When you’re trying to build an income online, sooner or later you need people to actually see what you’re doing.
You can build a website, create a landing page, set up an email list and find something you believe is worth promoting.
But none of it does much good if nobody sees it.
That’s where traffic comes in.
And the obvious answer seems to be:
I need more traffic.
I certainly thought that way.
But after spending money on traffic and seeing the results for myself, I think that’s the wrong way to look at it.
The real question isn’t:
How do I get more people to see what I’m doing?
It’s:
How do I get the right people to see it?
I Learned This One the Expensive Way
I’ve paid for traffic before because, like a lot of beginners, I thought if I could just get enough people to see what I was promoting, I’d eventually get results.
In one campaign, I received 110 clicks without a single opt-in.
More recently, another traffic source has sent over 300 visitors to an offer without producing a single lead.
That’s more than 400 visitors between them — and nothing to show for it.
Now, there could be plenty of reasons for those results.
Maybe the offer wasn’t right.
Maybe the page wasn’t right.
Maybe the message didn’t connect.
Or maybe I was simply putting the offer in front of the wrong people.
But one thing is pretty clear.
The problem wasn’t that I couldn’t get traffic.
I got traffic.
It just didn’t achieve anything.
Big Numbers Can Be Misleading
Something I heard recently really brought this home to me.
I was going through some online business training, and the person presenting it was talking about a time when his email list had grown to over 250,000 subscribers.
Sounds fantastic, doesn’t it?
Except only around 1–2% of those people were opening his emails.
And maintaining a list that size isn’t free. There can be a significant cost in both money and time, particularly when the vast majority of the people on it aren’t even opening your emails.
He eventually cut that list back dramatically and concentrated on the people who were actually interested in what he was doing.
That stuck with me.
It’s very easy to get caught up in the big numbers online.
Thousands of followers.
Thousands of visitors.
Huge email lists.
Millions of views.
But those numbers don’t necessarily tell us whether anyone is actually listening.
Traffic and Audience Aren’t the Same Thing
This is where I think I had things mixed up for a long time.
I thought traffic and audience were basically the same thing.
They’re not.
Traffic is people arriving. An audience is people who have a reason to stay.
For me, my audience isn’t simply “people who want to make money online.”
That’s far too broad.
I’m thinking more about people who have already had a go at building something online.
They may have bought a few courses, watched plenty of videos, joined email lists and tried different systems.
Yet they’re still struggling to put all the pieces together.
It’s not necessarily because they haven’t learned enough. They may simply not know what to do next.
I know that person pretty well.
I’ve been that person.
And in many ways, I’m still working through the same journey myself.
Maybe We Have It Backwards
One mistake I’ve made over the years is worrying about where the traffic will come from before being clear about who I’m actually talking to.
I’ve tried different programs.
I’ve bought traffic.
I’ve followed different strategies.
And I’ve spent plenty of time looking for the thing that would finally make everything work.
These days, I’m looking at it a bit differently.
Instead of asking:
Where can I get more traffic?
Perhaps we should start with:
Who am I actually trying to help?
What are they struggling with?
What questions are they asking?
What have they already tried?
And what could I share that might genuinely help them take their next step?
Once you’ve got a clearer idea of who you’re talking to, working out what to write about becomes a bit easier too.
You don’t have to try to write something for everybody.
One Hundred of the Right People
I’m certainly not suggesting traffic doesn’t matter.
At some point, people still have to find you.
And I’m now working on that part of my own business again.
But I’m approaching it differently this time.
I don’t just want clicks.
I don’t just want Facebook views.
And I don’t want a big email list simply so I can say I’ve got a big email list.
I’d much rather gradually build an audience of people who can relate to the things I’m writing about.
People who come back because something I’ve shared has helped them.
People who eventually trust me enough to open an email because they think there might be something useful inside.
That’s a very different goal from simply chasing traffic.
I still need traffic.
But these days, I’m more interested in whether I’m getting the right people than simply how many people are turning up.
First, I need to give them a reason to want to hear from me again.
I’d rather have 100 people who genuinely want what I’m sharing than 10,000 who couldn’t care less.