The new year is here now, and with that comes the anual tradition of the new years pledge, which for many of you will have something to do with working hard on your website. We all set ourselves targets for the new year, but we rarely reckon about the steps that we have to take to get there. For most of us, the essential target is more money, which comes from more traffic, and these posts will help you to reach your target.
The Essential Top List
Without a doubt, the best way to get traffic to your website is to write an awesome top list. With the new year, there’s plenty that you can write about too, but you have to follow a couple rules. Firstly, it has to be about people or websites. In the end is has to be about something that the people in the list can talk about with their later and share, which results in your website getting traffic. Secondly, there has to be a slight element of controversy to the list. Don’t chicken out and call it ’20 Best…’, you have to call it ‘Top 20 Best…’ and then order them 1-20, so that all has a rank. The reason that you do this is because people are going to argue with you, and they’re going to be much more likely to comment and share it at the same time. It sounds a small bit twisted, but I assure you, it really does work. For every person that doesn’t agree with you, there’s going to be 10 others who are pleased to just see the content.
When you write your top list, you need to make sure you do it by the book if you want it to succeed. That includes using the right formatting, a excellent sized description, and an image. If you want to really be with you how to master a top list then read more about it here. Once you’re done, post it on social media, and let all on the list know that they’ve been built-in. If they’ve got enough loyal fans, they’ll be told manifold times by others.
Best of 2011
This is a really excellent way to ease yourself into the new year, without having to work too hard, while providing your readers with exceptional content. And you know it’s exceptional content because you’ve already written it. So long as you’ve been around for more than months, then you should have enough content together to write a ‘best of’ for your website for the year. I’ve done this on ExpertPhotography, and I did it a last week on here. This is a fantastic post to write because not only do you get to share all of your top content with your fans, which will improve their time on site and pages per visit, but they’re also going to get access to your most well loved content, so it’s win-win.
Infographic
Infographics have a very viral nature, and they’re a fantastic way of sharing in rank with people, in simple to digest chunks. A proper inforgrahic really need to be made by a graphic designer, or someone with a excellent knowledge of photoshop, because it’s not as simple as putting together a bunch of text. I just attempted my own, and it took some time, but didn’t quite work out the way I wanted it. I took a excellent amount of time, and made it look excellent in a large image, but it still didn’t have the ‘wow factor’ that attracts most people to infographics. I knew it wasn’t going to be shared as much, and I knew it wasn’t technically an infographic, but I called it one anyway, and I used it for an equally valuable purpose. Don’t get me incorrect, it was by no means a failure, because I got lots of people liking it, but it didn’t go viral.
What I ultimately chose to do with it was share it with my Twitter followers when they followed back. I used to send them my beginner’s guide to photography, but it wasn’t really working out that well because they were the incorrect people to be sending it to. If they’ve listed something about photography in their blurb, then there’s a excellent chance that they don’t need to learn all that much. When I was sending them that link, I was getting about 30 clicks a week from the direct messages, but now that’s way up to 150 this past 7 days. The fantastic thing about the post is that it links to other tutorials and lists at the top of the page, so once I’ve got my new followers on my page, I can keep them there.
I’ve gone vaguely off point here, but I reckon it was still relevant. If you’re looking to have a proper infographic made, then I suggest you get it well done, which can be done for around $ 500. There’s plenty of people out there that will do it for you, have a look at these guys.
Guide to your Niche
This is similar to a ‘best of’ post, but instead of simply listing the most well loved content of the year, you place together guides for people to help them to learn. This is very similar to top lists, in that they have the same effect of cheering your readers to explore manifold posts in a single visit. They are but, a lot better, because they don’t go out of date. I’ve place together a beginners guide to photography for my website, and I link to it right through the internet on different forums, and I’ve even had people delight in it so much that they link to it for me.
These guide collect together your ‘bread and butter’ posts into once simple to read post, which clarifies how they all link together. It’s much simpler to link to a single post on the internet, rather than many, and it’s likely that it will be bookmarked and shared with lots of other people. Since this post has been in print, it’s been my most well loved tutorial, accounting for 4.33% of my traffic, and it’s not likely to end any time soon. So long as you can keep the content relevant, then you can continue to share the post, which will soon have it picked up by Google.
Amazon Associates Post
This is a fantastic way to start making money early on in the new year, to help make up for the money you spent at Christmas. For those that don’t know, Amazon Associates is a way to make a fee by linking to Amazon harvest on your website. It’s simple to set up and you can start earning fee honest away, but to do so, people have to click on your custom links. A fantastic way to do this is to do another top list, but instead of linking to people, you link to harvest that you urge instead. You could also do in depth reviews of harvest, that you in person like and urge, so that people will be likely to buy them. I’ve done this a few times, and I’ve sold five harvest worth nearly $ 500 each, and with a 4% fee on electricals, it starts to add up quite nicely. Just reckon of it as being paid to write content on your own website… starts to make more sense, doesn’t it?