Kikabink News

When it comes to getting traffic to your site, there are pros and cons associated with every traffic generation method.

There are also costs. Some are obvious, such as the monetary cost of paying to run an ad in a newsletter or on a search engine. Some are not so obvious, such as the time and possibly monetary cost of harnessing search engine optimization or viral marketing.

As discussed in yesterday’s feature article, it’s important to be aware of all the relevant costs and make choices accordingly. Otherwise you could end up paying much, much more for something than you first expected.

In particular, there is often a large, yet not-so-obvious cost, associated with relying on seemingly free traffic generation methods such as search engine optimization (SEO) and article marketing. Many Internet marketers are attracted to these methods because they don’t necessarily involve any hard costs (unless you hire people to help you). But, apart from the time taken to do them – for example, the time taken to optimize your website, write articles, seek back-links, etc – there is another significant cost.

It’s the opportunity cost associated with not knowing how appealing your product or service offer is, or how effective your conversion tactics are.

There is often a lag between when you begin SEO and article marketing and when you start generating significant traffic. That being so, days, weeks, months – even years – could go by while you wait for enough traffic to be able to assess how appealing is your offer and effective are your conversion tactics.

Given that you didn’t pay anything while you waited, you might be content with that. But what if, after all those days, weeks or months go by, you discover that no-one wants to buy your product, or that your current conversion mechanism is an abject failure?

Not only did you waste time on doing SEO or article marketing… but you missed the opportunity to spend time on alternative offers or conversion tactics that WOULD have generated results.

So what’s the alternative? It’s to aim for FAST rather than FREE. It’s to pony up some money to invest in advertising – such as (but not just) pay-per-click advertising with the objective of TESTING your product or service, your offer, and your conversion mechanism (e.g. landing page).

Sure, this may cost a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars. That may sound scary… but if it ends up SAVING you weeks, months (or more) of wasted time and ignorance about what does and doesn’t work… it’s actually very cost-effective.

None of this is to say that you should neglect SEO, article marketing or other (seemingly) free traffic generation methods, or that you should just focus on paid advertising to test what does and does not work. It should be noted that there ARE ways to generate substantial search engine traffic in a relatively short amount of time WITHOUT paying for advertising… In this case, it may be possible to generate traffic FAST and (somewhat) FREE.

The point is, however, to fully assess the costs AND opportunities involved in each traffic generation method available to you BEFORE choosing one or the other.

Following on from yesterdays Feature Article, let’s discuss five (5) ways you can build barriers to entry in your niche business.

1. Deliver quality - always strive to be better than everyone else.
2. Be unique - provide something that’s original and different.
3. Build a brand - build a strong connection between your name or your company’s name, your unique selling proposition (USP), and your products / services. Ultimately, you want people to think “valuable, quality products/services” whenever they think of you.
4. Integrate yourself personally into your brand - be recognizable as the person behind the brand. No one else can be you.
5. Protect your brand and business. Make sure you have the financial and legal resources to protect your brand and business. That means registering trade marks, etc and not hesitating if you see someone ripping you off. We were ripped off by two big companies a few years ago… but we didn’t have the $ to go after them. We suffered as a result.

Now, you can certainly take and benefit from these steps if you sell your own infoproducts… But what if your business is based on Adsense revenue or Affiliate marketing?

Let’s take each one in turn:

1. Adsense

If you churn out Adsense sites like everyone else… you’re vulnerable. Now, if you create 100s of these sites then sure, you may be able to make a significant amount of total revenue without getting a lot of competitors competing in ALL the same markets as you. Lots of eggs in lots of baskets, in other words. But any one Adsense site is at risk…

Unless, you don’t think of it as an “Adsense” site and position it as a “media” site. In other words, you think of the site like any reputable magazine/newspaper site. You provide quality, unique content, build a brand around providing that content, and sell advertising space (whether Adsense or otherwise) in order to generate revenue.

2. Affiliate

If all you do is put up the same sales letter webpages as all the other affiliates… then you’re not building a sustainable business. Instead of thinking of yourself as an “affiliate” position yourself as a “value added reseller”. Sure, sell other people’s products, but add value so that you in turn, can deliver quality, unique value, build a brand, and so on.

Of course, none of this means that you or any “guru” has to tell everyone everything you’re doing! You’ll naturally want to keep your most powerful strategies and techniques secret (unless you are paid megabucks to reveal them). This is because they are part of your competitive advantage and thereby contribute to your barriers to entry.

However, you should be able to tell people what business(es) you’re in without fear (and maybe benefit from the promotion)… (If you want to!)

On Monday, David Morin, Facebook’s Senior Platform Manager, announced that Facebook had reached 100 million users.

This was subsequently confirmed by Facebook founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg in The Facebook Blog.

Actually, that’s 99,999,999 users. I closed my Facebook account last Thursday. See today’s feature article for why…

Source: Marshall Kirkpatrick, “Facebook Hits 100 Million Users”, Read write Web, August 25, 2008, Mark Zuckerberg, “Our First 100 Million”, The Facebook Blog, August 26, 2008