To continue this mini-series of Statistical Analysis posts, we’re going to talk about Referring sites. I’m afraid that the information here, while practical, isn’t anything new or mindblowing. What I will provide are real-world examples of how knowing how visitors got to your site can prove beneficial in your traffic building efforts.

Building traffic is as simple as finding a method, tweaking said method, and then repeating it.

If you read any number of make money online blogs or my make money online ebook - then you should already be commenting on other blogs. Well, using Google Analytics, start to think of these blogs as investments. Each time you comment you are making a deposit, and then you are seeing which investments pay the greatest amounts of interest. It’s as simple as that. Check your list of referring sites on Analytics, and you’ll quickly notice which investments have the higher ROI (return on investment), or simply speaking… which blogs send you the most traffic based on your comments. While I don’t suggest you cease commenting on blogs that aren’t providing a lot of traffic, you can focus your efforts on the ones that give you a higher ROI.

So if blog X sends 20 visitors per comment, and blog Y sends 8, it’s only natural to assume that I should step up my commenting efforts on Blog X. Now, 20 visitors definitely won’t make or break you, but you can see how this would help if you multiply the formula 10, 20, even 100 times over. This form of statistical analysis doesn’t work with just blogs either. You can use it with forums, and social networking mediums as well. If you can find just 10 traffic sources that send at least 50 visitors a day, that’s 500 visitors right off the bat. And the best part about it is this…

In my eyes 500 visitors a day is the “breaking point” for a blog. After you can repeatedly achieve 500+ visitors a day, the traffic starts to grow exponentially, in an almost viral fashion. I’m not saying that your work is done at 500 visitors, or that 500 visitors will make you any money (because it won’t). What I am saying is that after your blog is able to consistently bring in 500+ unique visitors a day, it starts to grow on it’s own, even when you aren’t directly promoting it. Your 500 visitors might take a few months to turn into a thousand, but it’s going to be a lot easier to get 1,000 visitors than it was to get 500. I know it sounds nuts, but you’ll just have to believe me on this one. Achieving 500 visitors a day for a new blog is much harder than getting to 1,000 after reaching 500.

I’ve got more to come, but hopefully this proves useful. As always, feel free to stumble and to share your thoughts in the comment section.

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