Copyright 2006 Tinu AbayomiPaul

It might be that the traffic method you've chosen doesn't actually work. However, if you researched the method before you bought into it, that may not be true. Make sure it's not one of the following reasons before you abandon it.

1. Actually, it IS working -- but you have unrealistic expectations.

Maybe you aren't going to get a million visitors a month. And that's okay, because it may not even take a million *page views* to get your traffic to yield a better income for you. It's more about increasing the percentage of visitors that make you money than it is about numbers of visitors.

2. You've been inconsistent in executing it.

Meaning, some days you're gung ho, but most of the time you're not executing your plan. It ain't magic, hon. Someone has to do some work at some point. Either you do it or pay someone else to do it for you.

3. You don't have a plan.

You know what they say about a failure to plan. If you don't, trust me, it ain't good. Have a goal. If you don't know what to set it on, base it on an increase in revenue. Think backwards from the increase in buyers you would need to make the kind of money you'd like.

4. You're using the wrong plan.

Not every traffic generation method is good for every site or business. Some sites need to use RSS exclusively and extensively, rather than blog - this might include forum-heavy resource sites. Others are very well suited for blogs - any business that needs better PR, search engine coverage, or conversation with their consumer base would fit this scenario.

Of course, if you're leveraging your traffic method to also help you get ranked well in the search engines, then that's a good way to measure the success rate of his plan. One of my clients told me yesterday afternoon that 73% of his traffic was coming from the blog we built for him together. Delightful. And we weren't using anything fancy, just a modified version of a free blogging system.

Who says blogging doesn't work?

5- It relies on the search engines a primary method - yet you have no real search engine strategy.

First thing is - search engine positioning for the sake of search engine positioning is just foolish. You want to rank where your site can tie into the natural meaning of the phrase you rank for - so it's not that Pay Per Click doesn't work, it's that you might be bidding on terms that no value to your business, or poor conversions.

The same goes for natural search engine results. If you get ranked for something that doesn't connect well with your end user, you may as well not have been ranked at all.

6. You aren't measuring your results so you can't track where you went wrong. This mistake dooms you to backtracking to each change you can remember making and possibly making the same mistake, only worse this time.

7. You're flying blind.

Not everyone needs consulting. Not everyone needs to buy a book or ebook on the topic they want to study. Some folks have time to go out into forums or newsgroups, read everything they can find, and learn through trial and error. Other folks read blogs to get their learning on.

But whatever you're using as a method to learn more about the traffic method you've chosen, do it consistently, test and implement. If you want to hit the fast track instead, learn from people who have done, or are doing, what it is you've set out to learn. Why learn podcasting from a person who doesn't run a podcasting resource, or have a podcast at their site? Why learn about blogging from someone who has a blog no one likes?

On the other hand, you also don't want to become a traffic butterfly, floating to each new method you hear about before the first one has had the chance to prove itself.

There are other reasons why traffic plans fail in general. But those are the top seven. I find that if I can get my clients to steer away from these, and follow a few simple steps, they almost can't help but see steady traffic increases.