Before you begin creating your website you need to know who will be visiting it.  Knowing your audience enables you to build the website to suit their specific needs and tastes.  What writing style should you use?  Should you have videos, pictures, flash movies?  The only way to know the answers to these questions is to know who will be visiting your site.  And what they will be looking for.

Knowing your audience also helps determine whether they are likely to clicks on ads.

When I  was thinking about my website’s visitors I quickly realized that I might have a problem.  I do most of the adverting for the website through forums for webmasters.  The problem with webmasters is that they are ‘non-clickers’.

My Ad Non-Clickers

My website is most useful to a new webmaster, or someone considering becoming one.  Someone looking to start a website but does not know what to expect.  By looking at some of the data a aspiring webmaster can get an idea of what the future holds for them.  That is why the forums I visit are motley for webmasters. 

The forums are a great way to advertise my site.  I have the URL of the website as a signature so every post I make my website is displayed.  This is good because the people on these forums are mostly webmasters and therefore will find the website relevant. 

The problem is that webmasters will not click on my advertisements.  The advertisements on my website are mostly about making money online.  “Make 100 in 1 day”, “Work from home and make money”, “Easy money”.  For most webmasters these advertisements are useless – the webmasters are already working online.  And most importantly they have seen these advertisements hundreds of times before.  They have clicked on them in the past and will not click on them again.

So it looks like I have a problem.  My target audience.  The audience that the website is specifically built to serve will not click on my ads.  Of course there will be a few clicks here and there, but definitely not what it should be.  My CPM (clicks per thousand views) should be very low.

But my CPM is not low.  Why?  Because the purpose of the webmasters visiting my site is not to click on the ads.  Their purpose is to forward the website to their friends.  Friends who are not webmasters.  Friends who are thinking of becoming webmasters.  These are the visitors that will make me money.

My Ad Clickers

My revenue generating visitors are not webmasters.  Instead, they are people who just passively use the Internet.  Non-webmasters.   True window shoppers of the web.  They bounce from website to website.  No real direction.  Just going where their friends send them.  Passing the time between dinner and bedtime.

Like most people, they are not happy with their current financial situation.  Like me, they go to work with their heads down.  Their days at work are unsatisfying.  One of their reliefs is to come home, fire up the computer and be entertained by the Internet.  Amusing themselves with the wacky and wild online world.

Then one day they receive an email from their friend the webmaster.  “Here your go buddy, check this link out.  Now you can quit your hellish day job and work online”.  Well…something like that.   It does not matter how non-webmasters end up on my site.  But once there, here is what should happen. 

1. They see the number on the homepage clearly stating how much the website has made.
2. They look at a few information/data pages and see what is involved in making money online.
3. They think to themselves, “Hey, I can do this”.
4. But then while reading about the countless hours I have spent creating the website they suddenly notice, on the left panel, the statement “Easily Earn 100’s of dollars from home”.
5. They click on it.

If your reading this post you are probably a webmaster, or at least planning to be one.  You know what to do…(hint: )

About Traffic, Visitors, Promotion, What YOU Should Do

After 22 days online a milestone has been reached.  100 people have stumbled onto the website.  That is a lot of people.

If I had to make dinner for 100 people then I would have to start cooking at dawn – it is a lot of people to feed.  If I was at the supermarket buying supplies for the dinner and the line up at the cashier was 100 people – that is a big lineup.  If I had to wash the dishes after everybody has gone home – that would be a lot of dirty dishes.

But in terms of website visitors 100 is pitiful.  Like 100 people going to a Rolling Stones concert.  I need thousands, not hundreds.  According to my Google AdSense account these 100 visitors have earned me $4.34 by clicking on ads 8 times.  I serve dinner to 100 people and all I get is $4.34.

So far 157 hours have been spent creating this website.  This past month has been completely devoted to the website’s creation and maintenance.  Had I spent the time as a employee for a website design company paying $25/hour then I would now have $25 x 157hrs = $3925. 

This means that I have sacrificed $3925 dollars to please my visitors.  In return they have given me $4.35.  100 visitors came to my house, have a delicious dinner, and then pay me $0.04 cents each.

I should not complain.  I knew this would happen before I started.  The beginning is hard.  Lots of work with no reward.  100 visitors come, they look at 2.53 pages, and then leave.  Almost all of them not paying a single penny. 

But that is how the website business works. It is very ‘front heavy’. You must do lots of work at the beginning with little return. After many hours (I do not know how many hours yet) of being a slave it begins to turn around. Once there is a big visitor base and the visitors keep coming back and inviting their friends. Then you will be receiving lots of money for little work. You will be making money while you are sleeping, walking the dog, growing your chia pet. Your website will become the slave. Working for you 24/7.

Unfortunately I am not there yet. Maybe far from it.

So for now, still at the beginning, it is nothing but blood, sweat and tears.  Only the hope, that one day 100,000 visitors will come and leave a big tip on the table, drives me to continue.  Because then I can take the money and buy a dishwasher.

About Traffic, Visitors, Promotion, Actual Stats From The Website Used, Optimistic and Motivational

The Vision

You decide that you want to be a Web Master.  All you have to do if figure out what your website will be about.  For days you think of ideas.  Every time an idea pops in your head you think it might work.  Then after a few minutes of contemplation you decide that it is not a good idea.  Back to the drawing board.

Then one day while walking the dog, just as his leg lifts, you have a great idea.  You do not know where it came from but you really like it.  The more you think about it the better it gets.  From a little pea the idea grows into a melon.  The website begins to form in your head.  By the time the dog is back digging in the yard the idea has become golden.  You imagine millions of people visiting your site – why wouldn’t they?

My story is similar (except for the dog part).  Once I got the basic idea of the website, all the other things fell into place.  The money counter on the home page, the data page, the ‘did you know…’ section..  Millions of people visiting the website.  Returning again and again to see the number rise  Why wouldn’t they?  If I found a website like mine I would visit it all the time.  I had dollar bills flying in front of my eyeballs.

The Reality

The site has been up for 3 weeks.  And what a crash down to earth these 3 weeks have been. 

For the first week it was only one or two people visiting.  Then I joined forums and the traffic increased.  A little.  Week two and three have averaged about 25 visitors.  Far from millions.  How can it be only 25?  When I envisioned a typical visitor to the website I saw them reading the content while slowly putting a hand over their mouth to cover a wide WOW!  Then, all excited,  forwarding the address to all 200 of their Facebook friends.

The plan was for the few initial visitors to begin the traffic tsunami.  I thought I would need just a couple visitors and they would do the rest.  That is not happening.  To my surprise they are not forwarding the website to their friends.

Not only are they not forwarding it, the average page views per visitor is two.  TWO!  They land on the website, quickly look around the home page, click to another page and then leave.  How can they leave?  If I were to find a website like mine I would spend all morning reading everything – just absorbing all the great content.

And what I do not understand at all.  What has no explanation except that there must be some mistake with my statistics is that 63% of the visitors stay on the site for less then 30 seconds.  What can they possibly read in less then 30 seconds?  Nothing.  They are not even giving it a chance.  Just a quick look around, “I don’t like the background color”, and then they leave.  Only 5% of the visitors are do what they should do – stay for at least 30min.

After all these kicks in the balls.  When I think that the indecency is finally over.  And I am completely covered with tomatoes and eggs.  They go for the final blow.  So far, 0 RSS subscriptions.

The Lesson

At the beginning, when you have your vision.  Hold on to it..  Take it with you everywhere.  Imagin yourself explaining to Opera  how you came up with the idea.   Imagine yourself accepting a honorary writing degree from Yale.  Your family and friends envious of your success.  Cherish the vision because it will be a happy time.  Do it as long as you can because after you build your website all you will be doing is crying into your pillow.

About Traffic, Visitors, Promotion, Bitter and Pessimistic When I Wrote this, What YOU Expect vs Reality

 The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.  Everybody knows that.  But what I did not know, and just recently discovered, is that the price of traffic is also eternal vigilance.

As you can seen from the website traffic data page so far the traffic is coming very slowly.  At the beginning there was basically no traffic.  Then I started to post on a forum.  Each post ends with my signature which is a link to the website.  Every time I made a post, a few hours later my traffic would go up.

The problem is that the traffic does not stay up.  If I miss a day of posting then the traffic goes down.  Post then get visitors.  No post, no visitors.  Eternal vigilance – post everyday.

The website is still at its infancy and no traffic has come by search engines or word of mouth.  I can deem some interesting information with the threads I have created on a forum.  Since all my traffic has come from them.

So far I have started a total of 6 threads.  By taking the number of people that visited the website (147) by the number of posts (6) we can see that every post is worth almost 24 visitors.  This is sad.  Because so far it looks like I would need to create 41 threads a day to get 1000 visitors a day.  Unfortunately to make this possible I would need a team of a thousand monkeys typing a thousand words.

This means that the forum I am creating threads at is too small.  Not enough views.  Looking back at the last few days of my posts I can see that they have been viewed 851 times.  Out of all the people viewing my threads 17% of them click on the signature line.

All the above can be summarized as: for every thread created on a forum my website receives 17 visitors per 100 views.

Therefore to reach my goal of a 1000 visitors per day I need 5882 thread views.  Or to start 10 threads each receiving at least 588 views.  Still a lot but getting closer to being possible on large forums.

Two conclusions can be made:

1. By posting on big forums I will still need to be vigilant and post every day, but at least I will be closer to 1000 visitors a day and not 15.
2. I need to find other ways to get traffic.

Data used to for calculations:

• Unique visitors: 67
• Visitors: 147
• Threads created: 6
• Clicked on Signature: 23
• Number Views in forum: 851

Note: The only way to explain the discrepancy between ‘unique visitors’ (67) and ‘clicked on signature’ (23) is to assume that some of the visitors that clicked on the signature emailed a link of the website to their friends.

About Traffic, Visitors, Promotion, Actual Stats From The Website Used, Bitter and Pessimistic When I Wrote this