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This will be a series of posts, because there are a few separate points I want to cover here. I’m going to outline the 3 steps here in this post, and then in future posts in this series, I will go through each step in detail. There’s a lot of good information here if you’re serious about making money online, so if you don’t have time to read it all right now, please bookmark this page and feel free to come back later!

The Truth About Traffic

Traffic is important. No doubt. But not all traffic is created equal. Would you agree? And I would submit that you’re probably not all that concerned with seeing your traffic numbers increase so much as you are concerned with seeing your SALES increase. With me so far?

But the assumption we often make is that in order to increase sales and income, we need to increase traffic. This is an understandable assumption, but I am writing this post for the purpose of hopefully giving you a broader and more profitable way of looking at this situation. In other words, you don’t necessarily need more traffic. What you need is a better traffic system. What you need is…a sales funnel.

This is a key element of sales that most people miss, both online and offline, and without it…I’ll be honest with you, you’re shooting in the dark. Let’s not leave your success up to chance. Agreed?

I understand there may be some resistance to this. It’s extra work for one thing, and who wants to do that? And besides, so many other blogs make money just by getting tons of traffic and selling ads, right? Here’s the thing, that model works fine. It really does. There’s a couple problems though. First, advertising revenue is down as a result of our recession right now, and this is across the board. Many bloggers are finding that ad revenues are just not cutting it right now, and they’re having to find new ways of making money online. Second, not every niche is a high traffic niche. Your business can use blogging and social networking tools to make a fine living in any niche, even with only a small amount of traffic, but you need to be deliberate and effective in the way you monetize.

Low Traffic is Profitable Too…if You Know What You’re Doing!

Throw some ads up on a site that gets 3,000 visitors a month, and you’re NOT going to make it! But monetize properly, and that amount of traffic can work just fine for you. One of the sites I have is a real estate blog, for example, and it brings in about $40k in sales commissions a year, all from about 1,000 visitors a month. Trust me, high traffic rocks, but it’s not a necessity. You can monetize any level of traffic, as long as you deliberately set up an effective plan to make it work. But it’s not going to happen automatically!

Here’s something to think about. You don’t want to build your business to be entirely dependent upon a constant flood of traffic, do you? Learn to be profitable when you’re small. Do this, and when things click and you get that flood of traffic, you’ll be ready for it, and you’ll make a killing. But let’s set things up for you so that even with modest traffic, you’ll be able to to very well. Cool?

So here are the three steps I’m going to cover. Again, feel free to bookmark this if you want to come back later. There is a ton of info I’m going to be following up with here…

The 3 Simple, Killer Steps to Improve Traffic and Monetize Your Site…

1. Review where your traffic is coming from
2. Develop a sales funnel
3. Use an effective, targeted follow up system

Review Where Your Traffic is Coming From

So, let’s first take a look at where you’re traffic is coming from. I will go over some of the most common areas, and I’ll show you how to apply these simple principles to each one. This will give you an idea of how you can really optimize the use of your traffic to make sure you’re maximizing sales. Some of the most common sources of traffic are:

• Organic traffic…from search engines
• Social networking
• PPC
• Email marketing
• Incoming links (whether from articles you’ve published, guest blogs or other bloggers who have linked you up)

In the next few posts, I’ll show you how to funnel and optimize each of these for maximum results. I’ll show you what a sales funnel is, how to design one, how to use it, how to build your ultra-effective follow up system and more

Make sure to check out other posts in this series here:

Use a Sales Funnel to Blow Up Your Blogging and Internet Marketing Sales

Make Money Online by Selling More to Fewer People

How to Improve Traffic from Your Social Networking