tushardhoot1, Sep 15, 2007 IP

comboy Well-Known Member

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#16

tushardhoot1 said: ↑

Wow!

Awesome read, rep added.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your encourage. I will try to do my best. By the way, can you please tell me how to see rep status. I am new to DP forum. I read FAQ but do not see how.

Regards,

comboy, Sep 15, 2007 IP

birdsq Peon

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#17

comboy said: ↑

Thank you for your encourage. I will try to do my best. By the way, can you please tell me how to see rep status. I am new to DP forum. I read FAQ but do not see how.

Regards,
Click to expand...

It will be seen in user cp below subscribed threads :

Latest Reputation Received

birdsq, Sep 15, 2007 IP

comboy Well-Known Member

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#18

Thank you for your help. You are kind men. Now i can see my reputation status.

comboy, Sep 15, 2007 IP

jakomo Well-Known Member

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#19

Hello,
Thansk very very much! This is a good step by step info

Best,

jakomo, Sep 15, 2007 IP

comboy Well-Known Member

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#20

Some aspects of earning money online. Sometimes you forgot those things.

The good, bad and ugly of contextual ads from Google, Yahoo
Embarrassing juxtapositions have plagued contextual ads on media sites and blogs. But they can fit well with commercially focused content. Here's a deeper look at the pros and cons of AdSense and ContentMatch.
It has happened before, and it will happen again. I was reading a story on the San Jose Mercury News' Web site about federal agents arresting people for running a sex-trafficking ring out of massage parlors. And when I saw the text ads below the story served through Google AdSense, they were for day spas and massage services in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The ads are deemed relevant by the computer algorithm that might search the story for key words and match them to the key words that these advertisers bought. But the algorithm can't quite match human judgment that might consider this to be the wrong place for legitimate spas to promote their services.

When Google launched self-service AdSense advertisements in June 2003, these types of mismatched ads proliferated -- almost to the point of being a parlor game where you find the weirdest mix of ads and content. But over time, Google AdSense and Yahoo's competing ContentMatch have improved their algorithms, have worked more closely with big publishers, and have taken feedback from readers and advertisers to improve their systems and reduce mismatches.

Even so, contextual advertisements remain a strange breed, living alongside journalistic content or blog postings as text ads and fighting for attention with rich media ads. Contextual ads have performed well for Google and Yahoo, brought in some good money for online publishers, and given the advertisers some bang for their buck. If all three parties are happy, that's nice for their business, but how much tolerance should there be for goofy pairings?

John Battelle, who is starting FM Publishing to help bloggers sell ads on their sites, sees advertising as a conversation and believes that there's only so much an algorithm can do in matching advertisers with publishers.

"I think it rings a sour note in the conversation in the publishing community [when mismatches happen]," Battelle told me. "And sour notes over time can lessen the conversation. I know that the platform guys [at Yahoo and Google] are working really hard to stop that problem, which is really difficult to do, because it's language. ... You can do a hierarchy and say if this is a news story, you show only these types of ads, but then you're missing out on what might be the right ad."

As Google improves AdSense, Yahoo is readying a similar self-service platform, which is only in limited beta currently. But Yahoo's Search Marketing division (formerly Overture) has worked with large publishers for some time and has a long history of matching ads with search key words. Here's a rundown on the good, bad and ugly of these contextual ad services -- and which content works best in matching ads and bringing in more revenues for sites.

The good

The first rule of thumb for contextual ads is the opposite of the old local TV news maxim, "If it bleeds, it leads." In the case of hard news related to war, terrorism, rapes, murders and other unpleasant current events, the best bet could be to remove contextual ads or just run more generic run-of-site ads. Of course, some site publishers have no problem with hawking commemorative Iraqi War playing cards on stories about people dying in the war.

Yahoo's ContentMatch uses various sensitivity filters for what ads are shown with content -- along with human oversight from a staff of more than 100 editorial people. Paul Volen, who is vice president of product marketing for Yahoo Search Marketing, told me that Yahoo's human oversight is what differentiates his service from Google's.

"First, we do have a dynamic proprietary algorithm which takes the theme of a page and matches advertising to it," Volen told me. "We also add a layer of editorial oversight to that. We look at a site and try to understand if there's content that's evergreen and won't change, like index pages that are generic and aren't updated every day. In those cases, we could have the editorial staff look at them and come up with the best matches. We work with the publishers pretty closely across their site to figure out how we want to attack the relevancy and matching."

Google doesn't have an editorial staff for AdSense, but does assign account managers to bigger sites for the premium level of AdSense services -- though it is only available for sites above 20 million page views per month. Gokul Rajaram, group product manager for Google AdSense, told me that there are just too many dynamic pages served for humans to watch every ad that's served up.

So what content works well with contextual ad services? Usually the more focused the content, and the more commercial it is, the better. So a blog that covers Asian travel should outperform a blog about inner-city crime. Rajaram says there are a number of factors that affect how well the ads do for publishers and advertisers -- including how fertile a topic area is for advertisers and where the ads are placed on a page.

"If the advertiser makes $100 per sale, then they're willing to pay $5 per click," he said. "If the advertiser only makes $10 then they would only be able to pay one-tenth of that. The cost-per-click depends on the vertical that the advertiser is in, as well as the competitiveness of the term that it's in. ... Finally, there's the matter of clickthrough rates, which depends on the relevance of the ads and the placement of the ads on the page. What is the mode of the users, are they in a browse mode and just reading news articles?"

For a general news site, the breaking news sections might not perform as well as lifestyle, travel, business and technology. One great example of a fertile ground for contextual ads is Weblogs Inc., the network of blogs set up by entrepreneur Jason Calacanis. Calacanis has used AdSense to help jumpstart his business as he also sells display ads on his 80-plus blogs that are very targeted into vertical categories -- from digital photography to babies and pregnancy.

For that reason, Calacanis has nothing negative to say about his experience with AdSense.

"The ads are absurdly targeted in my experience," Calacanis told me via e-mail. "People look at them like content and they don't even mind them. It's a revolution in advertising --for the first time since the Super Bowl people want the ads! It's advertising nirvana for everyone involved: advertiser, publisher, and Google. ... Text-based advertisers find out about our site because of Google AdSense and then they wind up buying display ads. So, Google is doing free marketing for us in a way. I've found no downside as a publisher -- zero."

Still, Calacanis isn't putting all his eggs in the contextual ad basket and realizes the majority of his income is from display ads sold directly to advertisers. Plus, he says Weblogs Inc. is considering using the FM Publishing network being set up by Battelle to help match advertisers with blogs using the human touch.

The bad

While automated contextual ad services take the hassle out of selling advertisements for small publishers or bloggers, they might not perform that well for medium-sized sites that aren't focused on very specific commercial niches or cover more strategic or philosophical subject mattter.

Matt McAlister is vice president and general manager of tech trade magazine InfoWorld's online operations and also runs the remains of the Industry Standard's Web site. While the latter site does get about 50,000 unique users per month, according to McAlister, the AdSense ads just don't seem to fit well or bring in much income.

"In terms of revenues, there's certainly a threshold that your site needs to reach before [AdSense] does anything for you," McAlister said. "TheStandard.com has 50,000 uniques, but [the income] is almost laughable. It's better to do sponsorship, where someone owns a section of the site. I remember examples of the stuff that came up that was either completely abstract or inappropriate. I don't think it has great value to the people who are using the site. With the site at 50,000 uniques, that should be attractive at a certain level, but I have a feeling it's not a useful way to use your ad inventory."

InfoWorld itself is owned by media conglomerate IDG, and its site uses the contextual ad services of a company called Industry Brains. When you click on an InfoWorld story, you'll see small text ads placed adjacent to the first paragraph or two of the story. They look like AdSense ads but, they're actually served and created by InfoWorld itself. McAlister says they decided to run these ads in order to help advertisers who wanted to generate leads. In many cases, he said, people tune out graphical ads or don't ever click on them -- but they're more likely to click on text ads that are relatively relevant.

"We started off by targeting them at a very granular level," McAlister said. "Our taxonomy has about 200-some terms in it, so we were targeting two or three levels down the tree. But we found that it was better to back out and only target the top level, the top 14 categories, because you're able to reach a little bit further on the number of impressions you're able to serve. The targeting at that level wasn't that effective. They might not be as relevant, but with InfoWorld you don't have to be that specific to convert ads."

But McAlister does see the value in contextual ads and clicked on various ads while planning a recent vacation using Yahoo Travel.

"In a vertical like that, where the inventory is limited to a number of partners, then that scarcity creates value," he said. "But if you're using a blanket key-words matching system against the text on a page against an infinite number of sites, I don't think that's going to have much value for the publisher or the readers."

Battelle, who also founded the Industry Standard magazine, agrees with McAlister when it comes to automated contextual ads. He reiterates the point that medium-sized publishers are often stuck in the cold with Google and Yahoo. And his experience with AdSense on the popular group blog BoingBoing was that the ads just didn't fit with the often esoteric subject matter.

"Big publishers are slowly working out human relationships with the Googles and Yahoos of the world and start to filter and create feeds [of ads] that work for them," he said. "But you can't have a guy who has 250,000 readers a month as opposed to 2.5 million who can have a conversation with the AdSenses of the world."

The problem is that a Web page with content on it -- whether a reported article or a blog rant -- isn't the same as a page that has basic search results. So the interaction between key-word triggered ads and the content is different and more subtle to work out. That's how Battelle sees FM Publishing squeezing in to serve high-traffic blogs.

"Search has proven that point with this great aggregator on one end of the conversation, where people were putting their question into a search box, and a magic list came up that appeared to be relevant," Battelle said. "But what about the places where the conversation is already happening? A blog is not where someone is putting a question into a search box, but where a community is already very real, and you need to know the mores of that community before you can enter that conversation in way where you'll be accepted."

Jennifer Slegg runs a blog covering contextual ads called JenSense. Slegg compared ad relevancy using early versions of Yahoo's self-service network and says they still have a ways to go to match up with Google AdSense. She also mentioned one other fault with the AdSense matching system -- dynamic content pages aren't checked by Google very often.

"Bloggers have a harder time with relevancy, particularly on their blog index page when they post frequently," Slegg told me via e-mail. "Because Google indexes about once per month, writing a single entry about popcorn right before the [Google] bot visits can result in popcorn ads for about a month, even if the majority of the posts are about a tech subject. Targeting on individual blog entry pages is usually very good. This is why many of the news sites running contextual ad programs do not often run ads on the pages that change frequently, such as the index page and the subsection pages, but run it on the articles themselves."

The ugly

While many of the early kinks of contextual mismatches have been worked out at big news sites, there still remains a gray area that's difficult to catch. Just spend some time digging through the local news online, and you're bound to come up with a doozy or two.

For instance, a story on LATimes.com about police spying on activists ends with ads for doing public records searches -- basically spying on people. And below an obituary for a rabbi in NYTimes.com is an ad link to humorous Yiddish garb. While publishers and the technology companies might be watching for problems, they still slip through.

I talked with one of the advertisers who was included below the Mercury News story about the massage parlor busts. Pierce Salguero is executive director of Tao Mountain, a non-profit which offers courses in Thai massage and herbal medicine. He wasn't sure why his ad came up in that case and told me that he actually used the terms "sex" and "prostitution" as negative key words in AdSense so the ad wouldn't come up in association with these search terms or content.

"[Mismatches] probably happen more often than I know about which is unfortunate, because we're not a spa," Salguero said. "We're a non-profit network of researchers who are working at the medical application and history and context of traditional medicine in Thailand."

But despite the problems, Salguero wouldn't give up using Google and Yahoo for lead generation for his programs. He says he gets 80 to 85 percent of his business through paid search and contextual ads online vs. print ads and the occasional direct mailer.

"It's definitely been worth doing no matter what snafus might have happened along the way," Salguero said.

One sign of the effectiveness of these types of ads is that the publishers themselves have been experimenting with buying paid search and contextual ads to promote their own stories. NYTimes.com and Washingtonpost.com have both been pretty aggressive at using key words related to stories they want to promote.

Tim Ruder, vice president of marketing at WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive, told me they have promoted stories as well as sections of the site. The only problem is that as this method of promotion becomes more popular, the cost of key words will go up and it will lose its allure.

"We've seen that happen across the board within search," Ruder told me. "As it becomes more competitive, you make all this stuff based on return-on-investment decisions. The ability to make a healthy ROI is harder and harder as it becomes more competitive."

One ugly side effect of this promotion is when competitors end up promoting their news stories as a place to get more information on a rival site's ad box. While Ruder hasn't seen any NYTimes.com promotions come up on Washingtonpost.com, he did briefly see a Washingtonpost.com promo on a NYTimes.com page. But these are the type of glitches that are easily reported to Google or Yahoo, or fixed through filtering -- as long as you can keep up with all the pages served.

Ruder notes that Washingtonpost.com does already offer self-service ads for job listings and other classifieds but thinks the key word auctions at Google and Yahoo are a bit more complex to emulate. In the end, publishers of all sizes will have to weigh out how much return they'll get from automated contextual ads and whether it makes sense to split ad revenues with the tech companies.
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comboy, Sep 21, 2007 IP

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