Generating web traffic...

[da1prophet]

((based on the topic area of this forum including sales, marketing, SEO and blogging I figured it was more appropriate to post here than in the tech/computer specific forum))

As you can see in my signature, I'm about to relaunch my website and I wanted to solicit ideas for generating web traffic. A little background--I started a website focusing on topics that I enjoy--wine, fine dining, travel, etc--way back in 1995. It was a hobby at first, but over the next few years it started generating a ton of traffic. I stopped doing it regularly three years ago while I was going through a divorce and because I was focusing on other business interests. In my last month of actively doing the site, I received around 600,000 unique visitors and over a million page views. At the time, there wasn't a good way to monetize the site like there are now and it was a lower priority since I had other fish to fry in terms of my professional career. From the traffic it generated and the feedback I received I'm confident that my readership considered the content to be of "high value", so that's not the problem.

I'm also fairly conversant with most of the relevant technologies like HTML, PHP, and other website bells and whistles. In other words, I don't have any real issues with using any technology that might be necessary. I'm not a coder, but have always done well picking up and learning the new web and computer technologies as they develop.

So--help me come up with some good ideas for developing traffic. I've got a good sized mailing list (all double opt in) that I can use. I've also got good relationships with web site owners in areas of similar interest that I can leverage. I've already got the pages enabled to make them easy to refer to the various social bookmarking sites. As far as anything else goes, I'm open to suggestions :-)

[Mayo]

Hmmm,.. Linkshare!

I don't know if my future (opening March/April 2007.) adult dating website could be of help and your site of help to mine. I will have to see your content to make sure i could linkshare with your site. I can only assure you that if you have top-notch unique quality site you could very well expect a fine stream from my 20 to 40 million monthly page views in 2008. and going up... (this is only wishfull thinking for now, but soon to be reality!) (^_^)

I will leave you a message in April/May when my website starts spinning.

[da1prophet]

Hey, I am recently divorced...maybe you can help me in other ways ; )

Seriously, I'm receptive to anything....btw, did you see the cover story on Match.com and the adult dating industry in last Saturday's Wall Street Journal? Definitely looks like a marketplace that is booming...

[Mike]

I am a fan of the blog format. It is an easy way to run and maintain a site. You can even get people to help with the content. If the content is interesting and you already have a list of potential readers, it shouldn't be too hard to get traffic.

[John Wesley]

Seems like you've got a great start with that list of potential readers and similar bloggers. The fact that you've already built a high traffic site is great too. If you want to generate a quick buzz, I'd recommend taking your best piece of content, slapping a compelling headline on it, and trying to get some action on the social sites. For your site, the best are probably Reddit and StumbleUpon. If a post takes off it can bring you many thousands of visitors. Most of them are one and done, but some always stick around.

[da1prophet]

Yeah, I've done pretty well in limited effort with the social bookmarking sites so I'll definitely be doing more of that ; )

[AndrewJ]

I suggest that you keep 'exercising' that email list and get them ready for your launch. There's nothing worse than a stale list who have forgotten about you!

[da1prophet]

Originally Posted by AndrewJ

I suggest that you keep 'exercising' that email list and get them ready for your launch. There's nothing worse than a stale list who have forgotten about you!

Oh believe me, it's been exercised ; )

I'm actually pretty excited about the launch--generating traffic will be a welcome relief from the non-stop HTML coding I've done in the past few weeks. Over the past few days I've been working on my contacts--I've got a number of them who also own websites and all have been receptive about promoting my site. Most of these guys own sites that I've been promoting for years without asking for anything in return, which I didn't know at the time but may have been one of the smarter things I've done.