What’s the hardest thing about Internet Marketing?

I’m often asked what the hardest things about Internet Marketing is. In fact I was so interested to find out what challenges others had that I created a survey. I was overwhelmed with the responses received. You can read the results here.

Where’s my traffic?

I wanted more traffic.

One of the challenges that came up time and time again in the survey was not getting enough traffic. In fact I used to relate to this myself. We all want more traffic and to this day I want more than my average 6000 visits a day. That may sound a little greedy or perhaps ungrateful but what happens is when you master how to get more traffic, you simply change your goal posts. My initial goal was to get 1000 visitors a day, I then increased it to 3000 and then 5000. Whats important is that you set yourself traffic goals and increase them when you hit your targets. My next target is 10000 which does seem like a huge challenge for me but I know I will get there.

So how do you get traffic?

This is such a common asked question and there are literally 100’s of ways to generate traffic. But not all traffic is equal and if I’ve learned anything in the internet marketing world it’s important to try and test lots of different traffic techniques so you can work out which ones give you the best results. You also need to decide whether you’re going to go down the route of paid traffic sources or free methods or a combination of both.
I personally have only used free traffic methods. Over the next couple of months I’m going to experiment with some paid traffic methods – solo ads so I will keep you updated with how that goes and the results I get and whether it’s been worth the financial investment.
My biggest traffic sources come from social media and blogging. I admit I have a large network online which has taken me 4 years to build up so it’s only natural that I generate a lot of traffic from the likes of Twitter but we have to remember that traffic isn’t just about getting traffic it’s about converting it once it finds its way to your blog/website.

Which leads me onto the next challenge that many people face in internet marketing…

More optins/sign ups

If you’re not building a list then you’re committing one of the biggest mistakes in internet marketing. There’s a reason why they say the money is in the list. I’ll be honest here, although I get on average around 100 optins a day my figures could and should be higher than this considering I get around 6000 visitors a day. That conversion rate is something I’m trying to improve and am continually testing things.
Without traffic you can’t build a list. But without targeted traffic all you’re doing is generating traffic and will have a high bounce rate as they leave your site. Not only that but you have to think about why someone should leave their valuable name and email address, especially as we live in a high spamming world these days. Gone are the days where asking people to sign up to a newsletter will cut it and also more people are sceptical about signing up so you really have to work that much harder to show value and why they should part with their beloved name and email address?
List building is so important to your business and there is a lot of debate on the use of pop ups. I personally use one on my site and have tested it – the results are simply astounding when turned off or reduced. I’m 100% convinced that if you’re serious about building a list you need a pop up. Just by having a form on the right hand side of your blog isn’t enough these days. However I’m also acutely aware that some people do find them annoying. I think the key is to ensure you’re really giving away value not only in the pop up but also that your blog/website delivers what it says it’s going to, in fact the more you can over-deliver the better results you will get.

How to make money from your blog

I’ve heard this countless times. How do I make money from my blog? Well it’s not easy and it does take time – but it can be done. There are many different ways to make an income from blogging and it’s worthwhile thinking about having multiple income streams so that you can test which one gives you the best return but also I think long term it’s good in business to have different ways to make your income.
On my blog I make my income from selling my products and affiliate products. I also sell my social media marketing and business consultancy services as well as generate speaking and PR opportunities. I decided not to have advertising on my site even though I’m continually being approached by people asking me to place adverts up. I have nothing against this, but for me it’s not worthwhile someone paying me $500 a month to then have my traffic (that I’ve worked so hard to generate) be moved away from my site. Maybe in a few months I’ll re-evaluate this and if I can get a few thousand would consider it

So when you have advertising on your site, either Adsense (which I’m not a big fan of) or paid advertisers think about the fact that although you’re receive an income you are in effect directing people away from your site.

What do you find the hardest thing about Internet Marketing? How do you overcome them? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts.

PS If you are still having trouble with your internet marketing you might like to subscribe to get the biggest discount for my soon to be released “Internet marketing, what’s next? course”, where I share all the tried and tested techniques that convert into sales based on real world business skills.

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Lilach

Founder at Socialable Ltd

Lilach Bullock is passionate about getting tangible results using social media. Listed in Forbes as one of the top 20 women social media power influencers. She's the co-author of "Images that Influence" (Number One in its category on Amazon). Lilach is consulted by journalists and regularly quoted in newspapers on social media related matters, including (Forbes, Social Media Today, Prima Magazine, The Sunday Times and BBC Radio 5 Live ). A keynote speaker at business and marketing seminars. If you want excellent results, more business and better visibility you can can subscribe to Socialable newsletter here.

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