Creating A Sticky Foundation

Before Getting Started (Creating A sticky Foundation)

"If one is but secure at the foundation, he will not be pained by departure from minor details or affairs that are contrary to expectation. But in the end, the details of a matter are important. The right and wrong of one's way of doing things are found in trivial matters." - - Yamamoto Tsunetomo (Hagakure, circa 1709)

There are 2 things to always keep in mind when finally getting traffic to your site with any method.

ONE: Traffic leaks work best when you have engaging content on your site, that's sticky - remember that - doesn't hurt to big brand that site either. Make sure to capture their minds, and emails or some form of direct communication with them so you can tap that ass for dollar dollar bills ya'll later on. Once they give you permission to market to them, by giving you their email or some form of communication, Permission Based Marketing, they trust you, you own them. Like a crazed college chick in love with a college professor, you own that ass. That's a devotee - that's potential revenue. But don't hit it the first night of course, space it out.

No matter what type of attack you do to get traffic, the foundation of your websites have to be rock solid. And by rock solid, I mean sticky. Have a clear defined goal, just sending traffic to your homepage is the lazyman's way of doing it. Your site has to have one or more of these objectives engraved on every page of your website:

When you start out with this mindset and understand the reasoning behind defining each portion, it'll put you on a level playing field with the big boys where you start thinking at the Macro level or in God mode. Being able to communicate in a one to one method with your audience is a major component to your success. If you start attacking internet marketing without this foundation, you're leaking revenue, and not just today, but potential revenue that could be coming to you in the future - re-marketing opportunities - lost forever.

Every website should be doing one of these goals, that way if a traffic leak method dries up - cough SEO cough - at least you have a growing list of targets and made some money in the process. Yes, even websites in your private blog network need to pay their own rent (direct = revenue, indirect = collecting emails for re-marketing - make sure to tag each email to know the source), otherwise you are wasting their potential by just using them for links.

Segmenting your target audience is key, that can be done by demo, hobbies, likes, or things they gravitate toward - also knowing the source is important. Basically whenever you add a person to your list, make sure to tag them with as much info as possible - "female", "age 18 to 24", "Facebook fan", etc. Constantly find ways to get more and more information by sending out surveys and asking questions from your audience so you can tag them.

Why tag them? Well, it'll help you re-market to them and if you are really thinking at the macro level, if you plan on selling that business or web property it's a lot sexier to say you've got a database of 50K women age 18 to 29 years old, who are avid Facebookers with 50% that have shown interest in insurance, raising children, or marriage, and oh yeah, the website gets 2K to 10K visitors daily. OR you can say, yeah I got a website that gets 2K to 10K hits daily... Which one would you assume is worth more?

If you can't get this comprehension in your head, I got bad news you're not going to make it in God mode for online marketing.

TWO: Automation wins wars. But don't attempt to automate a traffic leak until you know the ins and outs of a platform. Once you know that shit like the back of your hand, get something serious for automation - I prefer CasperJS/PhantomJS with Perl, Perl or Python standalone - but I'm a coder. You might have to hire a botter - the more customized you can get your bots the more creative you can be. Some of these automated tools just won't cut it, but if you are starting out go for it, something is better than nothing.

Generating Sales/Revenue

Every site in your tier/pyramid should be able to pay for itself, at least hosting cost, so it's always profitable. People will stumbled upon these lower tier sites, so if you can drop a CPA offer or god-forbid Adsense on there to get some stream of revenue - it's a must. This thinking is from the old bluehatseo.com thought process.

At the very least drop a interstitial pop-up to capture emails (those shits work!) and send it to your master database of your network. Make sure to tag the origination of each email so you know when you tap that newsletter database which website captured that leads and generated those dollars. In God Mode, it's important to know what's generating revenue directly (sales/revenue from CPA offers or display advertisement - Adsense) and what's generating revenue indirectly (capturing emails).

If you create a network of 20-30 tiered or micro-sites, and can get them each to make $10 a day or capture 10 emails a day - that network is generating you $6,000 to $9,000 a month or 6,000 emails a month - which you can then re-market CPA offers that align with their tags for the niche they came to you from. $6,000 to $9,000 a month = $72,000 to $108,000 a year or 72,000 emails a year. Don't let that number fool you - you aren't spamming so you don't need a million people to get 1%. These people SIGNED UP to receive information for that niche. Those people are starting the conversation first, so tapping them is a lot easier than tapping a drunken college chick at a frat party on a Friday night.

72,000 targeted emails for mommies with new born babies for example - Think of all the toy coupons, or toy affiliate sites. Think about bulk Diaper affiliate programs. Think about life insurance opportunities. Mommies usually like living in houses, so mortgages. Families with kids usually have dogs, cats, pets - you can survey the email list and if they check of a question like "we have a dog", tag that email with being a dog lover and pet lover. Come back in 6 months, and you can re-market pet supplies to them. Are you starting to see the endless possibilities. And this is just from your tier sites.

Don't be lazy and just put all emails in a database, make sure to tag them, You'll thank yourself 6 months from now, when you've got a segmented database of users. ;)

Creating Opportunities To Re-Market To

The basic idea is covered in the above, but it's about capturing them with a communication channel that's easily available to them. Email is primary in my book, since unless you lose the database, it's impossible to get banned. Social media is good, but you can get banned from this, so I always opt to get an email, even if they are followers or fans. You never know when the 3rd party social media platform decides to change it's TOS and your innocent methods is now against TOS. Primary communication would be email, but if you can get addresses and phone number that's even better. You can use that database for offline marketing outreach. The more personal the better. Like I said Followers and Fans are great, but if you have the opportunity - well really create the opportunity to get their email - send out a survey for a fake $500 giveaway to your followers/fans. :) Capture that info yo.

Being able to communicate in a one to one method with your audience is a key to your success. If you start attacking the Deep Web without this foundation, you're leaking revenue, and not just today, but potential revenue that could be coming to you in the future - remarketing opportunities - lost forever. Imagine all those tier sites, micro-sites, or money sites you created, spammed, and had traffic to over the years. What if you collected 1% of all those emails? When a SEO slap happens or a traffic sources dries up you won't be shit out of luck. Also make sure to warm up your emails. Meaning have some automated system in place that sends out an email to your list once a week to keep your brand in their minds. It doesn't even have to be for your tier site, just your money/brand site. Keep them warm will only allow you to tap that revenue ass down the road a lot easier. Got to keep these chicks wet out here, and if you didn't know, now you know.

Carry on...