Web Traffic is King for the Affiliate

In an earlier post I asked if content was king. Well you could have the best content on the web but if you don't have any traffic then it really doesn't matter does it?

If content fell in the woods but there was no
traffic, would anyone know?

Probably not. So the point I am trying to make is if you want to be a successful affiliate then you have to have the traffic.

And not just any traffic. You need traffic that you can convert.

OK, so how do you do that.

Well you have to answer a couple of questions.

1. Who is the ideal customer for you site. In the case of this blog, the ideal person to be reading this is a beginning to intermediate level affiliate.

It is a good idea to draw a picture of your ideal customer. Is it a he or she? Young or old? Of a certain ethnic group or race? Married or divorced. These are all factors that could help you determine who your ideal customer is.

2. Where do the types of people that you are trying to attract hangout on the web? Where do they shop? What do they read? What games do they play? Do they chat? Do they blog? Do they hang out in forums?

The answer to these questions will tell you where you need to focus your attention at as far as getting through to your ideal customer.

3. What kind of ads, promotions, sells pitches work on your ideal customer. Is that teenaged girl who is looking for the latest video game going to respond to the same kind of ad that an elderly man who is looking for classical music?

Probably not, but if you have an idea of which one of these people is the kind of traffic that you want you will be better armed to make a sell.

OK so you have an understanding of what your customers are like. You have a good idea of who they are. Now you need to match that up with your merchants. You now need to promote the right products to those customers. And your ads need to have relevance.

You probably should not try to mix different types of merchants on the same web page. For example if you are selling books, you may not want to have ads for apparel on the same page. While an ad for audio books might be just the thing.

Main Point: Know your customer and what it is they are looking for to help your efforts to get traffic.

Another very important factor in getting traffic is the name of your web site. Many people do searches to find the things that they need. But there are also many people who enter a domain name into the address box on their search engines. This is direct search. And ISPs and web portals support this feature.

If you are looking to buy and you type in a name like item-name.com, this will probably get you to someone who is selling that particular item. The great thing about this type of traffic is that when they get to your site they were looking for you. Not a whole lot of convincing has to go on here.

You just have to be able to provide the goods or service that your potential customer was looking for. And if you could not do that you would probably have chosen a different name for your web site.

Main Point: Choose your web site name carefully, it can help you get high quality traffic.