For a number of years, many online marketers honestly thought that the only thing they needed to do to be successful online was to “build a website, and the buyers would come to them.”
They had heard all of the success stories from people, who claimed that they had simply built a website, and people just started to arrive in huge numbers.
The story, as it is told, is:
These folks built a website, then the search engines found their websites and started showing people the link to their website. And the people using the search engines saw the link to their websites and saw that it was good. Search engine users saw the link, and as if it were the only link in the Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), and they clicked the link by the thousands. And hoards of people came to the website with fists full of money, ready to buy what the website was selling.
Some people still believe this is how the search engines work. They have built their websites, and they are waiting anxiously for the “Traffic Fairy” to sprinkle his magic dust on their website too, so that they can also make lots of money.
Are YOU Still Waiting For The Traffic Fairy?
I hope not.
Those who are “waiting” for anything may wait until they realize they are flushing good money down the proverbial toilet, month after month… When they realize that they still have more money going out than they have coming in, they usually get irritated that the “Traffic Fairy” did not look favorably on them, so they stop paying their hosting bill and quit this scam called, “online marketing”.
The lifespan of most new websites can generally be measured in the amount of time most people will remain members of a subscription website. In case you did not know, this number is 3-4 months. Along about the 4th or 5th month, most people will stop paying their web hosting bill and let their websites die.
Those people who prepay 1-2 years on their web hosting bill will typically allow their sites to remain online, but they will quit the site long before their website runs out of life. Most will stick it out 3-4 months, and if they are not yet making money, they will just walk away from their new “online business”.
This is why you will find so many article directories where you submit your finest work, and no one will ever “approve” your article for publication. There may be nothing wrong with your article. The fact is no one is home to approve it.
The Traffic Fairy Smiles On Those Who Take Action
If you can believe it, in the fall of 1998, Google was a startup website.
Larry Page and Sergey Brin — the founders of Google — were just like you and I. They had a startup website, and they needed people to discover their new website.
In those days, Page and Brin could not simply build their website and “wait” for the Traffic Fairy or Google to find them…
They were Google, and no one was using their website.
What did they do to get Google off the ground?
While building Google in their garage, Page and Brin were doing what you should be doing now.
They were getting links wherever they could get links. The were adding their site to directories. They were issuing press releases about their new company. They were trying to get interviews with the press and ordinary webmasters. They were trying to get interviews with newsletter publishers. They were participating in forums and news groups to get the opportunity to share their story.
They were doing everything they could think of to get links to their new website, and they were trying to create interest in their website.
They started their website in September of 1998 and they got their first major press in December of 1998, when they made the top 100 websites of 1998.
It took them three months to get their first major press, and they had been actively promoting their website with the gusto of a 10,000-person marching band.
Yet the average new webmaster barely promotes his or her website and expects to attract thousands of visitors in the same time frame, as it took Google to get noticed by the public-at-large.
Are you starting to get the picture?
To Be Successful, Do What The Successful Websites Have Done
Before Google was the powerhouse it is today, its founders had to work their asses off to build their business.
They had to promote, promote and promote some more. They had to build links, build links, and build some more links. They needed to entice people to visit and use their website, and they needed to provide a method for people to find them.
My point is that the founders of Google wanted to be acknowledged and linked from every corner of the Internet. They chased links for their website, because they knew that people used links to get to a website.
Twelve years later, Yahoo credits them with 223,383,603 links to www.google.com and another 6,752,847 links to google.com. You and I are not going to get 231 million links to our websites, but getting links from a variety of resources is the secret to getting traffic to ones’ website. The Traffic Fairy blesses those websites that have a multitude of links to them.
Page and Brin tapped into the basics of building traffic to their website. They made a great website, and they did everything they could do to get traffic to that website.
You should try to emulate them, as you build your website and start to promote it. It was the secret to their success, and likewise, it could be the secret to your success.
Traffic Generation 101
The easiest and cheapest ways to get links and generate traffic for ones’ website is going to be: article marketing, press releases, forum marketing, social media marketing, etc.
But, there are at least three-dozen methods to generate traffic to ones’ website, and these are just four of them.
The more successful websites always strive to get traffic through a wide variety of traffic generation strategies and methods.
In my case, I have used 31 of the 35 methods I described in the 80-page traffic guide, “Multiple Traffic Streams: The Magic of Attracting Buyers”.
This has resulted in my top three websites being on track to serving 400,000 unique visitors and 5 million page views in 2010.
Don’t wait for the Traffic Fairy to bless your website. Take massive action to make sure that the Traffic Fairy would be a fool to ignore you.
Check it out here: https://goo.gl/JfpG7t
And if you do, you might just realize that the Traffic Fairy is real, and he would love to sprinkle his magic traffic dust on your website too.