Lots of people want to have a high traffic blog so that they can make more money online, gain more exposure and business contacts, or expand their sphere of influence. Tim Ferriss (author of The Four Hour Workweek) shares his experience and the results of various tests and experiments in his bid to increase the number of his blog visitors. You'll get a lot of insights from the video...

Please take note, though, that this is not a "four hours per week" blog plan. You will most likely spend more than four hours a week if you try to match the blog posting level of Tim Ferriss. But if you're having fun doing what you do, then this will not feel like work and will therefore not form part of your four hour work week.

Now that we have that out of the way, here's the video...

For those of you who can't wait for the video to load, let me share with you some of my notes (based on the experience of Tim Ferriss):

  • Best times to publish blog posts - 7am PST and 6pm EST
  • Best days for comments/trackbacks - Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday (so make a blog post on Friday evenings).
  • Post once or twice a week.
  • Changing "Categories" heading to "Topics" dramatically improved click activity.
  • Uses a "Most Popular" tab in the righthand side.
  • Moved the Twitter updates box out of the top righthand corner, because that was leaking traffic away from the blog. It was encouraging first-time visitors to click away.
  • If you are advertising on your blog, why make your RSS feed prominent? Your CPM earnings are much higher on your blog. For Tim, RSS feeds are becoming less relevant, as microblogging tools like Twitter become more relevant.
  • Dates on permalinks are not shown near the top of the page. They're displayed at the bottom. Dates are shown in blog posts that appear in the homepage, though.
  • Showing of read times: Total Read Time, Bolded Parts Read Time. This gives readers some clue or feedback of how much time they will invest.
  • How does Tim do research? Twitter.com, SlinkSet.com (analytical research), EverNote.com
  • How does Tim Ferriss write? Look up someone named Tucker Max. The important thing is not being a good writer; it is having a voice.
  • People generally don't know what they want. So instead of polling them and asking your readers "what would you like me to write" go ahead and simply write about things you are passionate about.
  • Passionate, angry writing - Write about the problem, not the person. Po Bronson said that when you're blocked (writer's), write about what makes you angry.
  • Tim writes between 1am and 5am. That's for synthesis. Tim gathers notes during the day.
  • For important posts, edit by hand. (Print it out and edit by hand.) Goal is to remove 10% - 20% of the post every time you revise it.
  • Ignore SEO for the first draft. Write your post first, and then afterwards go to Google Keyword Tool.
  • Focus on one topic per blog post.
  • Short is good when it comes to video.
  • Tim rarely does standalone video posts. Tim adds some value-added bonus in the form of TEXT. In other words, don't create a blog post where the only content is the video itself. Add some paragraphs of text.
  • In Tim's opinion, StumbleUpon is the cheapest source of traffic.
  • Tim focuses on evergreen topics. He does not "chase the news."
  • For interesting photos, go to Flickr Advanced Search - Creative Commons - Interesting.

I hope this gives you ideas that you can use to immediately gain more visitors to your blog, which you can use to sell more of your own product, for example. Once you get the product creation or content development, traffic building, and online payment systems in place, you can focus on marketing and increasing your online profits! :-)

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"Building A High Traffic Blog"
First Posted: July 5, 2009 | Filed in: Make Money Online

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