Focusing On SEO and Social To Get More Blog Traffic? Here’s Why You’re Wasting Your Time.

Do you find it to be a struggle to get more blog traffic? Do you feel a bit deflated because your traffic isn’t what you want it to be?

Let me ask you this…

Are you tired of the slow, slogging nature of trying to get blog traffic by depending on SEO, living on the content hamster wheel, or being told you have to “engage” on social media all day to attract people over to your blog?

If this is you, then please read this blog post from beginning to end. It’ll be one of the more important posts you’ve read in awhile.

I’m going to explain to you that you DON’T have a traffic problem. And I’m going to show you how you can get all the traffic you want. This really is an evolution of how to think about traffic for your blog.

Want Some Rice?

I first heard this analogy at Traffic & Conversion and it summed it up perfectly…

If you want some rice today, how do you get it?

Well, you go out to the field and prep it with fertilizer. Then, maybe a month later, you flood the field with water. Soak the rice in water and then you get into a plane, fly over the field and drop the seeds all over the field into the furrows. Then, you wait like 4 or 5 months for the rice to grow. Once it reaches the proper height, then you harvest it. Oh, then you mill it so that you can FINALLY drop some rice into a pot and boil it up.

Mmmm…. you’ve got some rice. Sure did take awhile, tho. 😉

Is this what you do when you want some rice?

Or do you just go to the store and buy a box of Uncle Bens?

I’m bettin’ its the latter. You don’t make your own rice from scratch. You simply go to the store and buy it.

Why is that?

Because rice is a commodity. It is bought and sold. Sure, some people grow it, but then everybody else simply buys it.

2 Ways To Get More Blog Traffic

At the simple, bird’s eye level, there are 2 ways to get blog traffic. They are:

1. Grow it up organically.
2. Buy it.

I hope you see the parallel. 🙂 Blog traffic is a lot like rice. Traffic, too, is a commodity.

You can go through all the work to grow up your traffic yourself organically, but in most cases, that’s going to take a helluva lot longer than growing a field of rice. You’re told you need to post to your blog often, do podcasting, do videos, track every move that Google makes so you can SEO your stuff, share your stuff on social media, be “engaged”, contact influencers, guest post…

AAAHHHHHHHH! That’s insane!

Or…

You can just go to the traffic store.

Whip yourself up a nice dose of traffic – and have it by the end of the day. The wonders of going to the traffic store!

I Have To Admit… This Is New To Me

My long-time readers know… I’m a bit of an “old dog” in this whole blogging thing. I’ve been at it a damn long time. Going on 17 years now (as of this writing, anyway). They say it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks and perhaps there’s some truth to that.

I’ve spent my entire career doing organic “free” traffic. And it has worked. I mean, I’ve not really had a traffic problem and I still don’t. But, at the same time…

I’ve been at this 17 years. 🙂 Who the hell wants to have a 17 year ramp up period?

Not only that, but organic traffic isn’t as targeted. On the whole, it is less efficient than simply going to the traffic store.

But, I resisted it for awhile. That old blogger school of thought is a hard one to toss. I’ve spent so much time building up my traffic through free ways that it is hard to shift gears.

But, I have. Slowly. I am running more paid traffic now. And it will most definitely be ramping up.

Case in point, just yesterday, I had a lead come into the Academy via a Facebook ad. This person ended up opting in, then proceeded to buy every offer in that particular sales funnel. All in all, this person spent about $334. My cost per lead? $0.52.

Now obviously not everybody does that. But, the numbers still work out in my favor. It is currently costing me (with this particular campaign) about 52 cents to get a person onto my email list. From there, it is up to my sales funnel to recoup the investment. And it does.

Even this old dog is willing to learn a new trick with those kind of numbers! 🙂

Why You Don’t Have A Traffic Problem

Bloggers go around with this mindset that traffic is scarce. That it is hard to come by. That you have to work your ass off to get it.

But, that’s like saying rice is hard to get. I mean, rice isn’t scarce. You can find it everywhere. You can just go to the store and buy it cheaply. And none of us even consider trying to grow our own.

Well, traffic isn’t much different. Traffic is everywhere. You just want to get some of it.

It is like money. Money isn’t scarce. Money is everywhere. Other people have it. You want some of it so you can have more. How do you get them to give you some of their money? Well, you give them something which they value more than the money in their pocket and they’ll give it to you. Pretty simple, really.

Traffic works the same way. It is, quite literally, a transaction.

Sites like Google, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter… these sites have TONS of traffic. And they’re inviting you to come to their traffic stores and simply buy some. And, doing so makes traffic extremely predictable. I mean, it is GOING to happen.

But, of course, traffic is made up of real people. Real, flesh and blood people. And just because you paid to get them to come over to your site doesn’t mean they’re going to opt-in or buy something. So, from there, it is just a matter of giving them value. All the things we already know. Be useful, be valuable, and they’ll reward you with their email address or perhaps a sale.

So, you don’t have a traffic problem. What you have is a problem in your approach:

1. You avoid paid traffic because you think the idea of spending money for traffic is bad, or that you can’t afford it. But…
2. The reason you think you can’t afford it is because your blog isn’t monetized in the right way.

I mean, look….

If you would be guaranteed to make $2 for every $1 you spent, I highly doubt you’d refuse to spend a buck. You wouldn’t be sitting there saying “Oh, I can’t afford to spend one dollar”. No, you’d happily spend it because you know you’ll get back two bucks!

So, it isn’t that you can’t afford to go to the traffic store. It is that your blog is set up to operate at a loss.

I mean, if you went to the store, bought some rice, then walked outside the store and poured that rice right into the trash can… it’d be natural to say that buying that rice was a waste of money. You can’t “afford” it.

But, the way most bloggers have their blogs set up, its pretty much the same thing. You would pay to bring the traffic, and it’d go absolutely nowhere. Result? Waste of money.

Your Solution To Traffic Is… REAL Monetization

If you want more traffic to your blog, your area of focus should NOT be on all those organic outreach methods.

Yeah, I said it.

If you want more blog traffic, you are WASTING YOUR TIME if you put all your focus on writing more content, doing SEO, engaging on social. All that stuff.

Instead, you need to monetize your blog properly. Implement the Blog Profit Funnel model – and you can get all the help you need to do it inside the Monetization Lab.

Focus on building up the business machine which goes behind your blog. Because having that backend in place is what is going to allow you to go to the traffic store.

In fact, you’ll be happy as a clam to go to the traffic store and spend some money… because you’re going to be making it back. And, do some tweaking and set things up right (all stuff we do in the Monetization Lab), and you’ll very shortly be profiting from that traffic.

Your email list will be growing. You’ll be generating revenue. And your blog traffic will increase.

This isn’t even a matter of speculation. It is a guarantee. It is predictable because it is based on simple math. If you go to the traffic store, you’re GOING to get traffic. It WILL happen. The “trick” (if you want to call it that) is to handle the incoming traffic in the correct way so that you’re not set up for a loss.

It all starts with getting the product/market fit right (and we have two courses inside the Lab for that… and all the feedback you’ll ever need inside the Lab member community).

Once you get that product/market fit in place, growing your blog and your business is basically a math problem.

Does This Mean Free Traffic Methods Are A Waste?

Not at all, but we need to see them for what they are.

Churning out more content, staying current on all the SEO trends, spending hours trying to build up your Facebook page or “engage” on Twitter… all that stuff is the equivalent of trying to grow your own rice. Sure, it works but it is slow going. VERY slow going.

That doesn’t make it a bad thing. But, the internet is evolving. It is harder than it has ever been to grow a site from scratch using free methods alone. And trust me, it isn’t really free. All that time spent, all those months spent on Twitter where you could have been making actual money. Sure, you might not technically be spending money, but trust me, that doesn’t mean it is free. You’re paying for it with your time, your frustration, and lost opportunity.

Today, I think the ideal traffic generation strategy for a blog is a combination of organic and paid.

In other words, you still want to be doing all the usual outreach methods that us bloggers usually think of, but we ALSO want to “prime the pump” using paid traffic. If you set up properly so that you can do paid traffic, then it will absolutely magnify and speed up the effects of all your organic traffic building.

Why Now Is The Time, Too

I’ll end off with this…

Now is the time to get in on this. To take your monetization seriously in order to provide funding for your paid traffic. Why? Because a vast majority of bloggers aren’t doing it.

Most bloggers are still screwing around with purely organic traffic, wondering why it isn’t working as well as it used to. And while many are familiar with the concept of paid traffic, they quickly dismiss it because it costs money.

It is short-sighted thinking on their part.

At the same time, more and more people are catching on. Me, for instance. 🙂 Like I said, it took this “old dog” a little longer to have the light bulb go off on this because I had been doing it the old way for so long.

As more and more people have that light bulb go off, prices will increase. Plus, if you perfect your game in paid traffic before most others do, you’ve got a leg up.

So, take some action on this, my friend. 🙂

You’ll see me talk more about it around the Blog Marketing Academy. But also…

Consider joining us inside the Monetization Lab. We’ve got a clear goal we’re working on inside the Lab – and we’re doing it together. So, why work on this alone?