My 3 Steps To Viral Internet Traffic:

You can get free internet traffic from sites like StumbleUpon, Digg, Flickr and Facebook today. Live people, by the millions, are right there just waiting to visit your site. What will you do with all that internet traffic? Build and monetize a niche website, put together a content-rich and SEO deep forum, or start a social gaming empire? Any way you use this key to finding subscribers and a posse is on you, but the more people I can help make money online, the better. Quality internet traffic helps you in meeting this goal. Getting thousands of real visitors and you becoming one of the most popular websites in your niche is the goal of this article.

I have three steps that every time has helped me get internet traffic in the thousands daily, month after month. This is a 1-2-3 setup guide from idea to active site, bringing you viral traffic and visitors in hours. It’s not hype, I’m not selling anything, you must care about the content you create to move forward with this. This plan and these tips work for all social networks that allow sharing, so get those creative juices flowing now.

This advice might not be for everyone. It’s just MY guide and shortcut to internet traffic generation which I know works. Some might be re-stating the obvious, another technique might be of use.

Take away from this what you can!

Step 1:  Unique, thus viral, content for your internet traffic!

This process is very specific in the type of content used. For this example, we are looking at images and graphics. These steps can really help improve the visibility of any type of content you are pushing, but for today, the niche is images. You don’t have to look far to find research and facts as to how often images are shared, the global footprint and sustainability, how they are such beautiful little ‘content in a frame’ items that users love to click, view, and share. It’s a hot, well-flowing market filled with potential. One tab in a browser opened to your site from even a small percentage of global internet traffic can be enough to send your hosting provider into a hissy.

What you have to decide is how do YOU carve a foothold?

So start thinking. Can you create unique images yourself? Can you network with others who can provide unique images for your site? Perhaps through a joint venture forum or other social network? Deciding how you can use images to create a presence is fundamental. Select a method and as you produce original content, you’ll find a real opportunity to see what really works when making a viral image or post work. In my case (and THIS will be a whole ‘nother post!) the niche I went after was infographics.

There are great tools available like MemeGenerator.net so you don’t need Photoshop experience for any of this. You can use MS Paint if you like. I have! However, the better your ability to manipulate images, the more doors you have open in this venture. Any beginner can use a meme generator to get internet traffic to a website.

Whatever your choice, you need to be able to provide something a little unique – as in anything, content is king. Just a LITTLE innovation here will go a LONG way for your website traffic! Spend some time brainstorming. The right slant to your brand of images can equal gold. As some of these images show and I’ve explained, the modification does NOT have to be complicated to get free internet traffic in the millions. We just love pictures!

Step 2: Use a theme easy for visitors to navigate!

Keep it simple and keep it clean. I used a WordPress theme that appears to be no longer available called Gallery Theme Pro, but many others are available. The name of the game in this is Call To Action, ease of subscription and sharing, and aesthetics (does it look good, do example images appear right in how they are viewed).

You can mainly go two ways on your home page. Either a gallery-type with multiple thumbnails, or a ‘Tumblr’ type, which is more like a blog. I prefer connecting visitors to the wide variety of images available first, and so I chose a gallery look. It’s your call. Four examples of differing formats can be found at DailyInfographic.com and uberhumor.com, or two in the gallery direction at wallbase.cc and iInfographic.com. Think about how you want your image content to be displayed in a manner that’s pleasing to the eye and functional, and also that you can work with easily.

There are plenty of free WordPress themes available to accomplish your goals with this.

I strongly encourage you at this point to integrate the use of social sharing buttons somewhere on the home page, preferably the upper-right. This will immediately be present and accessible to your visitors and you want to make it as easy as you can for them to click or enter an email and opt-in. This is where passing on your post to their network is your Call To Action and emphasis. Make it too easy and pleasing for them to do so. For two examples of an effective integration, my site uses a couple different options above and below (pictured).

Or, consider a theme with the follow/subscribe easily accessible and available on the upper left, like Smart Blog (seen below) from Theme Junkie. Innovative look, and an easily-spotted and usable subscription box for visitors. I really like this option and it’s well worth looking at, possibly even more effective if the floating plugin mentioned below is used. Raising your conversion rate and capturing subscribers is Job One, and making it as easy as possible for the flow of internet traffic to your site to do so is always a priority.

You can also opt for the ‘floating’ share buttons that usually hover on the left hand side of the page, wherever the user scrolls the page, to make sure you’re always there and available for clicking. This is definitely beneficial for the larger gallery and Tumblr style blog and highly recommended! You can do this easily with a plugin like Digg Digg. SavvySexySocial.com uses this technique very well in the picture below.

Alternatively, you can offer a toolbar that sticks to the bottom of your site and offers share options, via websites like Gigya and Wibiya, as in the picture below on Social Media Examiner.

Step 3: WP Greet Box makes internet traffic sustainable!

This plugin

is incredible and highly valuable in our goal of achieving that strong and steady viral traffic. WP Greet Box is free and lets you place a customized greeting to your post wherever you want, welcoming the visitor based on the network they are visiting from, to subscribe or Stumble or Like your page, as appropriate. The numbers on this are great as StumbleUpon users tend to click that they like an image often, which in turn boosts your visitors and potential for more Stumbles. A fantastic call-to-action plugin that provides incredible results, and this works for everything, not just StumbleUpon!

You must properly integrate this. You can see in my example picture below how I laid it out in this example, or live at SavvySexySocial.com and PRLuv.com. You want your image fitting cleanly and comfortably in your post, easy to see or enhance if necessary. I then placed the WP Greet Box widget to appear at the top of this post, where you see the Subscribe via RSS call to action. It’s the first thing users see on top of their image and is HIGHLY clickable!

I also made it easy for traffic to bookmark and tag with other social networks, as you see just to the right of the image, and to the lower right of the image. If massive amounts of online traffic is hitting your page and seeing a clusterf*ck of follow me icons and a poor layout, they’re gonna bounce. Sorry, I’m an infantry sergeant at heart and my mouth gets away from me. And my fingers. Moving on. Keep your site clean and functional.

The goal of this entire process is making it as easy as possible for your user to click that he likes your content! For a live example, the layout here on ComLuv.com is nice, but I’d almost be tempted to do side-by-side testing on post sharing clicks based on their current location, or bumped up underneath the post title. Check out this picture if you’re curious what I’m talking about. Think about it, would your shares be higher if the buttons were placed higher on the page? Would you be more prone to clicking Like, +1, or Digg in this case? Which will result in more clicks when weighed against the vast majority of the website’s internet traffic in real time?

Placing your sharing buttons at the beginning or end of your post is a whole other bag of chips, and for this route we used the right up front and on top method. In a lot of cases you can implement sharing buttons at the bottom of your image as well to capture those there, or eliminate the problem entirely as mention above with a few of the plugin options. Getting back on track, picking the right niche and developing an appropriate and friendly site can be highly profitable and quick - explore it! Even if you’re just writing notes and taping them to your cat for a picture, there’s real internet traffic out there waiting for you.

For those who immediately had an idea for a great online gallery and still interested, keep in mind your image SEO and do some further research on properly setting up your image information to be read by the search engines! You’ll be amazed at where some of your internet traffic comes from for certain images, it’s a fun area to focus on and profitable if pursued intelligently.

For a little more reading on the subject from two of ComLuv’s best, check out Mitz Pantic and ‘6 Tips to Skyrocket your Blog Traffic Fast,’ and Ana Hofman with ‘Blog Post Images That Will Rock Your World – And Where to Find Them.’ Both amazing and experienced ComLuv resources!

Two more posts with valuable tips on finding free images and creating image linkbait by someone who knows what he is talking about, check out these by Michael Gray (Google him!). Using Images for Better Linkbait and Optimizing for Creative Commons Images. Check out 7 Actions that Increase Blog Traffic by 25.3% by Steve Scott, it’s fantastic and well-worth the read.

Also, Debbie Hemley‘s Social Media Examiner post, 26 Tips for Using Images to Engage Fans and Followers, or Jacob Gube, co-founder of Design Instruct with 10 Image Bookmarking Sites for Visual Inspiration. These provide further insight in capturing internet traffic in as many ways as you can think up.

Once your site is put together and has content, find someone with a reputable and kept-up account on the social networks you’re targeting and ask them to share a few of your images, then sit back and be motivated by the numbers. StumbleUpon was always the leader in this method for me. Having a developed and active account in these various sharing networks always helps, but you can find quality outsource help for initial traction, like StumbleUpon. Or just ask your friends!

What gives this so much potential is you can start free (or dirt cheap) and certainly get your money back per year. The cost of a domain (do some research, take some time, use a coupon and it’s only a buck or two) and the cost of hosting (I’ll throw out $25 for hosting here, a year) and you are set. You CAN make more than $30 dollars in a year with significant internet traffic to a website.

Trying to find a domain to use with this method? Two helpful tools, Impossibility.org, and DomainsBot.com, can help you with suggestions of available domain names. Or you can score a list of over 14,000 available domains with current search volume keywords for free via my page right now.

You can cut hosting fees and a domain purchase out of the equation entirely with one of the free services, like Blogger, Wordress, or Tumblr. I don’t particularly favor this direction, but with this type of setup and sharing a theme priority, many microblogs using these services are extremely successful and can be a more than viable alternative to getting your roll on. Having a presence on as many networks as possible IS beneficial, and this is a method to get started entirely FREE! Your content can easily overcome not having a .com address!

I will be posting an expanded look at this overall subject in an upcoming post on my social media PR tips and tricks blog at PRLuv.com for those interested in a deeper look. I’ll go over some great themes and tools I’ve found for this purpose, some fantastic niches, and even some great available domain names I’ve got stored up.

Hope this helps or inspires some of you! Go get some easy internet traffic for your website and make it quick for them to become fans and friends of your website! Making money online can be simple, fun, and even free!

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