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TRAFFIC.
The most frightening word in online industry.
Starting a blog takes only 3 minutes (I actually set the timer to calculate the time), and writing an article takes another 1-2 hours (if you are writing an average article).
We feel awesome after setting the blog and publishing our first article.
Then we sit calm (putting hands on each other) and wait for the traffic.
We feel that we have written best article in the world, and people are going to love it.
That confidence is speechless, because we have made our first article live, and we are looking forward to solve the problems in the world.
Refreshing… Refreshing… Refreshing…
We are refreshing our Google analytics to see the spike of traffic.
We are waiting for some enthusiastic people to read our masterpiece article.
Is it picking?
ohhhhh it’s not.
“That’s my first article, so I am not going to get any traffic”, we say this to ourself and then move to next article.
Now the second article is also live.
Another masterpiece.
But again, Google Analytics is not showing anything.
hmmmmmmmmm..
Let’s write few more articles.
We spend many days to write 20 spectacular blog posts and the Google analytics is still showing only 10-15 visits a day.
What’s wrong here?
I think this is the story of every new blogger.
They start their blog thinking that it’s easy to get traffic.
They are inspired by the income screenshots, traffic screenshots, and the lifestyle of a blogger.
Everyone is running for traffic.
They all want HUGE traffic, but no one is willing to actually learn the art to drive traffic.
If driving traffic on any blog was so easy, everyone would become a blogger in this world and start making money from home.
Think about it.
Blogging is no less than a real business.
It’s almost equal to opening to store in your city and getting the clients to buy the products.
Look around.
How many shopkeepers in your city are successful?
Are all driving equal sales? or are there some best shops which are always getting clients?
and interestingly, ask them how much did they invest to open that shop?
Is it in hundreds, thousands, lakhs, or in millions?
They invested the money to start a business. They learnt how to run a business and get clients.
and here, we are thinking that it’s much easier to drive traffic on the blog because we are online.
I would rephrase my statement.
If driving traffic on any blog was so easy, everyone would become a blogger in this world and start making money from home.
Now let’s come to the point.
Let’s search “Start a blog” on Google.
Very high competitive keyword, and they are ranking at top of Google.
Once I opened this blog, and tried to find how old this blog is and how many backlinks do they have, I found this.
Around 10,000 backlinks.
And when did they start this blog?
They secured this position in Google after continuously working for 8 years.
and here you are worried about your 8 months old blog.
Note: My motive behind this article is not to demotivate you. I am just sharing the real data with you. In some exceptional cases, I have seen newbie bloggers making thousands of dollars per month.
and you can find such countless blogs which are online from last 5-10 years.
They are continuously producing the new content, ranking them in Google, and ultimately making money.
Let’s find the reasons why you aren’t getting traffic.
#1. You Are Looking for the Shortcuts
I hate it when people ping me at Facebook and ask, “Sir I am not getting traffic on my blog, is there any shortcut?”
Stop doing this.
Driving traffic on any blog is an art.
It takes countless sleepless nights, a lot of reading, understanding and dedication to master the skills to drive traffic.
Shortcuts are the biggest dream killers.
You drain your energy while hunting for the shortcuts. You underestimate your power, because all you want is quick success.
There is no shortcut.
I strongly recommend to understand the basic first. Spend your time to analyze the big blogging players in the industry. See what type of content they are writing, what type of promotion they are doing, how much efforts they are putting to stand out in the crowd.
#2. Your Writing Style Sucks
Please don’t mind it.
Even I used to write S#### when I started my blogging career in 2011.
Once I started reading some awesome blogs in the industry, I found that they all had an awesome tone. They were writing articles in such an awesome style that I used to feel completely lost in the articles while reading.
They were hitting my subconscious mind with their words.
Being a blogger, your biggest duty is to solve the problems of your readers.
and we do this with our words.
Focus on improving your writing skills.
This would be the biggest skill you would ever have to become a good blogger.
#3. You Don’t Think It’s a Business
Blogging is a pure business.
A white hat business where you make the money with your words.
Until and unless you consider this as a business, you cannot drive traffic on your blog.
Start investing in your business. Buy a professional logo, a well-designed WordPress theme, awesome stock images to make your articles awesome, and try to make it more professional.
#4. You Don’t know What SEO is
SEO aka Search Engine Optimization.
If your articles are not SEO optimized, don’t expect any traffic from Google.
Google’s algorithms find SEO optimized articles, they calculate the authority of the articles (by understanding backlinks, link juice etc.) and finally they give you ranking.
If you are not doing SEO, you are already out from the Google’s ranking algorithm.
Start investing your time to understand SEO.
Technically there are 3 types of SEO techniques.
- Black Hat SEO
- White Hat SEO
- Gray Hat SEO
I strongly recommend to go for white-hat SEO if you are looking for long term results.
#5. Information Overload
I hate this the most.
Being online, we stumble across many things on the internet.
People upload their MaxBounty screenshots, AdSense earning, traffic screenshots, YouTube earning and many other shining distractions.
We stop doing what we are doing and start digging for that method to make money.
After trying for 2-3 weeks, we don’t see any success and then we jump to next shining object.
Information overload kills your productivity.
If you have started a blog, focus on it.
Read many case studies about getting traffic on your blog. Read other good blogs to find out the ways to promote your blog.
Don’t get overloaded with the online information.
#6. You are Trying Old-School Methods
Blog commenting, directories submission, article submissions are one of them.
You can strengthen your relation with the blog author by repetitive comments on his blog, but comments are not going to give you any traffic.
Directories submission and article submission are the dead methods.
No one reads directories and article submission sites these days, because the content on such sites is totally crap.
There are many tools in the market which auto generate the content and submit them on such websites, which are totally crap articles.
Ultimate Demon is one such tools which many link building guys are using to spam the internet.
Stop looking for the old-school methods and start doing some creative work.
Running a giveaway can be a good way to drive the traffic, doing roundup post on your blog is another good method to get traffic.
Keep trying for new methods and say bye bye to all old methods.
#7. You Are Not Building an Email List on Your Blog
Selling to old customers is much easier than acquiring new customers.
And this same phrase is also applicable for blogging industry.
Getting recurring visitors is easier than attracting new people on your blog.
Email marketing is the best solution for this.
If you are not building email list on your blog right now, you are losing your potential customers.
Customers which can help you make thousands of dollars.
let’s make it easier.
If you are reading this blog post after receiving my email in your inbox, you can understand why am I saying this.
With just a single click, I sent this article in your inbox and you are here reading this blog post.
What is the ultimate thing I achieved here?
TRAFFIC.
Yeah, TRAFFIC.
I got thousands of people reading this blog post just with an email.
I cannot stress this more here because I have written a separate article on Why Should You Start Building Email List Today?
Start it right now and thank me later after few months. 🙂
#8. You Aren’t Sharing Your Blog on Social Media
Social media brings huge traffic, if you use it in a right way.
An awesome title of your blog post can attract people to visit your blog.
But before proceeding further, let me share some tips:
- Have attractive social media share button on your blog. I am doing this with plugin Ultimate Social Deux.
- Make attractive image for your blog posts to get people click on them. I make most of my images with Photoshop and few of them using DesignBold.
- Share your content on social media on peak time. In India, the peak time is in between 9:00 PM-11:00 PM.
- Activate twitter card for your blog posts and show your article’s featured image in twitter as well.
- Join some good Facebook groups and start sharing your content there.
I have driven a lot of traffic on my niche blogs with right angle and by sharing at the right time.
#9. You are Afraid of Guest Blogging
We are afraid of rejections.
We feel that most of the bloggers will say NO if we pitch them to submit a guest blog post on their blog.
With this fear of rejection, we never pitch other bloggers.
But here is the universal formula.
For every 100 people you pitch, you get 5-10 YES.
So the question is – Are you pitching 100 people for submitting your blog posts?
I can see your face right now…. because the answer is NO.
We have written an article on How to Make Guest Blogging Work for You in 2017, where you will understand the power of guest blogging.
#10. You Are a Newbie
Believe it or not, it will take few months before you start getting some traffic on your blog.
My biggest money making blogs still get 3000-5000 visits a day. As they are highly optimized around the buyer intent, so I make money with even low traffic blog now.
I made my first dollar after 7 months.
Being a newbie, it’s very difficult to drive traffic when you don’t actually know the basic fundamentals.
Here are some crucial aspects
- Your post title plays a big role to get the traffic when you share them on social media
- Your blog design should look professional to attract recurring visitors (we visit the blogs again when we find them professional and neat).
- Write in-depth article to deliver the value. Gone are the days when people used to read “7 tips to boost Alexa rank.” Write something valuable from your own experience.
- Spend time to improve your writing skills.
- Invest. Invest. Invest.
Final Words
I cannot stress more on this topic because you already know where you are lacking.
You know what right (or wrong) you are doing.
If you seriously want to become a good blogger, get the traffic on your blog, and ultimately make some money with your blog, ask yourself above 10 questions.
See where you are lacking and where can you put more efforts to drive quality traffic on your blog.
Traffic is the outcome of your efforts.
The more efforts you put the promote your blog, more traffic you are going to attract.
If you have any suggestions which can help newbies to get traffic on their blogs, feel free to share them in the comment section.
Now Your Turn!!
Share this article with your best buddies to help them understand the reality of getting traffic on their blogs.
Once they know these bitter truths, they can start putting more efforts to make their blog successful.
I am finishing this article by saying All the Best to you.