PR2 Newsletter : Issue 10
Welcome to issue 10 of the PR2 Website Promotion Newsletter.
It's been a pretty long dry spell out in the desert for all PR2 fans, but the
rain’s finally on its way! First, the usual numbers: this newsletter is going out to
around 5,900 people (an increase of 1,500 since last issue!)
The main reason for the long delay was my preoccupation with the Free Email Address Directory which has
gone from 5,000 page-views per day to over 12,500 page-views per day during the
three-month interval since the last issue of this newsletter went out. The site started
life in January '98 with 1,000 page-views per day. Since the site is now highly
profitable, more traffic = more money, and I confess I let capitalism
rule me for a while! PR2 is now firmly back on track, however, and as this course
progresses I'll be sharing with you all the tips and techniques I used to boost my site
traffic more than 12-fold in 12 months.
The big news is that the PR2 site has been completely revitalized. As well as a totally
new look, there’s a greatly expanded Resources section,
filled with my pick of the best products and services to get your site off the ground. All
the features from the "old" PR2 site have been brought completely up to date.
I’ve even dabbled with rewriting history: the archived newsletters have been updated
to reflect changes on the Web since they were originally published. And that’s just
the tip of an iceberg large enough to sink a virtual Titanic, so it’s maybe time for
you to get acquainted with this site all over again!
TAKE THE LADDER OF SUCCESS ONE RUNG AT A TIME
If you recently visited any of my sites, you may have noticed the tagline under my
"Genki Productions" logo: "Changing the World One Byte at a Time
(TM)". Arrogant? Maybe... But I have built up my traffic to over half a million pages
a month and 150,000 unique visitors by sticking to this "rule". In other words,
it really works!
What I do is to slice the problem of getting more traffic very thinly. I set myself a
target for the number of extra page-views (you can also work with actual visitor numbers,
of course!) I have to find during a month. At the moment, I have picked a target of 15% a
month growth. You can choose any rate you like.
The smaller your current audience, the larger you should make your target since you
only need a few more visitors to have a dramatic impact on your page-views. Then I work
out the actual numbers. For example, if my site received 100 page-views per day then by
the end of the month I want it to be averaging 115 page-views per day. I find it helps a
lot to keep a small figure in mind, rather than focusing on the absolute number of
visitors. So I forget about my current visitor numbers, and say to myself "Now, how
am I going to get 15 more page-views a day?"
Then I work towards the goal in various ways. I check my site's position in the search
engines, I post messages to discussion groups, I request links from other sites (and if
the fit is right I offer to reciprocate as well), I tighten my pages so that they load
quicker and therefore my visitors are willing to go deeper into the site, etc. Once I
reach the target, I can relax for the rest of this month and then start thinking about how
I am going to meet NEXT month's target.
QUICK TIP I
Do you have a form or survey on your site? If so, where does your "Thank You"
page take your visitors? I have seen far too many sites dump people at a bland "Thank
You for your input" message with NO LINKS OFF THE PAGE. This is a wasted opportunity
to cry over! By putting a link on the "Thank You" page you can steer people to
any part of your site you like, or even to a different site you run.
QUICK TIP II
To make sure that your email will fit the window of all popular mail readers without
scrolling, keep your lines shorter than 70 characters. I have adopted a 65 character
maximum for PR2. I make sure I don't go over that width by adding a temporary line to the
start of every message:-
01234567890123456789... [repeated until I reach 65 characters wide]
I can easily measure how wide my message is by glancing at the line. If you use a
word-processor such as Word to lay out a message, choose a non-proportional font (one with
all the characters the same width) such as Courier and set the left and right margins of
your page so that the line of numbers above just fits between them.
!!!HOT NEWS!!! PR2 now accepts advertising. Here's a sample:-
-------- START OF SPONSORED AD --------
Advertise in 3 consecutive issues of the web’s hottest web promotion newsletter, PR2,
for just $1,000
You will be reaching a highly qualified audience of webmasters and site owners.
Your ad (must remain the same for all 3 issues) can contain up to 10 lines of 65
characters. There will be a maximum of two advertisements per issue.
All advertisements must be paid for IN ADVANCE. For details go to http://www.pr2.com/sponsor.htm
------- END OF SPONSORED AD -------------
Until next time...
Edwin Hayward
Next:
Issue 11 (Coming Soon!)
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