Entrepreneurs-Journey.com

Finally, I did it. I was really hoping it would happen this year and it just squeezed in on the second day before the new year. I made it over 1000 on my RSS Feedburner counter.

Now while I can’t boast Steve Pavlina numbers I’m really happy with how things have grown here at Entrepreneur’s Journey. My goal was to have 500 unique readers per day visiting this blog by the end of 2005 and I’ve more than doubled that number. My actual daily traffic numbers broke the one thousand unique visitors barrier a few months ago but the RSS feed count has been peaking around the 800-900 mark for a while, so I’m glad to see it break through.

I’ve learnt plenty about growing blog traffic in the past six months. I can honestly say I built this blog from basically brand new, with about 20-50 regular visitors back in July, to six months later breaking through the four figured blog traffic mark. True the blog did operate as far back as November 2004 but for at least the first six months it was a casual blog for BetterEdit.com and didn’t attain it’s own identity and direction until mid 2005.

Entrepreneur’s Journey traffic growth over six months:

Blog Traffic Course

It’s been interesting to experience the growth of a blog and learn which traffic generating techniques work best. I’ve shared some of them with you, for example my article - Smarter Online Marketing And The Results Of The Million Dollar Homepage Experiment gave a nice comparison of two traffic creation strategies, one that worked well for free, and one that didn’t work as well and cost $100.

I’ve learnt methods to bring a solid spike in blog traffic and how you can improve “stickiness” and retain an audience, so each traffic spike contributes to your long term growth and builds on previous work. I’ve learnt which methods produce slow but consistent growth over time and I’ve tested and played with lots of different “free and easy” ways to generate traffic, some of which are worth doing and others that really shouldn’t be bothered with at all.

While there is no quick fix and there certainly is no easy way to build blog traffic I feel that I know what the “secret sauce” is to create a thriving blog. I have the framework, currently in my head, that can be applied to a blog on almost any topic that will result in similar success, growing a brand new blog from zero to a consistent one thousand visitors per day in six months. Those will be targeted visitors of course too, so while your intentions don’t have to be monetarily based (I love you people blogging just for the fun!), with a 1000 targeted daily visitors you can definitely make money. Results will vary dramatically depending on your topic of course, but the potential for income only exists when the targeted traffic is in place . Heck I make over $4000 most months from only 400 daily visitors to BetterEdit.com - it’s all about the targeting!

I Need Your Feedback

I’d like to do something with this new and very current knowledge and I know what it is - teach other people how to grow their own blog traffic. I’ve received a handful of emails in the last week asking me for blog traffic tips which I think is a good indicator that there is a need for this sort of advice. However I don’t want to make any long term commitment decisions without getting some more feedback, so this is where you come in.

If I was to transfer my current blog traffic experience and knowledge into an online course of some form, would you be interested in taking it? What would you pay to learn how to turn your blog into a 1000 visitors a day website over a six month period by following a week-by-week blueprint?

I’m fairly confident if you followed a blueprint, which of course I’m yet to create, your blog(s) would enjoy the same success as this blog. I don’t want to produce something and just leave you alone to work your way through it by yourself. I’d like to work with each and every person that takes the course to offer personal advice and consulting style help, probably through a private online forum so others in the course can benefit too and we can work together to grow our blogs and help each other. The fun for me comes from working with other people and experiencing the excitement of working towards a shared blogging goal. I’d consider myself a participant as well as teacher, as I’d like to take Small Business Branding, my newly acquired second blog, through the blog traffic growth experience too.

The other option I’m considering is offering blog growth consulting services. If any person is interested in employing me for advice to help grow their own blog or a company blog please contact me (contact details in the top right corner under my photo).

I look forward to hearing your feedback on my ideas.

Yaro Starak
Blog Traffic Builder

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A super big thank you to John Richardson from Success Begins Today for including Entrepreneur’s Journey in his Blog Success Awards for 2005 along with some of my own favourite bloggers like Steve Pavlina.

Since John gave me the title “Best Search Engine Blog” I feel it’s appropriate to point out that making a blog post praising other bloggers, and being genuine when you do it, is a fantastic traffic creation strategy. If you do it well those bloggers you praise are quite likely to link back to you in a post…just like this one :-). It’s a subtle art, giving praise, but if you can do it well it’s a great way to get the attention of any blogger, no matter how large or small their audience (or ego).

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I created a bit of a buzz in the blogosphere when I posted my article - No More AdSense - promoting the fact that I decided to strip all the AdSense ads from this blog and lamenting, in a perhaps overtly emotional way, the evils of chasing the dollar with AdSense. It’s easy to say no to AdSense when you make next to nothing from it of course, but I made a pretty good case for my stance and I definitely still think it applies to this blog, perhaps only at this point in time while I haven’t tested fully other monetization methods. I’m keeping the door open on AdSense for Entrepreneur’s Journey, but testing other ways to earn income first.

I Recommend AdSense

I want to be 100% sure people realize that I am not against AdSense as a way to monetize a site. I wrote my article to raise issue with how AdSense was impacting me, my blog and how I believe it also effects other bloggers, especially those aspiring “probloggers” trying to earn a full time income from blogging. Recently I tasted what I’m sure many niche content website marketers have enjoyed, the thrill of “easy” money from AdSense and the potential for more.

One of the websites I ceased working on earlier in the year, Yaz.com.au, which I intended to turn into a buzzing Aussie student community forum but lost interest in, was sitting online getting a few visitors from search traffic. Back when that website was in focus I did some search engine optimization work and some offline marketing for it, and it seems to have paid off, bringing in a steady trickle of visitors. I’m talking pathetic traffic - maybe 20 visitors a day - but it keeps coming no matter what I do now, which is absolutely nothing.

About a month ago I decided to slap some AdSense all over Yaz! to see if that trickle of visitors could equate to some “bus fare” change and play with the AdSense channels feature. I was experimenting for fun and it only took a few minutes to get the ads up. It made the site look ugly, but I didn’t really care so much, it was either monetize it, sell it or don’t renew the domain. With no income and little traffic it wasn’t likely to sell and in the case of monetizing you don’t know until you try so I went the AdSense root and gave it a shot.

Yaz! made $7 last month.

Okay, that’s nothing huge but there are some important statistics behind that number. First, that $7 equates to roughly the same amount of cash I earned from Entrepreneur’s Journey during the same period of time from AdSense and it came from 10% of the equivalent traffic. The click through rate at Yaz! was therefore a lot better and the money generated per click was also slightly better. Yaz! displayed AdSense campaigns on online dating, real estate sites or second hand textbooks, which match the topic areas of Yaz! and perform better than “Internet business” and the like that you would find displayed on this blog.

The real motivator though is the potential and I can see how some of my colleagues, Darren Rowse and Dane Carlson, went on to reap fantastic returns from AdSense. When you get a taste for the money and you see growth each month in AdSense earnings you imagine what you could do with five, ten or twenty times the current traffic going to a site. Potentially, if I turned Yaz! from a 20 visitors per day to a 2000 visitors per day community site it may bring in $700 per month or more from AdSense. That would be something and certainly not unrealistic if I devoted time to it.

That’s motivating. That’s exciting. That also reminds me of my comments about “greed” being the driving force behind chasing AdSense cash. I’d like to earn that much from Yaz!, but would I be building the site because I cared about it, or because I wanted more income. I’d like to say creating a fantastic resource and community would be the driving force and the AdSense would be a beneficial side effect as a result of my passion, but I’m not sure that would be true. Anyway, I digress, I’m writing this article in support of AdSense, so let’s get back on topic…

The Potential Is Mind Blogging…err…Boggling

AdSense is an amazing tool for webmasters and bloggers. It provides unlimited potential for site owners that command traffic. Traffic in today’s Internet business world equates to cash, and AdSense is possibly the best way to perform that conversion, especially for the small business online marketer. If you are following your passions and building a website that people love to visit then it’s your right, if you so choose, to be financially rewarded for it. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, but always remember why you built your site in the first place - to enhance other people’s lives and as a result, your own.

Yaro Starak
AdSense Earner

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I just unsubscribed from two email lists. One was from a well established online marketer with credibility and a huge following. I never purchased from him but I joined his email list to test him out. After submitting my address I was immediately sent a bunch of materials and a lengthy email. I saved them for reading later. A day or two more I received another lengthy email, then another a couple days from that.

Eventually a pattern ensued that every 2-5 days I would receive a large email, broadcasted out automatically from this online marketers autoresponder (incidentally this was another high profile online marketer using Aweber to handle email lists). The problem was I hadn’t found the time to read his first email and materials - it was information overload.

The other list I unsubscribed from was from an unknown online marketer targeting the podcasting market. He had an ebook about podcasting that he was selling and the email list was a free sample course to help sell the book. I subscribed on a whim but found the materials were targeted at podcasting beginners so after reading the first email and skimming the second I realised the information was redundant in my case.

Making Autoresponders Work For Your Target Market

There are some good lessons here. The first one is that if you do intend to build an email list, and as an online marketer you definitely should be, then you need to be careful to balance the size and frequency of your broadcast emails.

The first example I gave above was a case where I just got overwhelmed by too much information too quickly. That particular online marketer was probably taking careful note to track conversions and unsubscribers so I may in fact be a rare case of someone leaving his list or I may be indicative of a trend, which may force him to adjust how often he sends out his autoresponses. It doesn’t matter what is the case, the important point is you should be testing how your audience responds to your email broadcasts. Don’t be afraid to lose a few people, you can’t satisfy everyone, but definitely watch for trends - for example if a certain email in your broadcast sequence produces more unsubscribers it may need to be deleted or delayed or changed in some way.

How Many Emails Is Too Many Emails?

A general rule of thumb is definitely keep in touch at least monthly to maintain a dialogue with your email members. Anything more than that and your subscribers may have forgotten who you are so when they receive an email from you it appears “out of the blue” in a SPAM like manner and they may unsubscribe.

On the flip side, sending an email every day or 2-3 times a week will be too much, be careful not to bombard your readers with mail. Of course don’t make assumptions without testing first but in my opinion a good amount is no more than once a week, except of course if you are running an e-course, in which case 5-7 sequential days is fine until the course is finished and then move to weekly after that, then perhaps bi-weekly after a month or three then move to monthly later on.

The most important thing is to keep communicating. There are plenty of cases where an autoresponder may not lead to a sale until six months later when the prospect finally has a need to make a purchase. If your autoresponse series is helpful, informative and entertaining you should be able to establish and maintain a relationship with your prospects for as long as it takes to convert them to customers. You must be in their “headspace” when it comes time to buy.

Email Length

What I like about Perry Marshall’s emails is that they are all tiny. You get the main idea within a few sentences, often there is a link to follow if you are interested in the topic and that’s it. It takes about 30 seconds to digest his emails.

The online marketer that I unsubscribed from mentioned above had a habit of writing massive emails that I just didn’t have the energy to read through. If you can’t get the gist of an email with a quick scan then in my opinion that email is not doing it’s job.

I write large articles. If you read through this blog most of the major articles are between 1000 and 3000 words, definitely considered too big for quick digesting. I try and keep my email broadcasts short and to the point, but I can’t restrict my writing sometimes, especially with blog posts because I have a lot to say.

I’m well aware that it is important to consider my time-poor readers (99% of the web!) so I provide headings. You must make it possible for your readers to quickly scan and read the sections that are important to them and clear headings for each new idea is all it takes. This rule must be applied to email autoresponders too since people have a low attention span when checking their mail and it’s very easy to click delete. Anything you can do to get your point across quickly and easily is good and it’s even better if you can get an immediate response from a call to action as well.

Off Target

The second email list I unsubscribed from that I mentioned above was because I was not gaining anything from the emails. I was not the right target audience, hence I unsubscribed. This is going to happen to every email list from time to time, but it highlights an important consideration - get your targeting spot on. If you suffer from chronic unsubscriber numbers after each broadcast email you send then chances are you collecting the wrong people onto your list. Check the type of traffic you are funnelling to your mailing list to make sure it matches what you are providing from your emails.

Further Reading

Will Swayne has an article titled - The death of autoresponders? - that has some more points to help you make better use of autoresponders.

Yaro Starak

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My article - Small Business Branding - It’s Not “We”, It’s “Me” - is doing the blog carnival rounds this week (what’s a blog carnival you ask? Read Entrepreneur’s Journey At The Carnival to find out).

I’ve found that submitting one of my best articles to the two major business carnivals is definitely a good promotional tool to gain exposure to people outside my blog’s current sphere of influence. This brings in completely new visitors that hopefully will like what they see and come back for more. I recommend you submit your articles to a carnival as well, but only your really good stuff, you want to lead with your best. Try this blog carnival submission tool to find a carnival suited to your blog.

Carnival of the Capitalists

The Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Multiple Mentality by Josh Cohen. I really liked the way Josh formatted his presentation of the carnival, the quotes made for an interesting lead-in to each section. I also like that Josh gave me the “coolest name of the carnival” award too ;-).

Carnival of Personal Finance

The Carnival of Personal Finance is up at MightyBargainHunter.com, a blog all about finance, saving, spending, and oddly enough, bargains.

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