Where's all this traffic coming from?

Where's all this traffic coming from?

By Jim Daniels

Thus far, June 1998 has been one of my most productive months ever. (Who says summer is swoon time for small businesses?) Although my final server stats are not in yet, based on sales increases and new gazette subscribers, bizweb2000.com visitor numbers will approach 100,000 for the first time this month.

Time to take a hard look at why...

As promised, I will do this from time to time and reveal exactly where my web site traffic is coming from.

My faithful readers will then be able to learn what works for me and what doesn"t. In turn, you"ll be able to copy my most effective methods and spend less time on the stuff that"s marginal.

I won"t go into deep detail on all the statistics, just the bottom line stuff. I don"t want to bore you, I want to get to the "how I"m doing it" as quickly as possible.

As I mentioned, this month has been busy at bizweb2000.com. In the last three weeks over 800 new subscribers have joined the gazette. (Welcome newcomers!) This is nearly double the usual signup rate. These new signups are the best way I get a grip on where the traffic is coming from. Nearly all who subscribe, fill in the form revealing exactly where they learned of us. No server log can do that!

So, here are the results. What"s hot and what"s not...

Direct email: A few weeks ago we mentioned that we"d had great results with the www.jokeaday.com email list. So, this month we tried a few more. Here are the ezines that yielded the best results:

An oracle humor ezine ad http://www.oraclehumor.com/ brought in about 60 new subscribers and a healthy surge in sales.

Kevin Needham"s A.I.M. Ezine produced a landslide of subscribers (over 100!) with their new press release feature. http://www.inetexchange.com/inet-mailer.htm

Oh yeah, while we"re on the subject of direct email, I must mention my own zine, the BizWeb Gazette. It"s my best direct email tool - I use it every week! Anyone who is serious about doing business online should start their OWN house list and contact it regularly. Need help getting started? Visit: http://www.bizweb2000.com/contact.htm


Article submissions: This month many ezine editors published recent articles I wrote about my cybermarketing experiences. (Thanks Y"all!)

Just last week, an article I submitted to InternetDay was used the very next day and resulted in 80+ new subscribers and a rush of site traffic. http://www.internetday.com/

If you are not already writing and submitting articles on your area of expertise, I suggest you start! There are literally 1000"s of zines on any topic imaginable. To find ezines related to what you are writing about, visit: http://www.meer.net/~johnl/e-zine-list/keywords/

Consider arranging your articles at your site for ezine editors and webmasters. See my "free content" page at http://bizweb2000.com/articles.htm for an idea of what works. Ezine publishers always need good copy!


Strategic Links: A steady 25% of my visitors come from strategic links we"ve gained over the last year. Every webmaster needs a strategy to get links on related sites! Although there are lots of ways to get links, three specific strategies work best for me. You can read about them at: http://bizweb2000.com/linking.htm .


Word of mouth: A steady 15% of all new gazette subscribers and customers I receive tell me that