Blog Traffic Case Study
How I Generated 15,112 New
Visitors (And Counting!) With
Just One Blog Post & 7 Copy &
Paste Emails
By James Penn
BigBlogTraffic.com
Like Us On Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Big-Blog-
Traffic/347712258629607 and get updated each time a new blog post is
published.
On Wednesday 4th April I wrote a new, slightly different from usual, blog post
and published it to my natural health and beauty blog.
I then sent seven copy and paste emails to fellow bloggers in my market, sat
back and watched as hundreds and then thousands of visitors flooded my blog.
The entire process took around two hours. It took about an hour and a half to
research and write the post, a few more minutes to format it in my Wordpress
editor, and then ten more minutes to write an email that I simply copied and
pasted to seven different bloggers in my market.
What did the email say?
It simply asked them to share my new blog post on their Twitter feeds, their
Facebook page and their Pinterest boards.
Why did five out of seven of them share it and send me over 15,000 new
visitors (and counting)? That s what I ll reveal in this short, powerful,
actionable special report.
Let s get going& .
The System Outlined
Here s a brief overview of what I did so you can understand the process. I ll
then delve deeper into each step to give you a better understanding and a step-
by-step plan.
I wrote a blog post titled  The Top 7 Things To Make With Essential Oils
and published it to my blog.
The blog post rounded up seven different recipes from seven different bloggers.
I wrote an overview of each recipe, included an image for each one and a link to
the original recipe on each different blog.
You can take a look at the post at:
http://www.revitaliseyourhealth.com/top-7-natural-products-to-make-with-essential-oils/
I then contacted each blogger included, let them know of their inclusion and
kindly asked that they shared the post on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest.
Many of them were so grateful to have been included that they did so right
away and I started getting crazy traffic after about an hour of the post going
live.
Here s a screen capture of my Google Real Time Analytics just a few minutes
after the traffic kicked off.
And the traffic continued pretty much in a similar fashion for FOUR days. On
day one the post generated 1,246 page views, day two it generated another
1,809 page views, day three had 2,352 page views and then day four generated
1,069 page views.
At time of writing, the post has been live for twenty days. On only two of those
days has the total number of page views been lower than 200. The post is
STILL generating 250-300 page views per day, hitting nearly 600 views just a
couple of days ago.
YOU can replicate this success. In fact, you can copy this method but do it ten
times better and this report will show you exactly how.
Step #1
Pick A Topic
The first thing you need to do is pick a topic to focus your link round up on.
You know your market better than me (hopefully) so this shouldn t be a
problem, but here are a few ideas.
If you have a Food blog:
Top 7 Best Salad Recipes
Top 10 Best Chocolate Recipes
Top 15 Tasty Breakfast Ideas
If you have a Fitness blog:
Top 7 Weight Loss Case Studies
Top 10 Best Fat Burning Workouts
Top 15 Healthy Breakfast Ideas
If you have an Internet Marketing blog:
Top 7 Best List Building/Traffic/Money Making Blog Posts
If you can t think of a specific topic you can use for your link round-up, then
here are some more general solutions that will work for you no matter what
niche your blog is in.
Top xx [NICHE] Bloggers  e.g. Top 15 Gardening Bloggers
Top xx [NICHE] Experts To Follow On Twitter  e.g. Top 15 Link Building
Experts To Follow On Twitter
Top xx [NICHE] Books On Amazon  e.g. Top 50 Weight Loss Books On
Amazon (great way to promote your Amazon affiliate link!)
Top xx [NICHE] Blog Posts In [MONTH]  e.g. Top 7 Skin Care Blog Posts In
April
Once you ve picked your topic, move onto step two&
Step #2
Find Your Links
This is a very important part of the step. In fact, it s the MOST important part.
There are a few important requirements a link must have for it to be included.
1. The quality of the post and blog you link to must be high. This is a given. If
your  Top 10 post links out to a bunch of junk, no one will take it seriously
and you ll get no traffic.
2. This is crucial. The blog you are linking to must have a social presence on
Twitter, Facebook or Pinterest  or all three preferably. It doesn t have to be a
huge following but since you will be getting the majority of your traffic by
asking all those you include in your post to share on their social networks, it s
necessary that they have some sort of following.
3. Make sure you don t include big brands in your list. When I was searching
for links to include in my post, recipes from about.com, ehow.com and other
huge websites kept cropping up. There is no point including these because there
is no chance that about.com would share your little blog to their massive social
following. Try to be realistic in the blogs you choose and assess whether there is
any chance they will share your post.
TIP: Go through the bloggers you are planning to include recent Facebook and
Twitter updates and their recent Pinterest pins. Do they only promote their own
content or do they share good content from around the web? If the latter then
they are a good option to include.
How Many Links?
For my link round-up I included seven links. My original plan was to include
15.
Would 15 links have doubled the traffic I received since I d of had twice as
many bloggers sharing my post? Or would it have diluted the amount of
gratitude each included blogger felt and so reduced the chances of them sharing
the post?
Who knows? This is something I ll be experimenting over the next few weeks
and months.
I d suggest including a minimum of five links, but would not like to impose a
maximum since I haven t tested this yet.
I d imagine that if you created a really high quality Top 100 post, you would do
very, very well!
How To Find Blog Posts To Include
It took me all of five minutes to find seven different links I could include in my
blog post. Here s how I did it.
I went to Pinterest.com and searched  Essential Oils in the search box at the
top left of the page. I then clicked  Boards and this bought up hundreds of  Pin
Boards where people have shared their favourite pages from around the web all
about essential oils. This included hundreds of different essential oil recipes
which I could have included in my post.
Pinterest is great for finding recipe posts so if you are rounding up recipes then
head there first.
Of course, if you know exactly what you are looking to find then some Google
searches will hopefully yield what you are looking for. For example, I knew I
wanted to find an essential oil deodorant so  essential oil deodorant recipe
produced exactly what I was looking for.
Plus, if you already know your market then visit some of the more popular
blogs and see if they have any posts on the topic of your link round-up.
If you have any existing relationships with bloggers in your market then try to
include one of their posts since they will be more likely to share your post.
Once you ve found at least five links  but preferably 7-15  that meet the
criteria I ve already revealed, it s time to write your post&
Step #3
Writing Your Post
This is the really easy part. Most of it s done for you already!
It involves a simple three stage process.
1. Introduce what you are going to do. This will be just a few paragraphs and
perhaps 100-150 words. Here s the intro I used:
Essential oils are little miracle workers for both our body and mind. Their
scents help to calm, relax and uplift and when applied to our skin they deliver
intense healing and protective properties.
Making your own essential oil infused health and beauty products at home is a
fun and affordable way to be more frugal, be more natural and protect the
environment.
So avoid the chemical laden sprays, lotions and creams, and throw away the
dangerous air fresheners and deodorants and try making the below essential oil
infused products as shared by some of the industry s top bloggers.
2. Link to and summarise each link but don t reveal too much information. You
want your readers to click-thru because you want to send traffic to your fellow
bloggers. If they see traffic coming through they are much more likely to share.
Here s an example of one of my summaries.
Homemade Essential Oil Body Butter
From Rawmazing.com
Shop bought body butters can be expensive and don t always contain skin-kind
ingredients (think artificial colors, fragrances and preservatives) but this
homemade version packed with intensely moisturizing fats such as coconut oil
and Shea butter and skin healing essential oils such as rosemary, peppermint
and sweet orange essential oil will leave your skin feeling fresh, smooth and
supple.
For the full recipe and step-by-step instructions, visit Rawmazing.com
3. Sum up your post and encourage reader interaction by asking them to submit
their favourite recipes.
For a real life working example, take a look at my blog post.
http://www.revitaliseyourhealth.com/top-7-natural-products-to-make-with-essential-oils/
SHORTCUT ALERT
Since I finished writing this report, I have performed another of these case
studies. This one is doing EVEN BETTER. After just six days it has had nearly
8,000 views and it took just 30 minutes to write.
I didn t bother with the summary of each link. I simply put the title of the blog
post, an image and a link. This post was titled: Top 10 Homemade Beauty Gifts
For Mother s Day and you can see it, and copy the format, at the link below.
http://www.revitaliseyourhealth.com/homemade-beauty-gifts/
It took 30 minutes max to compile the post, send out the same copy and paste
emails and start generating crazy traffic.
Step #4
Publish Your Blog Post
There are a few things to do when publishing your blog post that will help your
blog post go viral and make you lots of money.
1. You MUST have social sharing buttons on your post. Hopefully, your blog
will get a lot of traffic from those you include sharing your post, but if you can
also get those visitors to share your post then your traffic will explode!
I use the Really Simple Facebook Twitter Share Buttons Wordpress plug-in
which is completely free and you can get it at:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/really-simple-facebook-twitter-share-buttons/
Side note: You can see all the plug-ins I use and how I set my blogs up at
http://www.bigblogtraffic.com/ultimate-bloggers-toolkit/
It looks like this:
You can configure which sharing buttons are shown. For my market (natural
health and beauty) Facebook and Pinterest shares are the most important, but I
also include Google Plus, Twitter and StumbleUpon because that can send some
traffic.
At the end of the blog post I also include a sentence encouraging readers to
share the post if they enjoyed it and include sharing buttons at the bottom of the
post so they don t have to scroll to the top to easily share.
 I would really appreciate it if you could share this post. If possible, please
share on Twitter, Facebook, StumbleUpon and Pinterest. I would be incredibly
grateful for any help you can give spreading the word.
TIP: Have you got a freebie you could offer in exchange for a reader to share
your post? This could help boost shares, but may also make you look desperate.
It s worth testing.
2. You MUST have at least one high quality image on your blog post. In order
to get promoted on Pinterest you need to include an image since Pinterest users
Pin images that link through to the blog post.
I buy my images at IStockPhoto.com for about $1-2.
For my viral post I also included an image next to each summary. I took these
images from the blog I was talking about. I didn t ask for permission because I
figured they wouldn t mind since I was giving them credit and sending them
lots of traffic. As it happens, I had no complaints at all, but I do suggest you ask
permission first to avoid getting in trouble.
3. One other thing I like to do is add related links to other blog posts from the
archive at the end of my post. This gets visitors moving around my site and I
found that the posts I linked to at the end of the blog post got some shares on
Facebook and Pinterest too which sent lots of traffic to them.
Here s what it looks like&
4. You may also want to include an opt-in form to sign up for your email list
and links to follow you on social networks like Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.
That way you can capture the visitors you get from this viral campaign and turn
it into long term traffic.
I use the Wordpress plug-in  What Would Seth Godin Do? at
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/what-would-seth-godin-do/
It works out whether visitors are new or returning and displays a message of
your choice to only new readers. With this plug-in you can have some text
placed before your post stating something like:
 New here? Join our email list and receive a free special report. Click here to
subscribe.
This is a great way for converting one time visitors into loyal fans.
Tip: Instead of building an email list, you could grow your Facebook following
 something I believe is becoming more and more important. Read this article
where I share ten reasons why I ll be focussing more on building my Facebook
fan base rather than my email list 
http://www.bigblogtraffic.com/facebook-vs-email/
5. What s the real reason we all want more traffic? Because we want to make
money!
So it makes sense that you will want to monetize your post  but you don t want
to go over the top because if your page looks too spammy then no one will share
it.
Here are some monetization ideas:
" Adsense  This was my main monetization method. While I only get
around 1% click-thru rate, from 15k page views that s still 150 clicks.
" Amazon  I LOVE being an Amazon affiliate because every morning
when I check my stats I ve sold some really wacky and crazy items. In
my post I linked to an essential oil collection so that readers could make
their own products with essential oils. I sold a couple of these collections
at $99.95 but know I made a lot more money selling items that customers
bought after clicking my referral link.
" Clickbank  This was an afterthought really. There is a high quality
product on Clickbank that reveals how to make spa quality products at
home. It costs $27 and I get a 75% commission. Unfortunately I only
added the banner AFTER the main traffic surge in the first four days so
missed most of the traffic but I still got a nice chunk of sales from this
product.
Right, so you ve written your post, formatted it, included high quality images,
social sharing buttons, links to other blog posts and monetized the page (but not
too much), now press Publish and let s kick start the viral traffic.
Step #5
Promote Your Post
Everything is ready to go now. This is where the fun starts.
You just need to kick start the traffic and it won t stop for a long time.
Especially if you have the social sharing buttons in a prominent position.
There are a few phases of promotion that I implemented.
Phase 1
Promote Yourself
First of all you want to utilize your own resources to promote your post. You
want to make it appear to those you have featured that you have done all you
can to send traffic to the post BEFORE you ask them to.
You should:
" Share your post on your Facebook page, share to your Twitter following
and to your Pinterest followers. If you get lucky you can get some
significant traffic from these three sources as your Shares, Tweets and
Pins are Liked, ReTweeted and RePinned.
" Email your subscribers letting them know about your new post. Plus,
hopefully some of these visitors will share your content on their social
networks.
Hopefully this will give you some initial traffic and send some visitors to the
featured blogs.
If you don t have any presence on the social networks and no email list yet, then
don t worry too much. This step is not really necessary. I had just 60 Facebook
Fans, 150 Twitter followers and 300 Pinterest followers when I launched my
campaign.
You do need to start building your following though because it will give you
incredible leverage  something I m going to discuss a lot in the future.
Phase 2
Tweet The Featured Bloggers
This is the next step and takes a matter of minutes but resulted in thousands of
new visitors for me.
Visit each blog that you featured in your post and find their Twitter account.
They will normally have social buttons somewhere in the sidebar or header.
Click on the Twitter icon and click through to their Twitter account.
From there you can send them a Tweet letting them know that you have
included their post in your link round-up and that it would be fantastic if they
could share.
Here are the Tweets I sent to those featured in my blog post.
SIDENOTE: I use the pen name Daisy Raybould in this market since it is a
female dominated industry. I purchased the rights to use the image on
iStockPhoto.com
After that, I waited&
From sending those Tweets, one of the featured bloggers (and the one with the
most considerable social presence) shared the post.
They shared their post on Facebook to 18,000 fans, receiving 53 likes and 44
shares.
They shared on Pinterest to their 8,000 followers receiving over 150 Repins.
And also Tweeted to their following of 750+ followers.
This really kick started the traffic and it just took off from there as a portion of
the visitors arriving started sharing with their social networks, but there were
still six of the featured seven who hadn t yet shared the post.
Phase 3
Email The Featured Bloggers
The next day I decided it was time to email the six bloggers who hadn t yet
shared the post. It s so easy to ignore a 140 character Tweet, but if someone
takes the time to write you a long email it is much harder to ignore.
I visited each blog, found a contact email or form and sent the exact same copy
and paste email to each featured blogger changing just a few details to make it
appear personalized.
Here is the exact email I sent:
Hi [NAME]
I published a post on my blog the other day that included a
recommendation for checking out your [INSERT RECIPE]
Here it is:
http://www.revitaliseyourhealth.com/top-7-natural-products-to-
make-with-essential-oils/
As you can see from the sharing buttons at the top of the post, the
post has gained a lot of traction since I published it on Weds with
over 3,000 readers so I hope it has sent you some good traffic.
The reason for the traffic was simply because one of the bloggers
included in the list (FrugallySustainable.com) posted a link to the
post on her Facebook page, Tweeted it, and Pinned it to Pinterest.
That sent a lot of traffic and resulted in more people Tweeting,
sharing and Pinning which of course resulted in more traffic.
I'm just sending you a quick email to see if you would be interested
in sharing the post? I'm contacting all those included and asking
them to do the same so that everyone can share the combined
traffic.
It would be FANTASTIC if you could:
- Post a link to your FB fan page
- Tweet the page
- Pin the page to Pinterest (if you have an account)
- Share on Google Plus (if you have an account)
- Submit to Stumbleupon
Any help you could offer would be very kind of you and if there's
anything I can do for you or your blog, please don't hesitate to ask
:)
Thanks for a wonderful blog and I hope this is the start of a great
relationship :)
Thanks,
NAME
It took five minutes to write that email and another five minutes to send out to
all bloggers, but after a few hours another four had shared the post with their
followers on Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter.
Tip: If you get ignored on the email, then send a follow-up email a few days
later. I did this on a second viral blog post and it convinced a lot more of the
featured bloggers to share.
At time of writing, this one blog post that took a couple of hours to write, has
generated over 15,000 page views.
It has catapulted my blog traffic and income  and it was one of the simplest,
yet most effective, things I ve ever done.
I simply:
" Wrote a blog post that linked out to seven other blog posts
" Asked them to promote it for me
" They did!
" Made sure all the traffic they sent me also shared my content on the social
networks helping the post to spread virally.
" Captured as much of the traffic as possible and turned them into email
subscribers and Facebook fans so that I could benefit in the long term
from this traffic surge.
Simple as that!
And it can be replicated as many times as you like and each time it will be more
effective.
You HAVE to try this out for yourself and see just how easy and effective it is.
I hope this case study has got some ideas flying around in your head.
There s just one thing left to do now  DO IT!
Set aside three hours (although you probably won t need that long) one day this
week and go through each step. Pick your topic, find your links, write your post,
publish it and ask the featured bloggers to promote.
Then grab a cup of coffee (or a glass of wine or a chilled beer), open up your
Google Analytics account, switch to Real Time and watch it all take off.
Like this&
Got any questions? Want some advice about your blog? Or want to share
YOUR  Top xx post with me? Email me at [e-mail]
Hopefully I can give you some pointers and advice. Or, if your post is in the
same market as me, perhaps I d be able to share with my social following.
Thanks so much for investing in this report and good luck with your viral posts!
I d love to hear your feedback!
James Penn
How I Generate 1,500 Visitors To My
Blog Each Day (& Growing& Fast!)
In early October 2011 my health and beauty blog was doing well.
It was ranking at the top of Google for a number of highly searched keywords
and phrases and was generating over 1,000 visitors per day with over 80% of
that traffic coming from Google.
Then on October 14th Google decided my blog was, for some unknown reason,
not worthy of its search engine listings, and my rankings plummeted in the
Panda 2.5.2 update.
I went from 1,000+ daily visitors to just 200 and my income virtually
disappeared.
I spent a few months doing everything I possibly could to recover my rankings.
I invested in numerous  Recover From Panda guides, I read every SEO blog
daily and I made many tweaks and improvements to my blog.
Nothing worked  and so, in January 2012, I decided to forget about Google and
diversify my traffic sources.
I implemented tried and tested traffic strategies and I came up with my own
creative methods and my traffic started to grow.
In December 2011 (the month before I began diversifying my traffic) total
visits to the blog was 6,126, in January that had climbed to 11,476, in
February that number grew to 17,685, in March it rocketed to 30,190 and it
continued its ascent into April with a whopping 43,677 visitors in just 30
days.
That s 1,456 Visitors Per Day
And the best thing of all?
Less than 15% of my traffic was from Google. Even if Google completely
obliterated my blog from its rankings, I wouldn t really notice. I had completely
diversified my traffic sources. I was receiving traffic from Facebook, Twitter
and Pinterest and I had hundreds of different bloggers sending me traffic.
By May I d accumulated so many blog traffic strategies that worked that I
decided I wanted to share them with other bloggers, and that s why I ve started
the Blog Traffic Academy.
Each month, I share a 10-20 page step-by-step PDF revealing one of my biggest
traffic sources. Throughout the month I also share quick tips, tricks and
shortcuts that get me more traffic, make me more money and save me time.
I want to personally help every single member explode their blog traffic and
become a full-time blogger.
Click The Link Below To Take A Look At What
Blog Traffic Academy Is All About & Join Today
http://www.bigblogtraffic.com/blog-traffic-academy-wso/
You ll instantly receive Issue #1 when you join.
Issue #1 reveals the 15 minute activity I do every morning that sends me
approximately 5,000 visitors per month.
It s a strategy I ve never seen anyone else talk about and is the EASIEST and
most effective method of traffic generation I ve ever tried.
Join Now For Instant Access To
Issue #1
http://www.bigblogtraffic.com/blog-traffic-academy-wso/
I ve got some incredible traffic strategies to share over the coming weeks and
months and you can have access to all of them if you join Blog Traffic
Academy today.
Click The Link Below To Get More Details & Join
Today
http://www.bigblogtraffic.com/blog-traffic-academy-wso/
Thanks for reading,
James Penn