Let me ask you a question. Does it really matter how many visitors your blog receives? You see, when I started blogging online after reading some hyped-up blogging books, I had the internal conversation with my brain like most Probloggers wannabe have when they get started. The conversation sounded something like this:
“Okay, so if I can get 20,000 unique visitors to my blog, that will be so awesome. And in the worst-case, with only one percent conversion rate like most marketers said, they will buy my affiliate products which is 200 sales. Wowsers! If the affiliate product give me a $37 per sale commission, then I will make $7,400! Let’s say I get 20k of visitors each week, I will be so filthy rich!”
I bet many of you talked to yourself this way when you’re starting out but the fact is it’s not always about raw hits and visitors. It’s about targeted traffic and building relationship which converts them from web surfers to buyers and loyal clients. The ugly truth is, if your blog does a lousy job of that, it doesn’t really matter how many hits you get because you will just earn ZERO. As a conclusion, it’s not just numbers, it’s about valuable traffic and how you do with them. For me, there are just three easy peasy ways where you can increase your blog readership and income.
Poke Their Goo-Goo Eyes
The first thing your blog post needs is a killer headline that will stop anyone dead in their steps. Well, you might say, BIG DEAL, what’s so damn important about headlines but here’s what I can tell you, Digg, Reddit and Propeller front page posts are stuffed with enticing headlines. I bet you won’t be able to resist clicking on the post after you flash through them because it’s just about psychology.
Like what Ogilvy said, five times as many people read the headlines as they do to the body and I am just one of them. Let me enlighten you, I am busy as a student, preparing for my O-Levels and also juggling with my web design business and technology blog. Although surfing the internet for technology blogs is fun and relaxing, I just don’t have the time to do it and here’s what, I put John’s, Shoe’s, TechCrunch’s and Engadget’s feed in feed reader and scanning through all the feeds at once. I don’t read all of the posts but only the one with eyeballs sucking headline. Make sense now?
I was never a fan of killer headlines and I even did an experiment on my blog. My blog is a technology blog and I was writing a post on how to access blocked websites content by using Virtual Private Network. To me, no one is ever going to read the lousy and boring post and I tried changing the title to “Are Porn Content Blockable?”. Guess what, by submitting the post to social media sites, the posts views skyrocket and I am now currently a believer of killer headlines.
Don’t Let The Cat Out of The Bag!
As an avid psychology fan, I am always interested in how it can improve blog conversion and guess what? Curiosity! Trust me, nothing works as well as curiosity because people just cannot stand having a secret kept from them. I did an experiment talking nothing concerned about my dad softly in my brother’s ear by just mentioning his name. My dad just shot his vision towards us and asked us what bad stuff we’re talking about him. See how it works? Trust me, this psychological law is one of the most powerful driving forces behind many of the successful copywriting techniques ever.
By implementing and leveraging this technique, you will be able to interest your reader to continue the whole boring story with just a little tiny unimportant secret kept from him. It’s just like zapping his spirit out of his body and he doesn’t even want it back. The master key to this techniques success is to keep something very important from him and not letting it out of your mouth no matter how hard he pleads. Here’s an example, in Jeff Walker’s, Frank Kern’s or John Reese’s pre-launch, no matter how hard their subscribers plead for early access of the video, they won’t allow it!
Electrify Them!
If your teacher tells you that you’re going to relearn the 26 alphabets, what will your response be? You will definitely droop your eyes, slump your chests and shut your eyes. What’s the conclusion then? People are uninterested in learning something they know and some old schools stuffs. What about a professor tells you that he’s going to let you into his gold-creation-out-of-thin-air class? Bet you are going to be super excited no matter how hard it will be.
So here’s the tip, controversy sells and it sells as good as sex. It might sound weird but it’s proven. If your blog is always about the wrong perception of your readers they have always taken for granted was right, you’ll improve your relationship and their interest in you plus indirectly compel them to be your loyal readers. Let some examples show their face. If I have a headline saying, “Shocking New Report! Cancerous Cells Aren’t Dangerous But Your Blood Is!”, are you interested in continuing to read the whole story? I believe everyone will and that’s just a simple controversy in action.
This is a guest post by obnoxious 17 years old blogger iYingHang who is always experimenting with psychological effects in blogging who blogs at his technologies blog Shastera.
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