Set Realistic Targets For Your Web/Blog Traffic

It is important when you set up a website that you are realistic about how much traffic you are likely to get, and how long it will take to get that traffic.

For example, if you publish a new website on January 1st with, say, ten web pages and a few dozen backlinks that you've managed to set up from other websites you run/own, the chances are that you initially won't get any traffic at all; and when you check your web stats, the only visitor to your site will be you.

If, from this point onwards, you aim to add one new web page and one new backlink every day, by the end of February you might be getting three or four visitors per day; and some days you won't get any visitors at all (quite often on a Saturday or Sunday - which is a quiet time for many sites as we do most of our Internet surfing when we're at work!).

The real danger is that you give up at this stage - after all, you've been adding backlinks and additional content for two months now and you're still not getting any real traffic. The name of the game is patience - it takes months and months of continuous effort before much traffic comes along. OK, sure, there'll always be sites like MySpace, FaceBook, and YouTube that are virtual overnight successes, but they're the exception to the rule, not the norm, so don't try to compare your success with theirs.

Set yourself goals
You need to set yourself goals and take a long term view. Decide how many visitors you want to aim for after, say, six months, and then after a year, and then after 18 months, and so.

For example, it's realistic to say that after three months of adding content etc, you should be getting visitors pretty much every day. After six months, you could well be averaging 10-20 visitors per day; after a year, 50-100 visitors per day; after two years, 200-500 visitors per day; after three years, 1000-2000 visitors per day; and after four to five years, around 5000 visitors per day.

These are just guidelines of course, and you might find that your site does better, or worse, than this. You'll probably also find that the growth in the amount of traffic you get is not linear: you might have a few weeks or months when things are progressing well, and then a period when your traffic might even go down. Fluctuations in traffic are often due to search engines tweaking their algorithms, which might cause the number of visitors you get to go up or down a bit. You need to keep your nerve though, and continue marketing your site.

Once you can get above 1000 visitors per day (30,000 per month), you have the basis for a business (albeit a small one), and you'll probably make a reasonable amount of money out of Google Adsense, for example. Once you can get up to 3000 visitors per day, you'll start to attract advertisers who are willing to pay you a few hundred dollars per month (perhaps) to place an advert on your site.

Five year plan
Have a five year plan, and decide what you want your target traffic figures to be. You might not achieve them, and you might need to adjust them as you go along, but like any business, you'll need projections to give you something to aim for.

Remember though, building traffic is an ongoing task and you should always be looking to market your site whenever and wherever you can.