Startup Tips: Losers Focus on Traffic
Photo by brookenovak
Do you know what the number 1 killer of startups is? Traffic.
Do you know why? It’s our constant fixation on generating and building traffic that ultimately kills a startup or prevents a blogger from writing full-time.
Here are some common mistakes entrepreneurs and bloggers make regarding traffic:
- No matter how much traffic you have, Google Adsense will never bring you significant revenue
- Getting a lot of traffic is NOT a business model
- Bloggers do NOT click on ads
- A blogger CAN make money without depending on traffic and advertisements
- Focusing on traffic, rather than building community, will ultimately lead to a failed startup
Think about it. How many internet startups get started without a clear business model? How many internet shows die because they never reached a huge amount of viewers? How many bloggers are afraid to make money w/ their blog because they feel they don’t have enough traffic?
Do you want to be a full-time blogger? Do you want to have a successful internet startup? STOP FOCUSING ON TRAFFIC!!!
Great, we’ve gotten that of the way now. So if you’re not focusing on traffic, then what should you be focusing on?
The Startups Focus
The internet startup should focus religiously on cultivating and maintaining current user relationships.
This does two very important things:
- Your first-mover users will have a very high chance of recommending your site (word of mouth) to their friends if they’re happy with your company
- When there is a community already established on the site, first time users will get instantly immersed in it and will have a higher probability of sticking
Do you know what I absolutely hate? I hate when AT&T, the cell phone provider I use, has fantastic promotions for first time customers, but completely neglects long time customers. The same exact thing applies to LA Fitness - my gym membership. LA Fitness has tons of promotions to get people to sign up, but has nothing for me, a 6 year member.
Do NOT become these companies. If you focus 100% of your energy on building a community for your website, then your members will do the marketing for you. Just take Twitter as the best example. Have you ever seen them market their product? NO WAY! All of their traffic has been from Tweeples blogging and evangelizing the site like crazy.
How to reward your current members
Contest and Prizes
Create a weekly contest where your members have to participate to win a cool prize like a free iPod or free Flip Cam. Get the company to sponsor the product so you don’t have to pay for it. When a member wins, make sure to get a picture of them, and put them on your website’s Hall of Fame so that they feel further attached to your website.
Unexpected Milestone
People absolutely LOVE surprises. Reward the devoted, hardcore people on your site by giving them an unexpected prize when they reach a certain milestone. If you’re an ecommerce website, give a surprise reward to someone who orders their 10th product from your website. If you’re a community based website, give an unexpected reward to someone who has reached 1,000 friends.
The point here is that if you give your diehard fans an unexpected reward, then they will tell your casual members about the potential rewards they could be receiving and thus have more active participation on your site.
The Blogger Focus
I have done my share of SEO and strategic Stumbling. I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I have spikes in my traffic due to both, but rarely does my traffic significantly increase after the spike. Inflated traffic like Digg, Stumble, and from Google just do NOT stick.
I don’t want to give you the same boring advice like “write quality content” or “comment on other peoples’ blogs.” I’m sick of it.
If you want to take your mind off traffic and build a stronger community with your blog, do the following:
- Reward the people who are currently your readers (similar to what startups should be doing)
- Promote your readers
- Introduce your readers to each other
What I wrote above for Startups applies to Bloggers in terms of rewarding them. Use the Top Commentors Plugin to reward your readers who comment the most; occasionally give out prizes to your readers based on a contest you develop.
How to Reward Your Current Readers
Feature your readers with an Interview
If one of your biggest fans has a great blog of their own, then invite them as a guest onto your blog and do a video interview with them. To make sure that the interview doesn’t bore your readers, make sure that the interview has a clear goal and objective. For example, if your blog is about fashion, feature a reader with a very cute fashion sense and talk about where you guys get the best deals and what to wear this coming season. If your readers can learn something valuable from the interview, then you should definitely do it.
Make introductions
You can safely assume that your blog readers share similar qualities. This means your blog readers would love to meet each other because people love to meet others of similar interest.
When appropriate, introduce one of your readers to another via Twitter. It’s quite simple actually; something like this would suffice:
@Yu-kai_Chou thx for the comment! Great ideas. Would love to introduce you to @Joseph_Yi. I think you guys would hit it off
Your readers will instantly become grateful to you and will not hesitate to introduce their network to your blog or Twitter.
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Traffic is never the answer. Focus on your current user base or readership and you will become much more successful.
Great post, Jun. It seems like too often bloggers lose sight of the mission of their site because they’re so focused on what everyone else is doing, how many subscribers that person has, or their latest blog stats. Blog stats are fun and a great indicator of how many people you’re reaching, but they don’t really explain who you’re reaching and how. It’s important to build a community, not just get clicks on a page.
I love the idea of rewarding people and actually have been doing that with giveaways on my site, but I never really thought of it as a reward…It was always just a way for me to say thank you, to give back when my readers have already provided so much through support and conversation. I think giveaways and prizes and contests really enable you to connect on a more personal level: you’re doing something for them, grateful for all they’ve done for you.
Great recommendations, I’ll have to consider them and see how I can apply them on the site!
Thanks!
Thanks so much for the compliment Susan. You’re right, it shouldn’t be thought of as a “reward,” rather, as a way for you to further engage your audience.
I wrote it as a “reward” in my post so that people will understand the impact of the gesture. If you go above and beyond to make your readers feel special, then they will go above and beyond to make you feel special.
Keep up the great stuff you’re doing w/ your blog
Great Read.
Nice and refreshing compared to what we’re been programmed to think over the past couple years.
That traffic = $$.
I especially loved: ” No matter how much traffic you have, Google Adsense will never bring you significant revenue”
Keep ‘em coming
Thanks Rory. Yea, Google Adsense bugs me because I see so many blogs use them, and it just feels like spam everytime i see them.
Very refreshing post Jun!
I’ve been blogging for about 2 weeks now and have read about 50 different articles/blogs on the topic. It’s like everyone read the same book.
Question, you seem to differentiate internet startups vs blogs. What kind of startups did you mean. I work for a tech startup, but I’m new to social media/blogging. Did you just mean startups that sell ads, but that aren’t blogs?
Thanks again.
-Chaalz
I’m talking about internet startup like eCommerce sites, social networks, community based sites, and web shows.
There are a lot of startups that make money through ads only. There are always other ways to monetize.
Hey Jun - insightful post, however I tend to disagree to some extent. For sites like my personal blog, I could care less about traffic - its my thoughts, my ideas and a place to foster conversation around those ideas. However on my “money-making” sites it is about traffic and a numbers game. My ad networks want traffic in order to pay out anything at all, and some of the affiliate programs, sales offers and products need more eyeballs to convert. I’d love to convert 100% of eyeballs into paying customers, but let’s be real - 2% would be fantastic and allow me to come chill on the Cali beach with you for a few days!
I do agree that focusing on high numbers of traffic via the social media game is useless. Digg and Stumble users do not convert and are usually a pain in the ass to try and game, beg your friends to vote you up and get a large crowd of haters that take your site down.
Google on the other hand is the key factor that I think you are missing. For small internet focused businesses, Google is their lifeblood. For one of our clients, getting him top ranking meant 50k in new business in one month. For blogs, not so much a problem, but for finding customers it is key! People on Google are searching for information/products/deals whatever, and if you are the trusted source (or so says Google), your conversions will show.
I guess what I am trying to say is that no matter how you do it, you need conversions - whether it is paid users, people buying products, clicking on ads, signing up for free, leaving comments, signing up for a newsletter, it doesn’t matter - you just need them to convert!
Greg, thanks for adding a different view to this discussion. I love feedback, so let me dive into this.
For many companies, search engine traffic is their life blood. This is great for them, and I’m happy that they’re able to survive through superficial methods. However, I feel that if a similar company came out and utilized building relationships along with SEO traffic, they would go in and annihilate the competition. I have no doubt in my mind that if there are two similar companies, and one focuses on search engine traffic while the other works on cultivating their current user base, that the relationship-focused company would eventually win out.
Right, without conversion, you got nothing. The cash flow is the life-blood of the company.
I want to get you on my show bro
Jun, I like it. Gary Vaynerchuk commented on peoples blogs 80% of the time he was starting up Wine Library TV. He didn’t do this to drive traffic, he did this to join the community of people talking about wine.
Gary is really big on embracing your community and caring about every single person who leaves you a comment.
Good stuff man.
Gary is the Man. If you embrace your community, you will definitely reap the rewards. People love to be cared for, and if you go out of your way to care for your readers, they will love you in return.
all i can say is that it was a good post
Jun,
I like your writing. Thanks. It makes a lot of sense and the truth is that anything worth growing is going to take time. I can see having just started a site that impatience and the need for traffic is like taking drugs but it’s true that in the end, what you want to do is scratch an itch on the web and truly fill if not a need then a port in the storm to tuck into at least. Information and analysis is important but even a place where a reader or a contributor feels that he is going to at some point get turned onto something or someone that will help them or enlighten them or even make them smile. Mashable has become a place where I can always get lead or pointed to something or someone interesting to me.
I think if you can do that consistently and be that consistently and as you write about, can reward and embrace your original group you can build some as important as traffic that will ultimately be traffic.
Good stuff to think about at least for me right now..
Mike Binder
Jokeyphone.com
Love your blog!! You have such great posts!
I work for a small business and they just don’t get it. I wish I could show them this blog, but they’re pretty stuck on ‘STOP’ spending time on social media and start producing traffic. Been pretty difficult because this part-time became more stressful, for the fact that I’m not given the time to and don’t know how to track my campaigns or contests while the company is tracking other campaigns (Google Ads, etc). Feels like I’m being set to fail =/
Thanks for the post! It really reinforces my thoughts.