Over the weekend I was contacted by a new Domainer who just put-up a number of mini-sites. He said that his traffic goes up and down in a very random pattern and he wanted to know why. I then asked him “well where does the traffic come from when it spikes?” He said, “how would I know where the traffic is coming from, I just know how many visitors I get”
Analytics is an often overlooked part of the website development process but potentially the most important step in the long-term monetization of a site. If you see that your traffic is going up and down erratically, more often than not there is a good explanation for this – and it’s not as random as you’d think.
Here’s a good example of how understanding your traffic spikes could dramatically improve your site monetization. Suppose you notice that last week you received a spike on Wednesday and Thursday – you might want to assume it is random, but analytics could tell you something very different. When you look at the analytics data you notice that 75% of the traffic came from a particular blog. Now you navigate over to the blog and realize that someone has just written an article about you or your site.
Knowing this information could be the key to monetizing your traffic. Maybe your site is about books and you notice the blog is for historians looking for history books online. Armed with this information you could add a new page to your site, or even a paragraph about finding history books online and some affiliate links or a small Google Adsense ad.
Over time, not only will you be providing more targeted content to your visitors, but you will be making your site that much more relevant to the people who are providing you with the traffic.
By knowing where your visitors are coming-from you have an advantage that every brick-and-mortar business in the world would love to have! Since Google makes a free analytics tool it couldn’t be easier to add this to your site and start learning more about your visitors – what you find-out will not only surprise you, it will make you more money!
If you like this post, then consider subscribing to my full feed RSS
