[impaul99]

Originally Posted by Addict

The thing that bugs me about this is you admitted that you really didn't get good amounts of traffic with your personal development site. So what you're going to do is show people how to get good traffic, all the while using yourself as a success story I assume.

No, actually I'm going to use my Personal Development site for contrast of what "Doesn't Work". Meaning, I still think my personal development site succeeded in what it intended to do (Help me gain experience writing, putting out some of my thoughts on personal development) but because I never set out an intention to build massive amounts of traffic to it and make money from it that never happened. The problem with it is that when you don't get traffic, you have no desire to write, unless you enjoy writing simply for yourself (aka help me get experience writing). Anyway, Personal Development is my passion, and I want to build that site as well, but I also want to have it get traffic. So that is why I'm jumping in with both feet and getting into the "How do I really build traffic to my site?" side of things.

The problem I see with this is one of the main reasons you'll get a lot of traffic (if you do) is because your readers are interested in the topic of building lots of traffic. It's not a huge deal, except your readers can't go out and have the same kind of success unless they copy you.

I totally get what you're saying. That is why I haven't done this sooner. It took me months to get over the inner turmoil of this "chicken/egg" paradox. However, I discovered there is no paradox, except in our heads. I'll be diving into this on my site as well.

It's kind of like Steve Pavlina. He has done some neat things in the past, but he admits that his game development business wasn't the success he had hoped for. Now he uses his website as a success story, but he was only able to do that by telling people how to be successful.

Yup, exactly.

I don't want to be so cynical about it, but this seems to be a very popular trend in the field (Robert Kiyosaki supposedly made most of his money through speaking, not real estate).

I have 5 of Robert Kiyosaki's books. They are great books. Lots of powerful wisdom, slightly biased towards the Real Estate side of things. I'm very happy for his success writing books. It's wonderful that he was able to experience greater success sharing his wisdom with others than just applying it himself. That is a very common thing that happens. Go help yourself, you'll see success. Go help a MILLION others have success, and you'll REALLY see succes.

My main advice is just to provide your audience with tips and strategies that are easily replicable even if they don't choose a topic such as yours. Try the traffic strategies on your other site to see if they work there. And please be brutally honest if you portray yourself as a success story.

Excellent advice, thank you.

I didn't mean to be so negative about your idea. It's definitely going to be a popular topic that could help a lot of people. I sure could use some help building traffic. It seems like I really have no returning visitors and even with advertisements I purchased, my traffic isn't growing much. I know some of the reasons for this, but I don't really understand it completely. Good luck!

Yeah, doesn't it suck? Doesn't it feel like a frustrating fire in your belly when you *know* you're writing well, but you feel invisible? I've tried a lot of the so called "strategies" that so called "experts" tell you, but they don't seem to work, so I'm now on a mission to find out the real truth and share it with the world. I really get the feeling I'm going to piss off a lot of people with this site, telling people what seems to be hidden. It's going to be so awesome.

Thank you for your feedback. Much appreciated.