How to get 150,000 people to read your blog in 1 week (and how I did it)
Learn the strategy I've used to get traffic to my website from extremely high-traffic blogs like Lifehacker and sites like the Wall Street Journal.
Ramit Sethi
When I started blogging in 2004, I took a good look around at other websites, calmly chewed a cookie in my dorm room, and then vomited. There were only about 12 big personal-finance blogs back then, and yet even in 2004, I noticed the trend of new bloggers complaining about why they couldn’t get covered by the Big Blogs.
Today, I’m going to share two strategies I’ve used to get traffic to my websites from extremely high-traffic blogs like Lifehacker and sites like the Wall Street Journal.
This advice is useful for getting thousands of new readers to your blog, customers to your new startup, or to get your dream freelance job. And you can start using it tomorrow morning.
So, back to the question: Why do some bloggers get the lion’s share of attention, while others toil endlessly to write posts that virtually nobody will ever read?
On a recent forum where both new and experienced bloggers share tips for getting traffic, SEO, etc, most of the discussions were debating minutiae about meaningless changes they could make to their blog to get more readers. “What SEO plugin should I use?” one asked. “Does anyone think I should change my blog’s name???” another wondered. After 20 minutes of reading, I had to close the window because I was getting so frustrated.
Look, here’s a simple chart of what matters for getting traffic for your site.
Basically, there are only two ways that really matter to get traffic to your website without spending a fortune in advertising:
Writing really good content – what I call “remarkable content” – and then telling the right people about it.
Writing amazing “guest posts” – articles for other relevant blogs with more traffic than you.
Use the Remarkable Content Strategy to Get Traffic to your Blog
You’ve seen awesome writing on the web, right? Work that creates reputations and builds businesses.
Maybe you read people like Tim Ferriss, Neil Patel, Brian Clark, or one of the other big-name bloggers who regularly produce high-caliber material you can’t get enough of.
Their amazing content turned them into respected experts, helped them build a loyal fan base, and opened up huge opportunities in their business and personal lives. And it all started with great content.
The real question is: Can you do the same?
There is a proven system for creating remarkable content. A system that helps you churn out amazing articles, blog posts, and emails – anytime you want.
I spent dozens of hours documenting everything I know to a free guide to creating remarkable content. It’s already got hundreds of thousands of new visitors to my website, and it sends more traffic every day.
Read how: The Ultimate Guide to Remarkable Content.
Use the Guest Post Strategy to Borrow Traffic from Bigger Websites
Besides writing really good content, the easiest way to get traffic to your blog is to write something interesting for another blogger who has more traffic than you.
It’s funny — when you point this out to many new bloggers by saying, “Hey, why don’t you write up something really good and send it to a bigger blogger as a guest post?” — many of them quickly make up a bunch of excuses. “Well, uh… I am really busy this weekend” or “I’m in the middle of this really interesting post on how HSBC interest rates changed!” Yes, okay.
But it’s not just as simple as deciding to write a guest post. When it comes to high-traffic bloggers, there are very specific ways to approach them so they’ll accept your pitch.
Before we get to the tactics…
Who could apply this strategy? 3 examples
Like I said, this works for bloggers and many other areas of business:
You’re a new blogger who wants more traffic: If you’re a blogger and you’re looking to grow traffic, put yourself in the mind of bloggers with large readerships: They’re busy, they have huge egos, and they need to constantly post new, interesting stuff to satisfy their readers’ voracious appetites for content. Could you write one piece of excellent content for them?As an example, here were the results of Nora Dunn’s travel post earlier this week, which drove nearly 100,000 pageviews in 72 hours. I’ve already invited her to have a regular guest spot on I Will Teach You To Be Rich.
You want to break into the fashion industry: Or let’s say you read fashion magazines and really want to break into the industry. The magazine needs fresh perspectives, especially things that haven’t been done (think Money Diaries for a magazine, for example). How could you help them?
You just started a new company and need customers: How about if you’re starting a business on Christmas ornaments, and you aren’t sure how to get traffic to your website. The first thing I would do is record some interesting videos for other Christmas sites and give them away for free.
How to get hundreds of thousands of new visitors using the Guest Post strategy
I’ve written up a detailed post with the tactics for writing successful guest posts for high-traffic bloggers. It takes effort to create these articles, but when you do it, you can get hundreds of thousands of new readers and many thousands of new customers for your business.