What I learned from 'the apprentice' about generating traffic

I have to admit that I really like watching 'the apprentice' (the uk version of the show - nothing against mr. trump and his wonderful hair I just think the uk version is way more interesting). Most of the show is pure entertainment but every now and then some helpful advice might be hidden.

1) Buy as low as possible
This sounds like a no-brainer but it is very important and we often might accept the price given to us. I was using Adwords to get some traffic to one of my websites and noticed that I used the suggested bidding price given by google to be on the first search page. It might be nice to be on the front page for a google search but it is totally unnecessary. Even with a way lower price my site still received lots of hits and I got way more traffic to it with the same budget.

2) Give freebies
To get things rolling give freebies of your product or related to it away. Either as a big giveaway on your website or better directly to important bloggers in your niche. This way they might post about you and/or your product and will get your name to a large audience. Don't overdo this technic as it might be seen as spamming but whenever you have a good strong product ready send a sample to those with influence in your branch.

3) Location, location, location
In many selling tasks this is key to success. You have to find a place with as much traffic as possible of the right audience for your product. But if your 'product' is traffic where is the right place to be?
Well in the internet one place is nearly as good as the other (besides having a strong domain name for your website which helps a great deal with SEO) but I am talking about incoming links. You want to place links at places with high traffic of your potential customers. How do you get those without paying for them? Be a active and helpful member on other blogs or forums. Post comments which are related to the topic at hand and include a link to a related article on your site. This is way more effectiv than leaving random posts with just your signature. Even if those get past the spam filter they amount of people following those links is very little.

Even if those might sound trivial and obvious they are important helpers in generating traffic for your website.

give them what they want (to see)

'Sex sells' is a well known marketing slogan. We see it all the time in tv commercials or print ads all over town. And alot of blogs and websites us this formular too. Even if the actual product or article might not be related to women you often have some beautiful girl next to it.
If the product is targeted (mainly) to a male audience the presence of an attractive woman might catch the eye of a possible customer. Getting attention is the first and maybe the most important step in selling a product. Without someone watching the right way there simple is noone to present to. From their on it still isn't a simple task to sell something but you just can not skip this first step:

1) get attention
2) ...
3) profit

As with all things in life be careful to keep the right balance. Not all products can or should be present with sex. And more importantly your eye catcher should not dominate over your actual product. If the target does not even notice your actual product or article you gained nothing at all. Make sure it guides your traffic your way but they still read what you have to say.
Looking forward to your comments about this article about the famous 'sex sells' paradigm to see if someone actually read it or just had a look at the beautiful girl below. So here is the moment you have all been waiting for, my 1):

..and now to something completely different: Guatebexico

just seen a really nice video a friend of mine did from his recent holiday trip to guatemala, mexico and belize. i think he did a good editing job. music fits pretty nicely. thought you might like it so i'll share it ;-)

Build it and they will come

That's what they want you to believe. Just build a blog and they will come in hordes. Write a bunch of interesting articles and all you have to do is monetize those thousands of visits each day. Well I guess for a few lucky ones this might work. If you have new and helpful content. But even then you need some people to spread the initial word. Just a couple of influental "big players" might be enough but chances are they will not be visiting your blog or website at this early stage. First you will need many, many readers who stumple over your posts by accident until you will hit a "critical mass" before your blog is ready to take off. To reach this threshold you will need to work for each and every visit.....or pay for it.
I think there is something like active and passive traffic. As with earning money the passive way is so much better. Passive traffic will come to you because you:

• have people following your blog (because you established your name)
  
• have tons of incoming links (because you established your name)
  
• have tons of search traffic (because you have very good content, expert SEO, and even more incoming links)

Now what is active traffic ? That is the traffic you generate by going out and advertise your blog:

• By exchanging links with other blogs in your niche
• By participating in traffic exchange programs
• By submitting articles to directories
• By spaming, I mean leaving comments on other blogs or websites
• By flat our paying for it

Contest#1.1 - review my blog

I'm still a bit disappointed about the feedback to my first contest. But we'll just try it again and make it simple this time.

What can you win ?
1st place: Ad spot (125x125) on my blog until the end of the year
three random entries will get 1000 ECs each

First place will be selected via vote on this site. Other prizes I'll do a draw from all entries.

How do you win ?
All you have to do is post a review of my blog on your blog or website and leave a comment here linking to that post. Your review should include the following points:

• general blog review
• best post and worst post
• at least one improvement suggestion

Voting on the entries will start on 18th of september and will last until 25th of september.

Good luck to all....

Halftime results

August is half way through it's time to check how I'm on my way to achieve the goal I set me. My goal for august was to get 1000 visits for the month. So far I only got 273 visits so I'm not on target so far. Also I think some of the effects should be kicking in later in the month. Let's check my list of actions:

• be active on entrecard => check ... 178 visits where from entrecard + 19 from entrecard ads
• implement a new design => still open :-(
• do a contest => check ... I started my first contest, but I am not happy with the results so far. Until now not a single person entered and it only lead to ~10 visits from different shout boxes where I announced it. Plus 15 visits from a comment I left at one other blog. Any feedback why you don't like the contest or why you think others don't enter is highly appreciated.
• other actions => I think a very good way is by useful comments on other blogs. So I'll add that to my action list.

So I've got ~750 visits to go in 15 days. Which means approx. 50 per day. The contest is open for one more week and some people really should enter in the last few days. If you are the only one entering you will get 1400 ECs and the ad spot until the end of september. The ad spot is worth at least another ~1500 ECs. Remember even just entering will gain you 400 ECs if you are one of the first three to join.

Contest#1

A couple of days ago I posted about my goals for this month and one of the items on my action list was to finally do a contest to help generate traffic. Here is it! And because I just recently found a nice way to make some change on the side by reading articles the objective of this contest is also set.
The winner of the contest will be determined by who can make the most money via readbud in two weeks. What is the prize for the lucky winner...because as we all know there can be only one. Whoever wins will get:

• A 125x125 link banner on this blog until the end of september
• 1000 Entrecard credits

If you want to take part in this contest all you have to do is make a short blogpost about the contest on your blog whichs shows your current readbug balance (so people who already made some money there don't have an advantage) and then leave a comment here with a link to this post. On saturday in two weeks you should make another post on your blog showing how much you earned until then.
I'll do a shoutout on my blog to the top five and how much they made and the first will receive the prize. Good luck to all of you!!

Update: The first three joining the contest will receive 400 ECs each just for joining.