The other day I made a post about the Pareto 80/20 rule where I explained how I want to focus my attention on the most important task of building an online business: generating traffic to my website.
Well, today, I’m revisiting the 3 types of traffic I learned many years ago to remind myself of what I am doing to generate traffic to my website and build customers.
Here is a quick snapshot of the 3 types of traffic:
- Traffic I control
- Traffic I do not control
- Traffic I own
An example of traffic I control is something like paid advertising. I have control over where I place my ads and I can customize who sees the ads based on different factors like location, age, interests, etc. I then pay for my ads to be placed and pay for clicks.
traffic I do not control might be something like placing a link to one of my sites on my profile page in Quora, which is like a forum type of webpage where people can post questions and search for information on specific topics. I do not control who sees and clicks on my links as it is open to the general population. It is free to do this, but I have less control over who is clicking my links.
Then, there is traffic I own. This is the best type because it incorporates the two best elements of the previous two types of traffic; control over who sees my content and offers, and it is free.
How do I generate traffic that I own? By building an email list of people who have shown an interest in my content and want to continue receiving emails from me with useful information that helps them in some way to build an online business for themselves.
With an email list, I control the content I send them (and the offers I send), and it is free.
For as long as I have known about affiliate marketing, which is about 10-12 years now, I have heard about the importance of building an email list.
The way to build an email list is to use traffic that I control and traffic that I do not control through paid advertising or on forums like Quora and other social media apps. I place a link for people to click to get a ‘lead magnet’, which is free helpful content such as a training video, an e-book, newsletter etc. about a topic that is relevant that they want to get.
These people click on the link which takes them to an opt-in web page. They input their email address and then get the content in their email.
Now, these people are on my email list and I can continue emailing them more valuable information and building a relationship with them. Eventually, some of them will want to take the next step of buying some of the products I offer, and I can make some money from it.
This is not a get-rich-fast scheme, instead, it is about generating traffic, attracting the right type of potential customers by helping them, and then making some money in the long term. It takes time to build an email list, but this is a long-term project for me, and I want to do everything the right way.