Increasing traffic to your site is generally much easier than trying to increase sales, but having a clear plan going forward can lead to massive benefits. Your main focus should be on creating a product others simply can’t match and everyone wants to talk about. Sure, it may sound easier to say than do, but using these few simple methods for persuading your readers, you’ll be able to increase sales without changing your product or main focus.

1. Be sincere and know your product. The world’s best marketers didn’t get where they are selling products that don’t live up to their promises. By informing their potential customers and providing truthfulness in their marketing approaches, these people have been able to sell millions of products. In addition, they rarely diverted attention to the competitors’ products – they answered all the questions in their videos or articles to effectively persuade.

2. Influence your readers. While persuasion and influence go hand in hand, there is a difference between the two. Persuasion is the act of persuading someone to do something, while influence is the ability to impact or effect someone using your power. Get your readers to believe that your product or service will solve problems and they have a much higher chance of parting with their hard-earned money. This begins with selling a successful record of solving problems. A good way to do this is through testimonials, which leads into the third method.

3. Provide answers and reasoning behind the product or service. Launching a product or service into the marketplace can be quite challenging, especially if it is your first or if you are trying to enter into a whole new product category. On your sales pages or through video, answer as many questions as possible, leaving very little potential questions unanswered. Another way to do this is through “testimonials.” I place this in quotations as testimonials have been so abused, especially in the age of the Internet where everything can be forged.

4. Think of persuasion as an art. Like an artist, it’ll take time before you know what works and what doesn’t. It’ll also be a skill that you can’t learn overnight and not everyone will be able to be successful at it. Simply trying to sell someone a product won’t work. People are able to single out and isolate advertisements – this is one of the reasons why you need hundreds of thousands of visitors each month to make a good income online and millions of watchers on television.

5. Paint a positive picture. Continuing from method four, you should always try to paint a positive picture of your products and services. Often, you’ll find negative reviews of your products on blogs due to people who didn’t understand how to use your product/service. If this is the case, you should reach out to answer their questions or solve their problems. Rather than losing slaes, you’ll be able to convince them that your product is effective, resulting in an increase of sales. You don’t want people to even think about comparing your product to what the competition offers.

Conclusion. Having an effective approach in persuading your readers is extremely important. It can mean the difference between one sale and a hundred. More often than not, landing sales is the result of just a few lines of copy – the lines that truly convince your visitors that your product is much better than anything your competitors offer.

A popular quote many live by is “The only real failure in life is the failure to try.” Apply this same quote to blogging, and you’ll quickly find another source of failure.

Success is an arbitrary term for many and has a far range when one applies it to blogging. For one, it could mean that you receive ten new comments per day, while to another person it means making a full-time income through the blog.

Beyond these two main sources of failure, there are several other reasons you aren’t seeing success as a result of your work.

1. When disaster hit (bad press about your business, a search engine rank hit, etc.), you didn’t have a plan for how to deal with it.
2. You don’t have a plan for the future, and you run your blog day-to-day. Sure, this can work for a month or two, but it won’t last.
3. You aren’t providing support to your blog visitors. Again, “support” can have a huge range in meaning. Respond to comments as well as emails. Don’t neglect any visitor or customer.
4. Do you provide a product or service people need? See if you can describe what you offer in just a few sentences. Otherwise, you have something people don’t have a need for.
5. Are you simply copying the competition or following trends? Recreating the success of others works, but it won’t get you too far, especially with how inter-connected all online businesses and blogs are.

Once you understand what is preventing you from becoming successful, you’ll be able to change your method for growing your business. No matter whether you focus on visitors, readers, or customers, keep these few basic ideas in mind when you write your next post or promote your blog.

You love writing. You love sharing your ideas with others, so you’ve become a blogger. Now that you have launched a blog, you want to create a community with others, delivering on the goals you have set.

One of the main problems with most bloggers today is that they constantly over-deliver. In many cases, the discussion contained in a post is much longer than it really needs to be. Even this post is longer than it needs to be. People live faster-paced lives than ever before but are still interested in content. Today, we’re absorbing more of it each day.

Starting a news site can be especially challenging – do you simply highlight the main news stories with a few short sentences about the main topic or write in-depth evaluations (more in the style of op-ed pieces than anything else). Obviously, it’s difficult to incorporate both of these post styles into your site unless you train your visitors to expect it.

Here’s a fact: a majority of the traffic coming to your site won’t read through one article, let alone all of them found on the main page. No matter how good of a writer you are, how “popular” you are, or whether millions of people have recommended one of your posts, this fact won’t change. You simply need to know how to deal with it.

1. Skip the Details

Details are great. Many people can ramble on and on about a topic for hours on end, and still have lots to talk about. Some of these same people begin a blog to write “novel” posts,which have thousands of words each (most posts are around five hundred words). While it is great to see the quantity, sometimes it is just better to get your point across in as little words as possible.

The most important aspect of this is that you don’t leave out any of the important details. Readers still want to be informed and they want to become knowledgeable. However, if you write a technology blog, you don’t need to explain all the details behind the acronyms with every post – there is a good chance your readers already know them if they are visiting the blog.

2. Clean up the Navigation

One of the main problems visitors have once arriving at your site is navigating through to read articles. For many bloggers, this isn’t too hard of a problem to solve, but more can usually be done to draw in visitors. Not only can you re-organize the navigation structure, but you can also optimize the site using A/B testing as well as heat maps, which show where users are clicking the most.

Integrating ads into your content can help increase revenue, but it won’t help with navigation – at all. Sometimes advertising that blends into your content inspires visitors to click away from your site – as they think it is links to other pages of your site – but then you lose a visitor that could have converted into a customer.

3. Provide a Reason for Visitors/Customers to Return

Announcing that you are writing a series of posts on a popular topic can drive more visitors to return to your site, but there are other ways that you can help draw visitors back to your site. Encourage users to subscribe to your site or follow your updates on the popular social networking sites.

What has separated some good online companies from the great ones? In most case, it comes down to support and the overall experience users have. If I have a bad experience at a site like Amazon, I am much less likely to shop there again, unless they can rectify the problem. I’m much more likely to visit a competing site or purchase the product directly from the product’s main site.

If you have killer content, you are essentially providing a service to your visitors. While you may give it away for free, there is a much higher chance you will convert them to customers/revenue if you can consistently deliver what they want.

4. Don’t Try Solving All Problems

Bloggers who want to “make it big” online will most likely fail. This isn’t the best way to begin your growth online – you’ll simply crash due to the amount of work. It’s more about time constraints than anything else. Obviously, if you are spending two hours each day writing new posts/content, then you’ll have a problem trying to expand this to ten blogs – you’ll spend less time focusing on some of the blogs.

Now, how does this relate to your visitors’ attention? Well, if you start branching out too far from your original focus, your visitors will notice this. Running a blog with a focus on one topic but then consistently delivering blog posts about another topic is one of the best ways to get your visitors to unsubscribe and never return to your site.

5. Be Structured, Plan for the Future

When you write on your blog, plan on having your content exist forever. Many bloggers do not do this. Instead, they blog as they go, creating bigger problems in the future. For example, instead of writing posts without paragraphs, some bloggers insist on not using any formatting or structure. Obviously, in the current time, it is bad, but in the future it will be worse. Imagine if these pages become ranked well in search engines – you’ll have a brand that is associated with junk.

Another good idea to keep your readers focused on your content is to use headings or a “snapshot” of what the post is about. These can be integrated into your blog fairly easily as long as you know HTML and spend some time to ensure your readers stay focused.

Conclusion

The key to maintaining your visitors’ attention is to set yourself apart from other bloggers, raising the bar for yourself, and have a product (content) that can stand up for itself. Don’t be mediocre – be something more and ensure that you can meet all your goals.

Photo Source

All bloggers, or nearly all of them, take one of two directions. One group starts their blog to make money directly rom their blog, while the other sets out to make it indirectly. There is a third group, the one that doesn’t want to make a single cent from their blog, but we aren’t discussing that at the moment.

At some point, you’ll either find yourself to be successful. In this case, you’ll be making enough money to quit your day job, and if you aren’t successful, you obviously can’t quit. Even if you aren’t successful, there are ways that you can make money from your blog.

Why Indirect Profits Are Better than Direct

Earning money directly from writing on your blog can certainly be easier to do, but it won’t get you nearly as far as it you earn indirectly. Selling advertisements can be great, and most blogs generate most of their income this way, but it won’t help you reach all your goals, especially if you want to become “known” both online and offline.

Start a business around something you enjoy. For example, if you enjoy writing, strike a deal with a publisher and get your work published. As bloggers obviously love writing, this is the path many take. It’ll also be rewarding to see your work hit bookshelves or appear across the Web for sale.

Having all your income coming through indirect sources generally means that your most devoted readers and visitors are supplying your income, rather than advertisers who may be making bulk purchases and have little to no relationship with you — other than purchasing a space on your blog. By having your income come through indirect sources, you are developing your brand.

With a brand in place, you’ll be able to grow profits further down the road. This is one of the reasons companies stagger the release of new products. Why release ten products at once only to see sales diminish within a year? Instead, use the sure-fire approach of creating the brand, experience, and relationship, then release new products. It has worked for companies and individuals in the past, so there is a good chance it’ll also work for you.

Types of Blogs that Create Indirect Profits

Sure, there are many ways blogs can generate profits, the most common being through advertising sales. However, you want to grow beyond this, and here are some ways that you can do it.

1. Provide updates to your customers through a company/corporate blog.
2. Use a blog to promote a book or other product that you are selling. For example, share the process you have gone through to get the product to market.
3. Share customer testimonials through a blog as a method to drive more sales.
4. Create a “personal” blog, in a CEO-like fashion, in order to build a more personal relationship with customers.
5. Provide support through the blog. Listen to what customers are saying and address complaints or issues.

Think About Your Personal Goals

The main reason you want to create indirect profits may not be clear at first, but one of the main reasons is flexibility. When you make money directly from your blog, you are focused solely on advertising – whether in the form of sponsored posts, advertising sales, or affiliate offers. There isn’t much you can do to increase income through these methods other than by increasing traffic. We all know what a very small stream of traffic means to a blogger – no revenue.

Generating a majority of your income through an indirect source means you can spend more time on improving your product, service, or other offering, rather than on building traffic. Your traffic will grow as you are able to get more people to sell your product through word of mouth marketing. For example, one customer can tell another person, who will then pass the product information further.

Your main goal should be getting the product into the wild. After this, it is all up to you to promote and market the product.

Here are a few questions that you should be thinking about.

• How often do you plan on releasing updates to your product?
• What type of content do you plan on publishing on your blog?
• Will you hire writers or get guest posters to write on the blog, or will it solely be your effort?
• Will you build sales links directly into your blog or refer new customers over to your official landing pages?

Once again, you need a clear business plan for launching your product, and then the outcome of your efforts revolves around how much time you put into your work as well as how dedicated you are to making things work out.

What are your thoughts on directly making money from your blog? Has it worked for you?

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Why do you need lots of passion to run a successful blog? Well, it all begins with what you want to get out of blogging. If you are passionate about something, there is a higher chance that you want to get more than just money out of it. You want to create a community and a network built around a brand. You don’t want to simply add “junk” to the Web, as many already do.

While I don’t know how many bloggers there are or people who make their incomes solely from the Internet, it is growing every day. More people are developing a passion for creating engaging content, whether it is the form of text, video, or some other medium.

Those people have to be more passionate than the average person, as many of them are setting their own schedules, trying to reach their own goals. They aren’t led by someone higher-up, and they are leading their own lives.

It is the passion of these people that can inspire you to improve your blog, get back into the swing of writing, and becoming excited to share ideas with others. Blogging isn’t easy for many, and that is the reason why there is such as huge rate of failure. Now, failure shouldn’t be viewed as an unfavorable outcome — these people now realize that blogging isn’t for them, or they may venture onto something that they can really latch onto.

Even though you may be reaching your goals and improving your life through blogging, you may still need some ideas to become passionate once again.

1. Stick to what you are best at. When you branch off of the topics you know and understand, you’ll become bored much more quickly. Alternatively, the opposite may also be true. Branching out from your main subject may introduce a newfound hobby.
2. Never stop innovating. Once you have developed a clear plan, revise it and launch new products to your customers. If you’re a blogger, this may be a free product such as an e-book, thought-provoking posts, etc. – it’s all up to you.
3. Enjoy your work. There are many rewards to blogging. Perhaps you haven’t spent enough time writing and networking to experience them?
4. Get focused. If you’re not focused, you’ll become distracted from your long-term goals and why you are really blogging. You’ll fall into traps many bloggers can’t get out of.
5. Look up to someone. Although it isn’t good to try to emulate someone, you may want to base your methods off those who are successful. It’s worked in the past and there is no reason why it can’t work for you if you have the passion and desire.

Being passionate about blogging shouldn’t stop with how you write. If you are passionate enough about blogging, you’ll also be passionate about connecting with others, sharing your ideas, and just have fun at what you love doing.

Some people dismiss the idea of brainstorming, viewing it as a useless part of writing. However, I encourage you to try brainstorming, just once, and you’ll see that you can save time every day simply by spending a few minutes – ranging from fifteen to thirty – to improve your blog down the road.

Tag Cloud Created Using Wordle

Creating an outline or list of topics can help you save time as soon as the next day. For example, if you spend fifteen minutes creating a list of twenty topics, you won’t be struggling to think of new ideas in the future, and you’ll be able to focus on writing the content, rather than the activities the readers really don’t benefit from.

Here are some tips you can use to get the most out of the 15-30 minutes you spend creating a list of post ideas:

1. Limit the time you spend on these lists, or they become less effective to a set time each day. For the most part, you should spend anywhere from one to two hours per week on these posts, spreading the time out evenly throughout the week.
2. The next point to remember is that these lists can be created in various formats, whether in a tag cloud, list of post ideas, or an outline with subsets of topics arranged by main category.
3. Don’t erase any ideas on the list, or you’ll possibly destroy some great ideas that can be adapted in the future.
4. Jot down some great ideas you think of throughout the day. Doing this will allow you to integrate this brainstorming session into you day. Although not as effective as spending a set amount of time per day, it can still work for you.
5. Plan up to a month ahead. Some blogs that publish content that takes more than a few minutes to write and can still be relevant in the future have a queue of posts waiting to be published (and may be scheduled). This technique eliminates the need to rush to get new content published.

What matters most when it comes to researching new posts and keeping your blog up-to-date is that you remain consistent and never fail to deliver what your readers are looking forward to. Have a plan that won’t sacrifice quality for quantity and spend the required time researching and drafting each new post.

The challenge of coming up with great posts has challenged bloggers for years, although there is a great way that you can nearly eliminate this problem with just a few visits to other websites.

The most popular content is ranked by users on sites like Digg, TweetMeme (for Twitter), and Like Button (for Facebook), giving you a glimpse into the most popular content on the Web. So much content is being shared at any time that even these sites can be difficult to use when you need new topics to write about.

For the most part, shared content revolves around two main types: original content, such as news stories, blog posts, and photographs, while the second group revolves around collections and remixes, ranging from list posts to edited photographs and remixed songs.

I’ll take a quick look at the front page of Digg and then we’ll look at how you can apply these trends to come up with interesting blog posts.

• There are two posts in the list format, “6 Bizarre Mysteries (That Are Still Totally Unanswered)” and “The 6 TV Badasses We’d Love to Have a Drink With”. These posts are popular across all types of sites, so it is no surprise to see them on Digg.
• Seven of the posts are news-specific. While news generally doesn’t revolve around the main television stations, it might depend on the time of the day, as many of the news posts currently on Digg are from sites like Telegraph, The NY TImes, CNN, Kiplinger, USA Today, and MSNBC.
• Four articles deal specifically or link directly to an image, while one links to a video. The other articles also include some type of images, but their main focus is on text.

How to Integrate Current Trends into Your Blog

Even if you don’t have a news blog, it can be a good idea to base your new posts on the current trends. Contrary to popular belief, some of the most trafficked posts deal with current events, rather than timeless content. Sure, the timeless content will still have rewards down the road, but that is only if it becomes popular today, is linked to frequently, and then is ranked well in search engines for a wide array of terms.

A popular post format working its way across the social networking sites right now is the “in-depth” post, with analysis of current trends, such as the Facebook debacle. Readers want to know how certain events will impact their life, rather then just the news, which can be found on the original site.

While there has certainly been debate about the format of list posts, these posts are popular and will remain so. They have always been popular, even in the days of newspapers and print. They grab a visitor’s attention and can become popular in a matter of minutes. Putting the time into researching the posts is ideal, and it’ll result in a post that will be linked to across social networking sites and relevant blogs.

The key is creating unique content. Until you have become as large as some of the most popular blogs, you’ll need to set yourself apart in some way or another. The key to doing this is to create content that few other sites have, and this may include breaking news. Scour the web for hot trends and then see if any new developments have taken place. Starting a really local blog can draw in the traffic levels that will let you earn an income – al inspired by sites like Topix.

Other Ideas to Keep in Mind:

1. Breaking a news story may not result in a lot of traffic unless it is an a popular niche, like technology.
2. If you simply re-post news topics found on other blogs, you’ll likely exhaust yourself, as you’ll generally need to post more than ten new posts per day.
3. Generating ideas based on the top news stories can be just as difficult as creating a post about something you have never researched before.

No matter what type of site you run, keeping tabs on the popular social networking sites and the directories connected to them will allow you to constantly see where markets are heading. Even if you have a blog about an extremely specific topic, you can still perform searches on these sites and see how well other posts have done.

Remember, the only thing that matters in all this si that your site stands out. Focus solely on what your visitors are looking for even before they tell you. Stay involved in your niche and create a community around your site to maximize the time you spend writing posts.

The social media explosion that began taking place two to three years ago continues to grow, with more tools to integrate them into your blog than ever before.

For bloggers, these tools make it possible to share your thoughts, links to blog posts, as well as continue the conversation through Facebook and Twitter. The times ahead will include even more of the services, although there will likely be a newcomer or two whose features are simply integrated into the leading services.

Pingdom also included a number of other interesting stats about the popular networking service, as outlined below.

• Growth through January 2011 will increase by 494%, with an average increase in the range of 15-17% per month if the momentum continues.
• Less than six months after Twitter announced that they passed one billion tweets, the two billionth tweet will have been made.
• By December, Twitter will process nearly six times as many tweets as the previous year.
• It took more than three years to get to a billion tweets, but the billion mark will be reached every single month if the rend continues by the year 2011.

Conclusion

What do you think of these stats? How will Twitter integrate “premium” services to better monetize the service – after all, the traffic to their website and through third-party applications will certainly increase during this period, too. How will you integrate Twitter into your site to better capitalize on the new traffic?

On the other side of the aisle are the “top bloggers” who dictate what type of blog you can make money from, persuading you to fit your new blog into a particular niche. For example, you are told that extremely specific topics generally don’t see as much traffic as a blog that covers a wider range of topics. With less traffic, you won’t be able to make as much income from your blog.

What if I told you that you can break through these “limitations”?

Everyone’s Blog Wasn’t Profitable at One Time

All bloggers began with just a domain (and possibly a hosting account if choosing to host their own site). The content didn’t magically appear, and traffic didn’t automatically flow in. Yes, it can be hard to believe, especially for the huge sites out there, but these sites were at one time just ideas. The business plans and uniqueness of each helped make them what they are today, and millions of other bloggers are hoping to one day compete with them.

There’s a good chance that many of the bloggers writing daily for some of the most popular blogs were laughed at much like millions of others hoping to prosper online. They got over these problems and developed the business plans that ensure their blogs remain possible today and in the future.

Over time, the traffic of these blogs increased, advertisers found value in partnering with the sites, and the rest is essentially history.

Your Blog CAN Be Monetized

No matter what type of site you run, and no matter how specific your blog is, you can generate a readership level that will provide a decent income. You could run a blog about all types of animals or a blog about a specific type of spider and be able to generate an income.

First of all, you have to remember that while some blog niches are extremely saturated, there are others that are relatively untouched by large-scale blog networks. Bloggers begin with a topic they either enjoy or one that will make them the most income, the latter results in a blogger who gives up after just a post or two.

The next idea you need to keep in mind is that procrastination and mediocrity won’t get you anywhere. As soon as a new post idea pops into your head, jot it down and implement new changes to your blog. What are you planning to do to separate your site from others? Why should I subscribe to your site versus all the other sites that may be covering your site’s topics?

Some bloggers give a specific timeline as to when you should beging monetizing your blog, but in all honesty, it depends on when you can reach traffic levels that can be sustained. Sure, the Digg Effect does wonders for a day or two, but can you sustain traffic levels at 1/10 of those highs the rest of the month? If not, then it is time that you focus more time on promoting and “selling” your blog than anything else. You really need to get word out about your site’s content before drawing in advertisers, who aren’t interested in reading your content.

How long does it take to sign up for AdSense and copy/paste some code onto your blog? Perhaps as long as five minutes. You’ll make about five cents per month using this method, unless you have an extremely popular blog (receiving more than ten thousand visitors per day). This approach doesn’t work for most blogs, so don’t take this route unless you want to maintain a blog that focuses on serving advertisements, rather than quality content.

Even the most eccentric blogs can be monetized by focusing not on your content, but on retaining visitors and converting them into readers. There are hundreds of thousands of dedicated communities online created to help draw people together who share particular interestes. Employ a similar technique on your own blog and you’ll be able to grow your site like the blogs covering multiple topics.

Quick Thoughts to Keep in Mind

1. Blogging has been around for years, but there are still innovations being made within individual niches.
2. Create your own trend and develop your own niche.
3. Follow trends in the news and create blogs for specific products or topics. These blogs can become valuable, especially years down the road when millions of users are “on the bandwagon.”
4. If someone tells you something isn’t possible, they are lying to you.
5. Taking the time to create a blog the right way will save you time in the long-term.

Conclusion

If you want to monetize your blog, there is no reason why you won’t be able to. The only thing that is preventing you from creating a popular site is how you market and plan your blog. If you only add a new post once a year, then you should only expect a few visitors. On the other hand, if you really put the time into your site, you’ll be able to monetize your site within a matter of weeks from the time you purchase your domain and you have fresh content on your site.

When a post on your blog becomes “popular,” lots of people will click through various social networking services, including Digg, Twitter, Facebook, and several others. The “Digg Effect,” as it was once called, still exists today, but there are better ways of getting around the problem and more ways to reap benefits of having increased traffic for a period of time.

Shanghai Rollercoaster by Jakob Montrasio

A Little Background on Traffic Spikes

Traffic spikes can happen at any time of the day, even when you are least suspecting it. Even if you have an older post that is valuable, it may receive thousands of visitors over a brief period of time, years after you originally published it. These spikes are great enough that they can bring down the most popular sites, powered by expensive servers, especially if you don’t have your site configured properly.

Let’s say you have an article with lots of images. Web pages can easily be over ten megabytes, and when you have thousands of visitors per hour hitting these pages, your server will experience a lot of strain. This is even more true if you have your site hosted on a “shared” server, with hundreds, if not thousands of other sites. The spike will mean the server is delivering gigabytes of bandwidth per hour.

Your goal when having a traffic spike is to keep your site up as long as possible. You want these visitors, even though they may not be as “high quality,” as you’ll still be able to convert some of these visitors into readers or customers.

A Few Tips on What to Take from Traffic Spikes

As I already stated, traffic spikes can be valuable. Realize that you won’t get return rates as high as those found when people land on your site from search engines, but not as low as if you were severing non-relevant advertising on sites outside of your niche.

1. First of all, plan for the future. If you have a site focused on content such as photos and videos, you’ll want to invest in a good hosting plan. Sure, shared hosting services offer great value, but having dedicated hosting can pay for itself fi your receive a lot of traffic.
2. Have a good site layout. First impressions matter, so take the time to design your site, customize it from a pre-designed layout, or have a professional website designer code you a design.
3. Use plugins to their full potential. There are lots of great plugins out there that will help you convert more of your casual visitors into readers, so have them configured to work properly when the spike comes.
4. Monetize and optimize your site. Don’t clutter your site with Google AdSense ads, as it’ll give your site a trashy look. Draw in quality advertisers before your site gets huge spikes. Your advertisers will see more benefits from these spikes if you get them before major spikes.
5. Integrate analytics and stat tracking beforehand. You’ll be able to see the effects of these traffic spikes and help better optimize your site for the future. Check out these 10 alternatives to Google Analytics if you are looking for alternatives.

Keep a few of these in mind as we look at some of the basic methods of dealing with traffic spikes. You can adapt them to suit the needs of your website, depending on what type of site you run and what kind of server you have your site hosted on.

Converting Users

There are a number of plugins available to help you convert more users into readers. They should be installed before any traffic spike, so you won’t be struggling with the high bandwidth usage.

Converting your users into readers is key – you’ll see more benefits in the long-term than if you simply work on increasing income from these spikes.

• Referrer Detector – This plugin will display a welcome message and a link to encourage your visitors to subscribe to your site. For example, for people visiting your site from Google, your message may read as “Hello Googler! If you find this post any useful, please support by digging or subscribing to the RSS feed for more interesting posts to come in the future.”
• Toolbars (Gigya) – Plugins like the Gigya toolbar can help your readers share the post, and they can be sometimes be non-obtrusive and help your readers share your content if they like it.
• Subscribe to Comments – The Subscribe to Comments plugin can help your new readers stay up-to-date on a post with a lot of discussion stemming from it.
• AWeber Integration – This plugin, or similar ones, can help you increase readership through a newsletter-type method and you’ll be able to grow your “list” of people who are subscribed to you.

Traffic Management and Optimization

Now that you’ve incorporated a number of tools into your blog, it is time to manage your traffic to ensure your site remains up for as long as possible. Again, you want to set these up before you even begin to experience the traffic spikes, and make sure they are configured properly.

Use a Performance Plugin such as the W3 Total Cache Plugin, which includes a number of options for setting up an optimized and cached site. When fully configured, you can see up to a 10x performance improvement. In addition, you can save money by reducing your bandwidth. A number of tools have also been included for using CDN (content delivery network). By total number of downloads, the WP Super Cache Plugin is feature-rich, but contains less features (thus it is easier to install and use).

These caching plugins will also help you manage traffic when your site isn’t experiencing huge spikes, so it is best that you install them as you are setting up your site.

Contact Your Hosting Provider as they will be able to help you in the event your site goes down. They may be able to quickly isolate the problem, although you may very likely be persuaded to upgrade your hosting plan or move to a different provider if this problem persists for more than a few hours.

Reduce the Size of Images on your site. For example, use image sprits – see this article for more information – which will help minimize the number of requests to your server. Another general rule is to use JPG and PNG (or GIF) images appropriately. Generally, PNG images are better for text images, while JPG are great for most photographs without text due to the compression formats.

Use a CDN to help off-load the images and files on your site. Many of the most popular sites in the world use this technique, as it reduces costs and speeds up the load time of sites. Use the W3 Total Cache Plugin to integrate them into your site.

Optimize Your Theme, as many themes come un-optimized. If you aren’t taking advantage of particular features, it may be time to remove them to speed up the load time of your site. Generally, templates (without images) should be less than a 100KB in size.

BrowserMob is a unique tool that I recently discovered that uses real browser users for website load testing, providing better AJAX support, and clearer reporting of the load of your website. You’ll also be able to monitor the uptime of your site through their service. Pricing ranges from free to nearly $2,000 per month, but if your income depends on your site’s uptime, then tools like this can help.

Conclusion

Have a good plan for when your site experiences huge traffic spikes. Remember, take advantage of every visitor you receive, as you should value each of them equally. Invest in quality plugins and hosting providers and you shouldn’t deal with much downtime – keep uptime above 99.9% to ensure your visitors are able to access your site most of the time. Even with a percentage at this level, you’ll still experience about seven hours of downtime per year, or about one minute per day.

Has your site ever experienced the “Digg Effect,” and how did/do you deal with the problem?