Build Your Audience

Every website owner wants more traffic. Traffic is great, but here on ActiveGrowth, we go further. It's not just about getting more visitors to your website, it's about building a highly engaged audience of true fans and loyal customers. If you want more than traffic, you've come to the right place.

Here's some of the best content we've published, to help you build an audience:

Audience Building: Podcast Episodes

We've covered traffic, conversion & audience building topics on our podcast:

The Traffic Tap Fallacy

Many years ago, I spent much of my time building up little websites, all focused on a very specific topic and optimized for a small number of search keywords. The sites were low quality - I'd hire cheap writing services to produce keyword-filled blog posts and published them without review or revision.

In other words, I was building niche sites and gaming the Google algorithm in order to drive traffic to them. I would then monetize that traffic with AdSense or affiliate offers.

It worked. I kept building the sites, I kept getting traffic and I turned that traffic into money.

Like many marketers, I thought of "traffic" in the abstract. The goal was to turn up the traffic "tap" and get more of this stream directed at my websites. When the numbers in my analytics dashboard went up, I knew I was doing the right things.

Or was I?

As I later discovered, there were 2 major flaws in my approach. The first was that I was gaming the system and the system didn't approve. One by one, the loopholes I was exploiting to get traffic to my (crappy) websites were successfully plugged by Google and traffic dried up.

Even worse, following this approach was extremely wasteful. Yes, I'd get a lot of traffic, but because my websites were crap, no one wanted to stick around. I had no return visitors. I had no subscribers, no fans.

And while the traffic did convert into money, the equation was lots of traffic => very little money.​

The Value of an Audience

Traffic is people. And to me, this is the difference between "traffic generation" (abstract, distant) and "audience building" (personal).

Building an audience is different and much more valuable than generating traffic. It's more valuable in monetary terms. I could have a niche site that got 10,000+ visitors per month and it would make $1,000 or less per month. On the other hand, I could make more money than that by launching a product or recommending a service as an affiliate, to an audience of around 500 people.

So, an audience member is worth far more than a mere visitor. If you're familiar with Kevin Kelly's 1,000 true fans framework, this isn't news to you.

But that's not the only way an audience is more valuable than traffic...

Building up niche sites and gaming the system was not particularly enjoyable work. It was a slog and it didn't feel particularly good. I was basically tricking people into visiting my crappy websites. I was extracting value, but not offering value in return.

On the other hand, building and serving an audience has been the most gratifying work I've ever done. I interact with real people, through this website and through my products. People are grateful for the content and products I create. I get messages from people thanking me on a regular basis. I'm getting paid handsomely for the work I do, but it's also work I enjoy and I know I'm giving lots of value in return.

In short, this feels good. And it pays well.

Let me show you how to do it.

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