A strange thing happened today.

Besides spending most of the day thinking I was insane due to a fever and a pre-migraine, I mean. Fun times.

The other really strange thing that happened today was that I got a note from a seller on Amazon. Oh wait, I forgot the back story.

You see, I am an Amazon whore.

A few years back when I had to spend 23 hours a day in bed recovering from a back injury, I got everything delivered. It was then that I fell madly, deeply and permanently in love with Amazon. And since some people sell their items through Amazon, I fell vicariously in love with them too.

This odd revelation is relevant because I have ordered a LOT of things from Amazon, and from Amazon sellers, many, many, many times. For several months in 2007, I got deliveries almost daily.

(Boyfriend’s money. You understand.)

So when I say that it was strange that I got an order from an Amazon seller, this is from the perspective of someone who

1- has ordered from people through Amazon a LOT, and
2- had a special folder, pop-up notification, and sound associated with any email that even had the word Amazon in it.

In all the emails I’ve gotten from them in all those years, I don’t remember getting a note from a seller unless something was wrong. Especially not a follow-up on an order.

Now, despite the fact that I am an Amazon trollop, I rarely create a review on Amazon, and when I do, it’s for one of two reasons. I’m promoting doing it in relation to an activity to promote myself, or I have had an extreme reaction to something. If something is great or awful, I’ll do a review. Not a lukewarm kind of gal – if things are just okay, I tend to keep my mouth shut.

And what do you think one of the suggestions in this follow up email asked me to do?

That’s right, write a review. Which makes me realize that I just lied. I’ll write a review if something thrills me UNLESS it’s something that I don’t want the whole world to know about me. In this case, since it’s just you and me here, I’ll tell you — it’s about a wig I bought.

The wig is fabulous. In it I can go from bad hair day to vixen in 41 seconds. It took some adjusting but when I finally got in on straight, well. In the words of my good friend Jill Foster, I look “Hawt.”

And since it’s not that different from my normal hair style, even my niece mistook it for my actual hair this weekend.

So. Am I going to review it? Darn right I am. Because the people who made the wig that makes me so happy, asked me to do it.

And the moral of the story is?

Ask people to do things that even seem obvious. Obviously, if I liked the experience I had with the product I bought, I’d review it, right? You would think. But as I just explained with a personal example, people are crazy, and so are the reasons we do or don’t do things.

Yet you can sometimes overcome our crazy just by asking us to do something. Want more people to comment on your blog posts?

Ask them.

Not just at the end of the post. Pick five peers and say, I need a comment on this blog post if you have time today. Don’t forget to give before you receive, regardless of whether you think reciprocation will occur. And the thing you do needs to be genuine support, with no grudges allowed. My test is that it’s something I’d feel I’m doing the world a service by doing, whether or not it’s ever recognized.

I’ll share a post in Facebook whether or not the other person will do the same for me in my estimation, because I think it’s a great post that people who have friended me will enjoy.

Now if someone does the same for me? I take a page out of Lisa Byrne‘s book and spend hours paying attention to what they do as ell.

To get back to the point, ask people to take action. You probably are on the big things, but break that down more and think of where you expect an action but can’t take it for granted. Are you asking people to subscribe to your newsletter? Are you asking newsletter subscribers to be on the lookout for the next offer? Are you asking new customers to buy one more thing?

Really think about it….

What do you want your customers and clients to do? And have you asked them to do it?

This is list building week here at Free Traffic Tip. And the first thing we need to do is connect the dots between generating traffic and building a list.

In my weekly research, I look at all kinds of techniques and products that promise to deliver visitors to websites, as well as to local businesses offline, and one of the most repeated myths I hear about list building is that you should focus on list building instead of building traffic.

This is usually imparted as wisdom from someone who doesn’t specialize in generating traffic, but has at least one successful method under their belt for getting visitors to their site. And you know me, I’m a capitalist. I believe in competitive markets, and in stating any truthful information you have to in order to persuade a buyer. The problem is, this isn’t true.

Yes, your list is your monthly bread and butter – the place you can fall back on to generate sales of new products, to measure interest in upcoming projects, to whet the appetite with freebies.

But instead of just paying for leads – which is essentially having someone else decide who might be interested in your goods and services- you can also use traffic to build the list for you.

How?

That’s where the money funnel comes in. The money funnel is the path from a visitor coming to your site to your sales process. It usually goes from subscription to repeated exposure to content that links to goods and services, then to an explanation of how to get those goods or services. Then it repeats the process of offering content, periodically repeating the ordering information.

Sometimes you’ll get a direct path from your content to an order page, but it’s best to make sure they are able to sign up first, because over 98% of first time visits to an average site do not end in a sale.

One of the main functions of your site should be to attract visitors who would be interested in coming again.

Every single entry point on your site should in turn have an entry point to that money funnel, whether it’s your RSS feed, an audio in your podcast, the directory your sales letter is in, or your blog. That way the process goes:

interest ==> subscription ==> actions leading to a purchase

with the only variable being how long it takes them to go from interest to purchase. (Of course you have the people who will drop out of your newsletter altogether, and that’s okay. You don’t want to keep people on your list who aren’t interested in buying, becoming affiliates of your product, helping to spread the word about you, or partnering with you.)

There’s a lot more to be learned about the money funnel and we’ll be revisiting it throughout the rest of the week. For the moment, that should be enough criteria to make sure you have a money funnel set up at your site, and if you don’t,
to know why you need one.

Every month of the year has a holiday. And every holiday is an excuse to get in touch with the people around you — why shouldn’t that include your customers and clients?

Whether it’s a funny video, a sale, a contest, or a quick email with warm holiday wishes, holidays are a fine reason as any to follow-up with the audience that has requested information from you.

It doesn’t have to be a big deal, but don’t opt for just the boring “Happy Whatever Day!” message every time either. Give something away, hold an event, give an award – whatever you do, make it a memorable experience as often as you can.

This helps your traffic and sales because sometimes it’s just a matter of reminding people who were on the cusp of buying that you’re there to serve them.

Maybe you’re not an “online person”.

Perhaps the only time you use your computer is to read your email, search for something on the Web, read the news, or see pictures and other updates from friends and family.

It would make sense then, if you don’t really “get” how the web is supposed to help you sell more of your products and services.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter if you are a vitamin wholesaler, provide language translation services, sell timeshare resales, or write books, your clients and customers are online. If you can intercept them while they’re there, in a way that adds to the quality of their lives, rather than intruding upon it, you’ll be light years ahead of your competition.

Because there’s another truth. Most companies either go from quick fix to quick fix, never really getting anywhere or find leads and customers haphazardly, with no real system, hoping for the best. And it’s sad because the resolution is pretty simple.

Pinpoint what your target market is doing online. Then get in their path. Instead of fighting the uphill battle of getting visitors to come to you in some kind of vacuum, go to them.

You’re probably thinking, well whoop-de-doo for you, Ms. Has-it-figured-out. How exactly do I do that?

Of course I can’t provide all the answers to that in one day, but let’s think about it for a minute. Where are your customers online? Better yet, how do I get to them, or get them to come to me? We’re going to come back and answer that more specifically momentarily.

First, let’s look at the question in general terms.

According to the US Census Bureau, three out of five households are online, now that’s just in the United States, and translates to 110 million households. About half of those have high speed internet access. Think about how your business would suffer if you turned away business from 60% of your clients. If you’re not making your presence felt online, that may be what you’re doing.

Or think of it this way – what if 60% of your customers referred you one more paying customer this month? What is the math on that for you?

If you count wireless, the market is even bigger than that. Half of Americans have accessed the web using a wireless device such as their cell phone. And if you’re talking about awareness and occasional use, 77% of US Adults have used the internet. There’s no way you can say your customers aren’t online anymore. Somewhere in that 77% is someone who would like to do business with you.

Let’s go beyond that a little. What are people doing online, and how often are they doing this? This is important because this will illuminate how exactly we can come across your specific customers and clients.

If you think that most people are not “online people” get ready to be shocked. 73% of Americans use the internet on a daily basis. The same study tell us:

* 58% of internet users are reading or sending email,
* 50% are using search,
* 38% are getting news,
* 38% are online just to pass the time or for fun, and,
* 27% are using social networking sites.

(Of course some people are doing more than one of those things, so the numbers aren’t going to add up to 100%)

Those first four activities are the top four actions people take online, email, search, news and leisure. And although social networking is fairly new as a mainstream activity online, more than one in four people are using them. Now, if 73% of Americans use the internet, and most of them do one of the top three activities, then obviously, you need to be where that’s happening.

Your customers should be getting periodic emails from you. Your site should be showing up in search. Your company should be making news, online and off. And if your newsletter or website can help them pass the time when they are bored, in a way that’s related to your products and services all the better. If it can’t, it can certainly contribute content to the social networking sites where they might be spending those idle moments.

Let’s get back to your specific site now. How do you narrow those people down to folks who are interested in what you specifically have to offer?

The initial step here would be making sure there’s a market for what you have to offer. Search for the problem your product is the solution to, and find out if people care enough to pay for that solution, then that they can afford to do so. There’s a lot of people who are looking for jobs at any given time, recession or not.

All of those people aren’t willing or able to pay for resume services or for job seeking advice. If your solution has a price tag on it, target the people who see the value in paying for information they may find freely online. Make sure you remind them what that benefit is.

Can an expert give them more precise advice? Do you have a track record of matching jobs to people? Would the time wasted looking for the information possibly cost them the open position?

Now, once you find where the pain in your market is, even if you aren’t planning on relying on search engine traffic, the insight you can gain from doing simple keyword research is invaluable. keyword research can tell you who is searching, what context people are discussing products like yours in, who your top competitors are, and most importantly, give you an intelligent estimate of how large the market is for your solution.

Many is the entrepreneur who is shocked to find that upon discovering the perfect solution, and marketing to the perfect market, that there just aren’t enough of those people in the niche they’ve chosen to make a living from month to month. Armed with this information, it’s easy enough to expand a product line into nearby niches, but if you don’t know this, you might spend months attempting to gain traffic that just isn’t available.

Once this research is over, it’s time to attack on all fronts. Make sure you are reaching them in all the ways discussed. Start with one primary way to gain customers, like advertising, then add ways to make money from existing customers, like a new product. It’s simple enough to find your customers online if you know what they’re doing and where you need to be to be connected to them. Then all you need is a system for keeping the visitors coming to you consistently.

Somewhere in a town far away (unless you live near Prince George’s County, Maryland), I’m getting ready to transport these Christmas gifts to my cousin’s Christmas celebration.

This other part of me, though, is thinking about the New Year already, and what you need to know about the coming year.

This past year, I’ve noticed that the people who are the most resistant to social media are the folks who claim that they can’t measure their return on investment, either because the returns on investment aren’t measurable, or, more likely, because they don’t know how to measure it.

Then there’s the camp that is worried about having 100% complete control over how people see their content and what they can do with it before they will use social media. These are the folks you see mostly in larger corporations who don’t want to start a Twitter account because someone might quote or retweet their trademark tagline.

There’s no way to prevent this whether you start a Twitter or Facebook account or not. You already have less control over your content. By using social media tools and sites, you can lead the discussion and guide it, but you can’t control it. Whether or not you participate, social media has taken off to the point that ll media is social, and it seems archaic to those of us who’ve been using it all these years to even use the phrase “social media”.

These two groups are the remaining stragglers who are getting left behind.

My prediction for the next year is that the successful companies will let go of control in favor of online and offline visibility and higher profits. Those who do not will struggle to grow, if not fail.

Some things that bring great benefit in social media are untrackable until they come to fruition. How do you track a relationship that leads to a profitable venture until the venture comes about? How do you track the word of mouth that results when someone sees something on Facebook? How will you know each person told 12.8 friends, even when it results in 100 new sales overnight?

Most of your content is protected by copyright law, no matter what Facebook’s new privacy policies says – indeed they probably came up with this new wording in an attempt not to get sued for redistributing your information in the ways you’re allowing when you sign up.  How can you stop 2000 people from updating their status with your slogan or a quote from your new commercial?

Even if it’s negative, why would you want to? Now your customer service department can approach dissatisfied people one on one and solve their problems, and perhaps get those people to be just as vocal about how you 1-listened and 2- fixed their problem.

You can’t control or track everything. Stop trying and enjoy the benefits. Get in there and maximize what benefits you can.

This may sound crazy coming from a track-happy, test-crazy, traffic strategist and traffic systems engineer. But the simple truth is that there’s only so much you can track.  Sometimes the best you can do is isolate whether or not the action you are taking helped or hurt. If it helped you keep doing it, if it didn’t, you stop doing it, and keep moving.

Secondly, there’s a point at which waiting until you can track something costs you money.

For years before I began to get super success from article marketing, I wanted to be able to track where every single click from every single article came from. My theory was that if I knew exacly what to track and where the traffic was coming from, then I could just stick to those places when submitting my articles.

It sounds really intelligent in principle. But in reality, there are too many variables. So many factors go into a successful article marketing campaign. You would have to be able to track:

• time of day the article was released
• time of day where it is when the article is received
• whether or not that was the most-read day for that publication
• how timely your topic is
• how compelling your article is
• how many other solutions there are to the problem you seek to solve
• whether the resource box fit in with the article
• what else was on the page or in the ezine where your article was printed
• whether there’s a demand for your solution among the audience who read your article

If you had a good day in a publication, and all of these factors were spot on, they could all be completely different on another day in a different publication. Something as simple as the time of day the article was released could get you poor results one day, and you’d end up discounting this publication, when on another day, the publication of your article would have made you thousands of dollars.

In 10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2010, the author writes that two of these things are measurement of ROI (return on investment) in social media, and the desire to own your own content.

My advice would be to go in the exact opposite directions of these two trends.  Just because you can measure return on investment doesn’t mean you should obsess over it. Depending on what you’re selling, knowing you’re engaging 100 CEOs or 10,000 college kids might be good enough.

And we already own our own content. According to the US Copyright Office, anything that can be created, including the words you write, are protected from the instant they are fixed in a tangible form.

The battle for control, and the invention of tools to track results, will play themselves out next year or in the coming one. In 2010, focus your energy on increasing your level of engagement with as little unnecessary effort as possible.

366 Ways to Get Web Visitors –

I have decided to release a list of 366 Traffic Methods all at once. So now, you can’t ask me how to get traffic for a WHOLE YEAR.

Go away!

Okay, I’m just kidding.

Really.

The great thing about this guide is that it’s rebrandable.

You can just put your own link on the front page, or you can do that AND join the free affiliate program and load affiliate links in it with the rebranding kit, a zip file you can find right here or on the last page of the guide. I have committed Mac treason and created a program that only runs on Windows, (XP or Vista). Please refrain from flogging me. I will do my best to help if you have a Mac that doesn’t run Windows, just reply below.

(And… btw… HOW DO YOU LIVE? I was without Windows on my MacBook Pro for two weeks and almost drown in my own tears. Anyway.)

(You can get your 366 Traffic Methods here if you are reading this via feed and can’t see the embed above. That’s a PDF link so don’t hurt yourself!)

If you own The Evergreen Traffic System or Traffic Reality and are signed up at my site, there’s an affiliate link in your member area that will give you an extra 10% bonus, so please use that one instead of signing up twice.

Oh, and of course I forgot to mention in the guide that the cookie the affiliate code drops is good for a Year.

That’s right, even if it takes a year for someone who signs up to our newsletter at the site to buy, or even if they don’t sign up but you were the first person to tell them, it will be a year before anyone else gets to make a sale through them.

So. Uh. You might want to grab the rebrand kit and get your copy out there before everyone else.

And if you need hints as to how you can do that?

It’s a guide to generating web traffic! So you can use the traffic generating guide to generate traffic to the traffic generating guide. Lots of the methods are free, too. (See what I did there?)

By the time this is published, it will indeed be my birthday on the East coast, where I’m currently located.

And I definitely wanted to take some time out to celebrate that, so I’m planning on not working at all tomorrow. Yay me!

What does that have to do with you? At some point in one of these videos I tell you exactly what you can do on my birthday to make me smile.  

Okay, seriously though, what this has to do with you is that every year, on my birthday, I’ve sent out a special newsletter, blog post, birthday gift to all my pals, something.

This year I’ve decided to be naked. 

Yeah, that’s drama, and kinda hype-y. But I bet you want to know what it means, doncha? 

If you don’t, you can always just leave.

.

.

.

Still there, huh? Thought so.

What it means this year is that I’m going to, right now, for the first time, give a video peek into the stats of my site. Not  a picture of last year’s stats.

Not a screenshot of last week’s stats. 

My web site stats for 2009, from the first three months of the year that I wasn’t promoting… and a look at the dramatic difference it made when I am actually well enough to promote this year. 

Where does nakedness come in? That’s how it makes me feel, totally exposed. But I’m comfortable being this open with you.

Of course, I can’t give it all up – I’m not THAT easy, LOL!

The one thing I didn’t share, that I’m only telling folks signed up to Traffic Reality is what links send me traffic. It’s surprising information that I also keep close to my chest.

But I show

• what keyword phrases send me traffic, and how much,
• what kind of traffic Google has sent me this month, 
• exactly how many unique visitors I’ve had this month, and,
• how my traffic tripled about two days into turning my promotion machine up from low to medium.

I’ll also point out how you can tell that this isn’t Bot traffic – at least 89% of my traffic is from real human people looking at my site.

I’m sure most of you remember this time last year that I was physically unable to work and couldn’t promote my site…  But the traffic kept coming, because of the way I have set up my sites.

That was shocking to some people, that you could keep having traffic for months or up to a year without manually promoting your site every day, with no spammy software, and no virtual assistants.

But if you think that was a shocker, wait until you see what it looks like after a day or so of me just doing a BIT of promotion. This is not full strength, now. 

Meaning none of this traffic is from JVs or affiliates, StumbleUpon, Digg, press releases, podcasting, video sites, link campaigns or any offline promotion .

This is just from search, blogging an average of twice a week, RSS traffic, one article published, a few Tweets, two newsletters sent, and very light auto-pilot promotion on Facebook.

Here’s the first video where I do a quick overview – look in the upper right corner at the time – this video was recorded live and just published a few minutes ago. You can see the time changing in my taskbar in the upper right – it matches up with the video, this video is unedited.

You may want to view it full screen for the full effect. Or you can see the first stats video here if you’re reading via the feed, or as this is republished on Facebook.

And here’s the continuation in the second video. Again, notice the time. The only reason there’s even a break is due to Jing Pro’s 5 minute limit per video.

Again, you may want to view this full screen for the full effect. Or you can see the second stats video here if you’re reading via the feed, or as this is republished on Facebook and other sites.

Now, why am I showing you how much traffic I get to this site?

1. Because it’s the one thing web site promotion professionals and marketers Will Not do whether they know what they’re doing or not, because the results are so often taken out of context. 

   For example, the amount of visitors I got to this site this month pales in comparison to traffic I’ve generated for clients and for some of my other sites.

   However, given that the majority of people online have absolutely no interest in a site about web site traffic? It’s pretty darn good.For the average online business person or marketer, it would be phenomenal.
    

2. To show you that those results are possible for everyone.

   You’ve heard my story, most likely. If not, go to the Evergreen Traffic sales page and read it. The bottom line is, yeah I’m an expert at this, but the methods I use are easily boiled down from rocket science into steps anyone can follow.
    

3. For me. To give myself a much needed pat on the back for still having “it”, 11 years after my very first website went online. 
    
4. To get you to give Traffic Reality a try.

Traffic Reality is my new membership site. Well, it’s my new, old membership site. I set it up to show people how to get better traffic results to their site back in 2006 and had to take it down. 

This year, with help from friends, I put it back up. If you’ve heard of Evergreen Traffic, in which I showed three simple traffic techniques and showed you how to combine them to multiply their effects, then you’re familiar with my concept of blending different traffic methods into a system in order to magnify their effect. 

For example, search marketing and article marketing can go well together if implemented properly. Try shortcuts or mis-judge how to blend them, and you’re courting disaster. 

In Traffic Reality, I

1. start you off with one traffic method, and teach it to you in bite-sized pieces,
2. show you how to put it on auto-pilot or semi-auto-pilot, then,
3. add another traffic stream. 

By the end of the second week of implementing the steps you see your first incremental traffic increase. The next month I teach you how to maintain those resuls while simultaneously increasing your traffic with another method, broken down into about a dozen of lessons, sharing literally hundreds of traffic tips, methods, techniques and sources.

So essentially, it’s Evergreen on steroids, split down into pill size. 

These are the exact same tactics I use to promote my sites. And a site like this one is in a difficult spot – almost every business is at least twice as easy to generate traffic for than mine is.

Until my birthday ends, the price special that expired last week is on. So, if you want to get into Traffic Reality at a 20% discount price that you’ll be locked into forever, you want to join today.

Oh yeah, all members can also sign up for the affiliate program. It’ll be a while before we introduce it to Clickbank – they have to approve the site and everything, it’s not like with a product. 

Current members, look for an incredible bonus at the end of each week of lessons for the next 9 weeks. One hint: if you’ve seen all the main pages of the site, you already know what it is.

I’ll be back with more birthday madness later on in the day.

I’m sure you remember our last traffic tip, where we learned how to use slideshows to attract visitors to your site. If you’re stopping by for the first time, it may help to read that tip first.

What we’re doing now is taking that tip and with a few slightly more technical tweaks, take it to the next level. That next level is slidecasting. 

What’s Slidecasting? 

If you want to be technical, it’s podcasting but with a slideshow instead of a regular video. Since a podcast is an RSS feed with enclosures or attachments (most commonly audio), technically a slide with audio doesn’t qualify. But we’re going to go with the general use of the term, which is an audio-enabled slideshow. 

So how do you create a slidecast?
 

It’s surprisingly much easier than it seems with the tools we have available. All you need is a slideshow (have a look at our last slideshow article if you don’t know where to start), and an audio to go with it. Then you can create the slidecast by synching the audio to your presentation with free online resources, or you can invest in programs to help make a slidecast that’s ready for even wider marketing.

Getting Your Slidecast On (As Talking Slideshows)

The first option is the easiest: record an audio to go with your slideshow separately, and sync it to the existing slideshow using online tools. Few mouse clicks and – Bob’s your uncle. 

(Your uncle, not mine – have you SEEN my name? I have no uncles named Bob, trust me.)

SlideShare can help you do this, MyPlick supposedly has a similar feature, and Slideboom even supports your efforts to do this within PowerPoint before you upload. I hear their plug-in is neat, too.

Getting Your Slidecast Out (As Video Presentations)

Okay, now we’re getting a little more crazy with it. You can also make the Slidecast into a video. 

Why would you want to do that? 

Because it’s an easy way for the camera-shy to get in on that whole video marketing thing. For all we know in ten years, the web will be mostly video. If you think I’m crazy, remember that the internet started out as as ARPANET, just a bunch of shared text files on a handful of computers, then NSFnet in 1986. 23 Years later? 

YouTube.

God, I’m old. 

Anyway.

Now is the time to start producing videos (well, two years ago was the time but you’re still good). And this is the easiest way to get your foot in the door if you either don’t want to be on camera yet, or feel that your information is best conveyed in pictures. You can either use a program to do this, or record your synched audio slideshow made at one of the sites above with screencasting tools or screencast software.

Adding audio to Keynote isn’t as easy as Apple makes it sound, but it’s not like it’s harder than doing it in Powerpoint. However, if you can afford it, Camtasia works with Powerpoint to create a video version of your slideshow. (there’s a free trial), a PowerPoint plug-in will help you, or if you’re on a Mac, use a program called ProfCast, which will let you record Keynote while it’s playing, as you narrate in real time. It exports the result as an MOV file, which makes it perfect for uploading to any video site, or creating a video podcast to promote.

Or, you could just do it the easy way and use Amit Agarwal’s tutorial on using AuthorStream to create your slidecast video. It’s called How to Convert PowerPoint Presentations to Video Files (with Sound).

Yeah, yeah, I know, why didn’t I tell you the easy way first? 

Well, what fun would that be?

In the previous article, we talked about how you can use the model of incentivized following in social media to create a contest that can help you gain publicity and leads for your business. Here are a few tips specific to running the contest.

1. Set up clear, easy rules for entry and giving away the prize. Keep it as simple as you can – the more rules there are, the fewer entries you’ll get. Do just enough to prevent someone from cheating.

2. Dedicate a page to describing the prize in as tempting a way as you can, almost like an information/sales letter. Then at the end let your readers know they could win this item and how to enter. Publicize that page when promoting the contest.

3. Eliminate as many negative experiences as possible – as we mentioned in the contest traffic tip, some may not enter because they think talking about this in their status updates may be spam, or at least irritating. 

Of course, some people have the kind of audience that won’t care, but give the others an alternative way to respond. Perhaps they can send you a link to where they saved your contest page in Delicious via DM for you to verify.

4. Give reasonable odds to win. If you have an audience of 20,000, limiting the contest to the first 100 entries can condition your group to respond fast, pay more attention, and see more value in participating the next time around. Fewer people enter contests that they see as a shot in the dark. Think about what you did with your last Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes letter.

5. Give a second prize to everyone who doesn’t win. Sometimes I don’t even announce that there’s a second prize until after they’ve entered, or even after the contest is over, in the interest of under-promising and over-delivering.

6. Publicize the contest on Twitter, Facebook, your blog, or whatever venue you chose, while it’s happening, but don’t make it the ONLY thing you ever talk about. Try adding it to your bio, or mentioning it just twice a day, when you sign on and off.

7. Announce and congratulate the winner in public and make sure they have no problem getting their prize.

Why don’t I consider leaving comments a traffic method?

Because commenting isn’t meant to generate traffic, it’s more of a by-product.

And yes, there are some things we can use to generate traffic, even though that isn’t their purpose, but only when it’s ethical.

Leaving comments for traffic alone isn’t ethical.

You’re trying to take something from a community that worked hard to get it, instead of getting credit for sharing something with a community that you belong to, and reciprocating when it’s given to you – these are two different things.

I wish there was a plug-in that let me keep people from leaving links until after a certain number of comments, and to turn their links off if they stopped participating.

Andy told me on his ultimate dofollow list about Lucia’s plug-in, which paid commenting may force me to turn to this evening.

Think about how you’d feel if someone did that to your blog, everytime you want to evaluate a traffic method related to blogging. If you wouldn’t mind and allow it at your blog, then knock yourself out, because whatever you are doing to others is about to happen to you.

Commenting to get traffic is also inefficient.

Why?

Let’s say you leave one comment.

That comment will probably only bring you traffic as long as that post is new. When it fades into the archives, you won’t get much traffic from it.

Let’s say it’s a DoFollow comment, and you’re getting link juice.

Sure, your link will get followed by the search engines, and counted among the number of links to your site, which may give you a little boost.

But wouldn’t it be better not to have to share that link juice with the other commenters?

Wouldn’t it better to have a whole post dedicated to your site?

Wouldn’t it be great to get a Permanent link to your site from their Blogroll, on a page that has more weight than a single post?

Wouldnt it be cool if someone discovered you by your link and then shared your link with other people?

So how do you get that kind of action?

Let’s look at it logically.

Good Bloggers tend to make posts about:

• Quality tools, content, services, & products that will serve their community.
• People who are doing innovative, interesting, creative things that will interest their community.
• Quality tools, content, services, & products that will serve their community and make them money.
• News of interest to their community that will either save them from doing a full blog post or help them to do a full blog post.

.. just to name a few.

It follows, then, that if you want a blogger to blog about your site, to share your site with others, or to add you to their link roll, you should :

1. Make comments that will both help and intruigue the blogger and his/her community, which make a good introduction to you.
2. Form a relationship with that blogger on the basis of what you have in common that could serve their community.
3. Form a relationship with other commenters in that community.

In other words, comment to give, not to get. If you get the same amount of love back from comments you make, then great. If you don’t, that’s fine too, at least you got a link, and if you stick to it, you’ll get that love elsewhere.

As far as how to apply this to your comment routine, that will depend a lot on your own preferences.

This is what I normally do.

My Seven Step Method of Commenting to Form Relationships

If I comment on your blog, it’s for the sole purpose of getting a link.

I can buy links, earn them, submit for them, write articles, win awards, be written about, publish a press release, create a podcast…. so what the heck do I need you to link to me for?

It would be nice but…

A link is a consolation prize, not an end in itself.

If I comment on your blog, it’s my way of saying hi, a precursor to a relationship. If we were to use the metaphor of dating, the first comment is the stage where I decide if you’re worth asking out.

Step One – Stalking.

I read a blog for at least a week, looking for common ground, and seeing if the blogger writes in a style that leaves a place for replies other than “good job”.

The content has to speak to me, so that I want to say, “fantastic job”, “thank you”, or “and you know what else”, or “I respect you but you’re SO WRONG about this.”

You can’t expect people to write their most compelling work every day, but if I don’t see at least one memorable shot after a week or so of hanging around and reading archive posts, I’m off.

Because if I’m not electrified, and I’m looking to market to people like me, well, they’re not going to be electrified either.

Sometimes I ignore this rule if their audience loves them for some reason I don’t understand, mostly because some of my readers have the same mercy on me.

Step Two – Introductions.

I comment once, leaving my full name, and making a concerted effort to truly contribute to the conversation. (I make an effort every time, but this first time, I want to be noticed, maybe even impressive.)

Usually the first comment is without leaving my link unless the browser fills it out for me.

If comments are moderated, I may come back if it’s really important to me and I remember. (If your template allows it, enable a subscribe to comments plug-in. Ours doesn’t, one reason I want to change it.)

If not, it’s a quick way to lose my attention, which is why I try to only moderate comments when we’re all on vacation, or if key members are out sick.

Step Three – Flirting.

I comment twice. This time I’m looking for a response from the publisher within a few days.

If the person who writes the posts isn’t responding to me, but is to other people in that thread, I think that’s BS.

Every contributor is important. I don’t want a relationship with a sometimesy person, which also means I’ll probably never, ever buy from them.

If you won’t reply to my comments, you won’t reply to post-sales emails if I need help.

I’ll probably still read though, because you can’t judge the sum total of a person on their flaws.

If the person doesn’t comment at all, either because they have a high traffic site which always produces 25 or more comments per post, I will cut them a little slack.

But I’ll probably read less often, and stop bothering myself to comment, unless I observe interaction between commenters.

Step Four – Yes, I’m asking you out on a date.

I comment three times.

With this third comment, if I make it this far at that site, and they respond or their community responds, I’m moving them up to my priority list to read, link to, write about and reference.

Step Five – I Talk About You All the Time

I share my favorite reads. I may share their posts on del.icio.us, Digg, Sphinn, PlugIM, BUMPzee, StirredUp, Stumble Upon, Facebook, anywhere I’ll see them more often.

Step Six – We Fall In Like

I bond with my new friend. We might poke each other on Facebook or email each other. (Rare for me because I Loathe email.) We may have our own inside jokes on each other’s blogs.

My motives are simple – make a new friend.

If anything else comes out of it, that’s great. If there is something I can do for them, even better. If one day, they do something for me too, that’s awesome. It doesn’t always happen that way, and that’s okay with me.

If it doesn’t, I still get credit when I comment, which I’ll do in bursts of frequency, and at the minimum, traffic and/or links will come from it, and the community that posts there often may post over here, and if they do, I’ll mention them from time to time on my blog and add them to my links.

Who knows, that friend might lead me to another friend who wants the same serious business relationship I’m looking for.

If it does work out, it’s magic.

They’ll write about me, they’ll link to me, they’ll reference my posts, they’ll add me to their Blogroll, they’ll thank me in public, they’ll write me privately to set up partnerships, and I reciprocate or initiate the same with them.

Which results in much more traffic, much better links, an increase in both our audiences and in sales, as well as, a new friendship.

Step Seven – The Mutual Appreciation Party Begins

I Repeat steps Five and Six as much as time allows.

Again, thinking about this logically, what would you be willing to do for a person who was doing that for you? I’ve had people do those things for me, and I’d bend over backwards for them anytime, even if they only got to step five.

Successful businesses are built on good relationships. You don’t have to be best friends with everyone – in fact, I’m really big on not working with people who expect something for nothing, abuse my time, or think that because I’m well-known in an area they want to be popular in, that I somehow owe them something.

However, every good blog traffic method is built on being a good neighbor in the blogosphere. No blog is an island.

Thanks to Isotropic.org for letting me know how many days are left until the end of the year.

Yeah, my knees got weak, but love me two times, baby – last me all through the week…” The Doors, Strange Days, Released October 1967.

So what’s this song have to do with anything. Well, this week I’m gonna “love ya” by giving y’all an additional post in our “How to Attract Links and Increase Web Traffic – The Ultimate Guide”. Is that cool, or what.

Enjoy!

10 Remarkably Effective Strategies for Driving Traffic -SEOMoz

8 Reasons Why Lists Are Good for Getting Traffic to Your Blog – Problogger

7 Ways to Get to the Top of the del.ici.ous Popular Page – Problogger

“Love me two times, I’m going away”.

MorganLighter