How To Keep Hustling When Your Traffic Doesn’t Respond To Any Of Your Efforts

You knew it.

Sooner or later it will come.

Now it’s here.

The day of imminent surrender.

So much hard work you’ve put into this.

Dozens of strategies and tools you have twisted and tweaked to stimulate your blog’s traffic.

And what’s your analytics response to all that sweat and tears?

Day in day out, it shows you nothing beyond the low pulse of a patient in a critical condition.

Your patience is about to run out.

Finally, your holy pledge of never-ever-giving-up unravels.

Something’s gotta change.

Why your biggest savior treats you like your worst enemy

It’s one of the first things you learn about blogging:

Traffic is your blog’s foundation.

It’s the breeding ground to harvest your commissions and sales from.

It’s the driving force behind your future empire that allows you to benefit from a highly automated, hassle-free blogging lifestyle.

And in case you ever want to sell your blog (well, you don’t have to!) traffic is again one of the most important metrics to score your blog’s overall value.

As a result, you are bombarded with a vast of strategies on how to streamline tons of targeted visitors to your blog.

And so you dive into all the strategies that attract humans and robots to visit and rate your blog.

You spend weeks or even months on applying several traffic strategies, but somehow your blog doesn’t respond with a decent growth in traffic.

Over time, maintaining your patience and persistence gets more and more difficult.

Increasingly, you catch yourself doubting it all: the strategies, your capabilities, and blogging as a business opportunity in general.

That’s when the what-if chain reaction gets going, swirling up questions like these:

What if the traffic method I picked doesn’t suit my niche?
What if the traffic tactic I chose doesn’t fit with my personality?
What if other strategies lead to results much faster?
What if I am not x y z enough (fill in your favorite weak points) to master the traffic challenge?
What if I ran into a bold scam leading to zero visitors but big trouble with Google instead?

The encouraged and brave soon-to-be traffic maven in you is gone.

Now, the doubtful pessimist dominates your increasingly unfruitful actions and sleepless nights.

This is where most aspiring bloggers give up.

But you can do better.

You can silence that pesky pessimist to revive the unshakeable traffic builder in you.

I’ll show you how.

How to pick the best traffic generation strategy for you

Let’s eliminate the “wrong strategy” doubts first.

…It’s impossible.

It’s nearly impossible to screen all the countless traffic building strategies available, to make your best choice of.

But here comes the good news:

You don’t have to.

All roads lead to Rome.

You just have to make sure to stay on the paved roads.

Yes, dozens of solid and highly successful marketers have paved the way to traffic building mastery for you.

You simply have to follow in the steps of their proven strategies to get there.

But, following the paved roads means to consequently leave out the dirt roads, which are all the get-rich-quick schemes that make unrealistic promises for huge amounts of instant traffic.

Forget about these troublesome fast lanes.

Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Neither is sustainable blog traffic.

Don’t feel born for that kind of endurance sport?

Well, the marathon-gene in you is much easier to activate than you might think.

The simple golden rule for effective traffic generation (and a happy life)

You’ve already collected X step-by-step guides about Y traffic building strategies.

But somehow you need more ideas. More data. More golden nuggets to add to your game plan.

Why? Just to be prepared. So you have plenty fallback options in store in case the first one you try doesn’t work out…

It’s the downside of being pampered with helpful information:

You can’t stop distracting yourself with collecting more ideas.

So many new methods to dive into. And all that reading and watching videos feels like actively building your business.

But it’s not.

It’s passively ensuring that your business makes no progress at all.

No execution means no progress.

And the more options you collect, the more you dilly-dally over the overwhelming choices.

To break that infinite loop is easier than you think:

You stop digging for the ultimate strategy.

Instead, you pick one of the proven strategies you’ve already collected.

And this is the golden rule:

Stick to that one strategy.

Funnel all your actions into that one strategy.

Don’t know if you have that one proven strategy in your extensive bookmark-portfolio?

I can help with that!

For the waverers: A whole bunch of massively proven traffic strategies

Yes, finally the moment has come where you can skip the pondering, stop the endless comparison of resources and the ongoing search for the ultimate strategy that works.

Instead, you can rely on what smart blogging wizard’s have demonstrated to work umpteen times.

All of the following tactics are proven and you can get started today:

If you prefer to have a collection of strategies in one resource, this all-in-one post of 32 smart ways to drive 3x more traffic to your blog might be a good fit for you.

To benefit from all these tactics above, you just have to follow these three rules:

Pick one strategy from the list (it doesn’t matter which one, they are all effective)
Follow the instructions and follow through to the end of the instructions (yes, sounds easy but most of us get sidetracked here)
Master that one strategy before you move to the next one.

If you consequently stick to these three rules, it’s only a question of time until your traffic gains the traction you need.

“But how long will it take until I can see a decent growth of my blog’s audience?”

I know. Patience is one of the most challenging parts of the audience-building process.

So let’s take care of it next.

Why some bloggers turn into traffic generation mavens (and others don’t)

They are all around you; these epic success stories of people who once started out as new as you.

And you love to read and listen to all these awesome traffic breakthrough stories on your favorite blogs and podcasts.

But following other people’s successes has a drawback:

You feel like everyone manages to succeed, except you.

Truth is, every success is an accumulation of smaller and bigger failures.

Some people avoid discussing their failures entirely. More often, though, people go into the details of their setbacks and struggles, but your attention doesn’t want to absorb and record it.

All you (want to) see and internalize is that everyone gains traction fast, except you.

You need to reset that perception to pull yourself back into a good flow of progress.

Traffic mavens share a certain kind of trait:

They know that building an audience is one of the hardest trials of patience you can go through.

They have learned to work themselves through the up’s and down’s of that trial with stoic calm.

And whatever blogosphere-hype asks for their attention, they never let it interrupt their flow.

They are unstoppable.

You can become that unstoppable too.

Here’s how:

How to keep on building traffic while your analytics keeps on playing ghost town

A decent amount of monthly traffic is the accumulative result of your persistent actions to build it. This accumulative result usually shows up after you’ve done that enduring work for a couple of months (or even more).

Ergo, generating traffic means putting in consistent work for a long time without seeing any significant results from that work for a long time.

This cripples the reward system that normally drives your persistent actions.

The split of your goals into end goals and intermediate wins can help to reactivate your reward system.

Your final end goal is, for example, to grow your blog’s traffic from zero to a thousand daily visitors within the next 6 months.

Your intermediate wins are all the accomplishments you strive for on your way towards achieving your end goal.

They give you the needed rewards to live off while your traffic keeps you on hold.

Some examples for intermediate wins you should celebrate are:

You’ve landed a guest post
You’ve landed a podcast interview
Your content was shared by an influencer
You got mentioned by an influencer
You got a link back to your content
You created an awesome lead magnet
You created an awesome email funnel

Building traffic is such a heavy-weight, dominant goal that we tend to forget taking notice of all the other achievements we collect along the way.

But all these underestimated “little things” can be very powerful to cheer yourself up during the echoless traffic building process.

Feel like these “little” rewards are not enough to push you through the marathon of building your audience?

Let’s see how to best deal with your motivational lows next:

How to crush motivational lows forever

Motivation has superpowers.

Its presence can supercharge your energy and the outcome of all your work.

Its absence can let your focus, creativity and overall output hit ground zero.

Trouble is, you can’t book motivation to support your next writing session (or whatever else upcoming challenge).

Motivation comes and goes.

It leaves you without letting you know if or when it will come back.

It plays on its own terms.

What would you say if your best friend would treat you that way?

Right, that’s not what a reliable relationship is built on. And in terms of business, that’s not what you should make your success depend on.

The best way to manage your moody motivation is to exclude it from your actions.

Don’t let something that some researchers doubt to even exist threaten your performance.

Yes, it’s time to skip the “motivation fairy tale.”

Who said people with epic success are flying high on endorphins day in day out with everything they do?

They’ve become successful because they keep on hustling no matter how capricious their ego (aka motivation) behaves. Asking for perfect motivation for every hour in each day is like asking for everlasting happiness.

That’s impossible.

Emotions (need to) change. We – our bodies and souls – are not built for 24/7/365 pure bliss.

Daniel Gilbert – Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and writer of the national bestseller “Stumbling on Happiness” – puts it this way:

Your emotions are meant to fluctuate, just like your blood pressure is meant to fluctuate. It’s a system that’s supposed to move back and forth, between happy and unhappy. That’s how the system guides you through the world.

Imagine that each of your motivational lows is shared by the lows of thousands of other bloggers who don’t allow themselves the luxury to let their mood affect their actions.

Lionhearted, they stand strong and move on.

You can do just the same.

Practice working with no attention for your present or absent motivation. Eventually, it will morph you into an unshakeable action taker.

This new strong habit of persistence multiplies into more quality, more accomplishments, more self-esteem, more success. A wonderful chain reaction

Speaking of habits – let’s kill the No.1 bad habit that unites us all next!

The one killing distraction you should ban

Come on, let’s be honest…

Do you still give yourself that daily dose of frustration?

I mean, checking the “low pulse” of your traffic in Google Analytics?

It’s probably one of the first addictions we develop in blogging.

And, speaking for the low-pulse-period of your traffic journey, one of the most painful habits imaginable.

It tells your subconsciousness you’ve failed again, every time you check.

Toxic stuff, so stop it.

You’re a big hitter.

It’s already carved in stone, your time will come.

Then, you can start checking the stats about the interactions of your awesome tribe on your blog. But don’t overdo – making your reporting on a monthly basis is more than enough.

If you’re vulnerable to analysis paralysis and other distractions, take the following as a great substitute!

The one glorious distraction you should make a daily habit

When things get tough (like in the traffic-building-treadmill), we forget about our dreams, our visions, our reasons WHY.

All you can think of, day and night, is TRAFFIC.

But traffic is just a vehicle to get your big prize.

That big prize isn’t the money you get from traffic converted into sales.

It’s the good stuff that comes beyond the money, like:

Genuinely helping people with their biggest pain points
Being your own boss
Working on your own terms, whenever, wherever
Spending more quality time with family and friends
Becoming and living the best version of yourself

Familiar with any of that? Long time no see, right?

Time to revive these things.

Go into colorful, detailed fantasies about these scenarios that move you.

Each visualization that conjures a smile on your face is worth doing every day.

Next to that colorful “living your dream-come-true lifestyle” visualization is another set of living pictures you should add to your daily “soul food menu”:

These scenarios are all about doing your daily business to get your big prize of living your dream-come-true life.

Envision yourself doing all the work needed like a charm.

For example, picture yourself writing without barriers or networking like magic or putting your visitor’s feedback into powerful resources.

Why do I stress these 2 types of visualizations so much?

Because they are much more than a welcome distraction:

Research shows that mental practices like visualization can increase your motivation, your confidence and your self-efficacy. It can prime your brain for success and boosts your states of flow.

Practically, it’s best to add these two sets of daily visualization to your morning and/or evening rituals (if you don’t have some yet – now is the best time to get started!).

That scheduled visualization protects you from abusing it as a daydream escape from your work throughout the day

Don’t forget to use this traffic turbo booster

In the beginning, I said it’s best to avoid playing around with more than one traffic strategy at a time.

Like with any other strategy, it’s always best to pick one and master it, before you move on to the next.

I need to make one exclusion from that rule.

Whatever traffic method you’re into right now, there is one extra traffic boosting technique you should always use on top of that:

Blogger outreach.

Building relationships is common talk, yet still one of the most underestimated accelerators for your traffic.

Whether it’s reaching out to your visitors, to peers or to highly decorated influencers – in the end, it’s the people that make momentum.

Traffic is not a numbers game.

Traffic is a people’s game.

People decide to stay for another moment of inspiring engagement with your ideas, your helpful content, your win’s and losses on your blog.

People initiate a share, a comment or even a reference back to one of your helpful posts.

People recognize all the buzz you wholeheartedly create for them, leading to them making reciprocate gifts in a way you never dared to dream of.

People are the multiplier of your every action.

A lack of time is a common excuse for low or superficial engagement into blogger outreach.

Being an introvert is another reason why many people shy away from building relationships.

But, especially in our industry, dozens of introverts have boldly proven their ability to even outperform extroverts in doing extrovert things great.

So, don’t let these excuses be the reason why you miss out on potentially fruitful relationships (and awesome traffic).

Are you ready to hustle?

Time to say goodbye to all those days where only the thought of (lacking) traffic has crushed your plans and questioned your entire blogging endeavor!

All the quirks and traps the traffic building process tries to throw at you can’t stop you any longer.

You know the tricks of taking massive action with unshakeable staying power.

Your new traffic-builder-credo is:

Not seeing it (yet) doesn’t stop me from building it.

You are ready to take the traffic challenge as what it is:

The “entrance exam” of blogging business.

Now go and pass that exam.

Your epic future is waiting.

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