Writers: The Secret to Your Success is Traffic – Part One

During an unscientific survey of bookstores in both the brick and mortar and online worlds it was discovered that the most popular topics for books were those that dealt with relationships or how to make money.

This begs the question of how can we best use that information. What can we do to leverage that to make more money for ourselves. For those of us who are paid to provide content the answer is that we start with an evaluation of how we are being paid for our content.

Image via Wikipedia

Typically the business model that is used is an advertising revenue share plan in which the content provider, or writer receives a small portion of the revenue generated from advertising dollars.  Publishers like it because they know that writers have a vested interest in helping to market the sites. More traffic generates more ad revenue, everybody wins.

So the real question for the writers is simple. What can you do to bring more traffic to your stories. There have been many articles published about this that make it sound like a simple process. The problem is that they gloss over some critical details.

We are going to keep this simple. What you want to do is build a community that relies upon your content. The reasons why they rely upon it are not as important as the fact that they do. Sometimes the best and most effective way to do this is by becoming an expert upon a topic.

You need to do two things simultaneously. One is you need to build a portfolio that supports your efforts to position yourself as an expert. At the same time you need to go out and find the people who are going to populate your community.

The goal here is to establish a routine in which your community comes looking for the content you supply. There are a lot of different methods for building that community. You can participate in forums, on blogs and any number of publications online.

It is important to understand that this will take some time. You don’t build a relationship overnight. You don’t build a house overnight. The beginning is when you establish a foundation that you can build upon. Do a good job of building a solid foundation and it will treat you well. 

If you are diligent about this over time you will find opportunities in which you can be a guest writer or guest host online. These opportunities are like gold because they provide you with a chance to be exposed to a new group of readers who potentially will come to love and rely upon you as well.

In part two we’ll delve a little deeper and explore some additional opportunities you can take advantage of as well.