Traffic is Vanity – Profit is Sanity
Everyone is always so transfixed on getting more traffic and how many uniques they get a month. Does it really matter? I don’t think so. Why are we all chasing the traffic dragon that you can’t catch? Remember when 500 uniques a month was good; then 1000, then 5,000, then 10,000 then… Where does it all stop and why does it matter? First accept that a niche site about acne cream will never get the same traffic as say facebook. Also niche product sites almost never get the same amount of traffic as web forums or the like. Why are we all so obsessed with the statistics while totally throwing quality aside? Is it a need to feel famous or important? Why are you blogging; is it to become famous or to share information and value with a part of the public for a profit?
There are two types of traffic plain and simple. Traffic that converts and that which doesn’t. Unless you are a major hub which makes all its money on advertising traffic means nothing without sales. Even if you sell advertising the quality of the traffic has to be good or your advertisers simply won’t renew their slots if it wasn’t worth it. Cheap non targeted traffic is one of the cheapest commodities online. Go to any major webmaster forum or even eBay. People sell hits by the million.
Grocery stores get a lot of visitors looking for groceries. If you had a specialty shop totally unrelated to groceries would it matter if you got a lot of spill over from the grocery store nearby? Would anyone really buy anything if they were looking for groceries? Obviously someone would maybe but would it be worth spending the increased rent for such a high volume location? I doubt it. On the web you may not be spending $$$ for visitors but you are spending time. You could be using that time to make better content or find visitors that are motivated to purchase what you’re selling from similar sites or search engines.
Imagine a web where instead of focusing on traffic and uniques people focused on finding interested customers? Imagine what would happen to your business if you received 1/10th the number of visitors but each one of them was motivated to do something whether it be subscribe, tell a friend, click an add or purchase a product or service?
What I’m getting at is focus on building niche content that are searched for people in your niche and less on getting lot’s of traffic from social bookmarking sites with high bounce rates. This month I have received thousands almost the majority of traffic from Stumble Upon. Has it increased the subscriber count, repeat visitors or anything besides uniques and page views? Sadly I’d have to say no. If you are selling a product or service you must entice your visitor with the first fold to keep reading because their is some benefit to them. If they weren’t already searching the exact or a similar topic how hard a sell would it be?
I’m going to be brainstorming over the holidays for some new ideas and I’m going to have a totally different mindset. I don’t care how many people visit as long as they are super targeted. High traffic stats on the net are pure vanity and when is the last time that paid a bill? I’m going to ground myself and stop the insanity and get quality traffic that is motivated to purchase or subscribe to the products or services that I’ll be providing.
You can make money online selling anything; you just have to make sure those interested get the message. You can advertise for years in the WRONG venues and get nowhere. The catch with niches is that since it’s a smaller motivated group they are more inclined to purchase if they find you but sine it’ s so narrow a topic it’s hard to connect with that small segment. That’s why it’s appealing to be everything to everyone for maximum profit but as a little guy in the vast web you can’t just jump in and start taking pie away from 600lbs guerrillas…
Another reason to focus on quality traffic is to avoid smart pricing. Click here to read up on what smart pricing is and how it can affect an entire adsense account.
Take a look at your blog; where is most of your traffic coming from and is it doing much for you besides eating up bandwidth and increasing the number of uniques? If it isn’t I’d take a step back and reconsider your promotional efforts into areas which may not bring through the same quantity but definitely a higher quality of traffic! People searching for a solution that you can provide have already made 50% of the buying decision. They are ready; now you just need to have them find you and sell them on the benefits of choosing you.
The old saying goes if you try to be everything to everyone you’ll end up being nothing to no one…
89 Responses to “Traffic is Vanity – Profit is Sanity”
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Very interesting post Rob. I agree with a lot of what you say. What I would say however, is that traffic can build SEO cred to some degree. Which dials into the targeted idea because of punching keywords into the search engine. I left the traffic exchange industry (again) for the very reasons you list, and I really don’t do a lot of I’ll click yours if you click mine stuff. Targeted niche traffic generation makes more sense and is more effective. I’ll take a thousand less hits a week if it means more conversions. Good article!
T
Glad you found the post useful. Targeted traffic is one of my major goals for 2008. Best of luck
We must think alike, I did a post recently on quality versus quantity of traffic!
There definitely seems to be a mindset that more traffic is better, even if that traffic doesn’t do anything for you. Let’s hope posts like this help to start changing that mindset.
LOL Just read your post now Jay. It’s a good one. I actually wrote this on the 22nd of December then procrastinated posting it during the Holiday madness. Thought I’d add more to it but alas I pretty much posted it as it was a week previously lol.
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