Introduction to Website Traffic

Making money on the Internet is not quite as simple as setting up a good webpage and letting the checks roll in. Don't get me wrong, having a good webpage is a vital component of making money. The "only" other thing you have to do is get good traffic.

Traffic is Internet-speak for the number of visitors to your website. All your marketing efforts, whether online or offline, will revolve around trying to generate traffic.

However, don't worry about raw traffic numbers. We're not getting paid per eyeball, we're getting paid per signup. Forget "hits" (page requests a visitor's browser makes to your website), don't worry too much about "uniques" (the number of different computers that have visited your website), even "click-throughs" (the number of visitors who have clicked on one of your links and visited a partner site) don't really matter. At the end of the month, it's all about how many of your visitors you turned into customers. That's it, pure and simple, the more people you get to sign up for the services you are promoting, the more money you make.

Obviously this is a bit of a numbers game, since the more traffic you get, the more chances you have of converting someone into a customer. However, it is much more important to get good traffic than just to get a lot of traffic. Good traffic is people who want to come to your website, or at least one like it. Junk traffic is people who just somehow end up at your website. Obviously, you have a better chance of converting people who want to visit. There are other articles that go into more detail about different types of traffic and offer some strategies to make best use of each kind.

Don't just rush out there and start buying advertising. Take a little time do some reading and thinking so you know more about how things work and what you're trying to do. Work out how you're going to approach things and then go out there and do it. The four Ps of marketing (Product, Pice, Place, Promotion) still apply in the online world, but the five Ps that I learnt in the army are perhaps more important - Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance.