Total Web Review

Last week you read about different types of advertising. That was just a start for the articles that I will be writing over the next few weeks that have to deal with advertising. First thing that needs to happen though is we need to find out if you are ready to advertise.

One of the first questions you need to ask yourself is what do you want the advertising to accomplish? Your answers may look something like this;

• Increase traffic
• Make Money
• Pad your ego by seeing all of the people swarming to your site

Okay, well the last one was a little off the wall but you get the point. Those first two are the main reasons you would advertise. You want to get the word out about your site or product plain and simple. Now just what your intent is for that traffic is the important part. Here on TWR I have used a couple of methods to advertise. They have all come with mixed results mainly because the advertising was unfocused. I had yet to define my goals completely. Now my goal has always been more traffic and I have been able to achieve that to a point. The problem though is that it hasn’t converted very well. That is where focus comes in.

Focus

Either you are planning for the short term (make money now) or the future (convert new visitors into regular readers). I have always focused on the later of the two. Yes making money would be nice but right now I am fine with making enough to cover my expenses and maybe use it to spur a little growth. Traffic is the most important to me right now and 1000 uniques per day is kind of the focus at this point in time while I am sit at about 100-130 right now.

Traffic

I guess you are wondering what I am planning on doing to focus in on my goal? Well first, I am going to start highlighting some of my better posts when I advertise. Put your best foot forward they always say, so why not show your best stuff to those clickers? It will beat them coming to your site and reading you write about the bad day you are having. One campaign that I currently use is Entrecard so for those days when I know I will not have new content I will change the url to show an old post from the archives that maybe they haven’t seen (I hope I have some good posts back there!). Another thing that I have harped on that goes hand in hand with this is writing quality, frequent, content roughly five times a week. Four or six would be okay also. Just stay on top of it. If a visitor reads just one post that they really like, chances are good that they will be back and soon you will start seeing more of those visitors coming directly to your site instead of from other sites. The thing is, it can be a win, win situation. Those that bookmark your site may just post about it on their site and give you a backlink and a few more visitors. Since my latest advertising effort my direct visitors have went up 300% over the past two months. While I may have card droppers jetting from my site at a 88% bounce rate I maintain around a 10% bounce rate on my direct visitors. That is what you are looking for.

Money!

Say you want your money now, damn be the consequences? Well you can do it but you should be careful because trust can make or break a site. If you are shilling some affiliate laden junk for a hefty price and your reader/customer buys it and hates it, they are going to blame you. Eventually you will get a bad name. This time last year John Chow had a site that many people hailed as the greatest thing since sliced bread. Here it is a year later and I hear a whole lot of complaints about his site and the stuff he sells. Now, myself while I read his site and try to pick the gems from among the coal I haven’t purchased anything. I don’t get too bent around the make money hype but to each his own. I can neither recommend or warn against anything his site sells.

With that being said, if you want to sell something on your site you should focus your efforts when it comes to advertising on that product. The landing page has to be perfect and then you have to send people there. You can’t just write an article about your favorite widget, tuck it away behind the latest Entrecard post and expect to convert clickers from your ad campaign. Send the reader there and then talk it up in your site. Next you need to ensure that your advertisement isn’t misleading. Those clicks are worthless if the readers bounce as soon as they click on the ad. If your are using a banner, get your point across on the banner and let the people know what they are coming to your site to look at. If you are using cost per click campaigns, you really need to do research on your keywords before you commit large amounts of money to it. There is nothing like the feeling of going through a couple of hundred dollars with nothing to show for it.

Well there you have it. Just a few tips on advertising. I will be writing more articles like this over the next week or two and I hope that I can bring you information that you can use. The next article will talk about a few specific advertising tactics in depth.

Thanks,
James Terrell

Categories: Advertising, Blogging for Success
Tags: , Advertising, blogging success, keywords, targeted traffic, total web review