Hello fellow website builders. Here is by far the best advice I can give anyone who wants to increase their traffic and visibility.

Interview people!

My website was growing ever so slowly until I started interviewing people for my website www.tips4running.com. Now my traffic has quadrupled in the last six months.

Here’s why interviews are so effective…

1. Interviews are unique, original content.

2. They create a lot of traffic.

3. It’s a super powered link exchange.

4. You can find new ways to monetize your site!

Want the details on all these points?  That’s outstanding!  Let’s review shall we?

1. Instead of rehashing other material that is found on the web, create your own buzz by interviewing people in your niche. Don’t be afraid to go after some big fish too.

All you have to do is send out a kind email. If they don’t respond, you lost a minute of your time. If they do respond, you’re on your way.

Probably 50% of the people I ask to interview agree. I target two specific groups. The easier group to get are people who have their own websites. I interview runners who blog about their running or have a website dedicated to some aspect of running.

The other group is famous distance runners. I have been lucky enough to get some great interviews with great collegiate and Olympic runners.

2. When I post an interview on my site, my traffic numbers explode. I’ll give you one example. I interviewed a very good collegiate runner and an excellent collegiate coach.

When the interview was up on my site, I would post a link to it on different running forums. People then start talking about the interview on these message boards, which means more and more people who didn’t know about my site are visiting to read unique, original content.

3. An interview is a super powered link exchange because you might end up with more links than you ever imagined. Here’s how I got two mega links!

First, I went to Alexa and looked at the most powerful sites in my niche.

In the running category, the third most popular site is called LetsRun. After a bit of reading and research, I found out this site is run by two brothers who are running fanatics. I emailed them and requested an interview.

One of them, Weldon Johnson, agreed.  After some more research, I sent Weldon about 15 specific questions.  When I finished the interview, I posted it at my site, and he did as well.

That day, I had a huge spike in traffic. Of course, days later the traffic receded, but the baseline was much higher than before.   Also my site was linked to one of the major running websites.

Fast forward two months.  Matt McCue, An author of a new running book contacted me.  He found out about my site from the interview with Weldon Johnson.

He asked if I would read his book, An Honorable Run, and review it.  I said yes if he would also do an interview. I read the book which was phenomenal by the way, and then interviewed him over the phone.

He had some great contacts for me that he shared with me after the interview.  I sent the interview to these people, and the interview was linked to by Runner’s World. According to Alexa, Runner’s World is the number one running website.

4. Another interview that I did led to some serious money. Marius Bakken is a former Olympic distance runner. He has a few running websites. I interviewed him and we exchanged links.

A few months later Marius contacted me because he wrote about running the marathon. He told me he was selling this book using Clickbank. I read it and reviewed the book for my site and became an affiliate for Marius Bakken’s 100 Day Marathon Plan.

Now I make more money selling his eBook than I do with Adsense.  I didn’t even think about selling eBooks until he contacted me. Marius Bakken would have never asked if I didn’t interview him either.

Need any more proof that interviews are an avenue to pursue?

You’ve had your blog for a few months now.  You’ve chosen a topic you love and have great information.  But you have very little traffic and no sales.

So what’s wrong?

Often times it’s nothing but your impatience and lack of consistency.

A few months is hardly enough time to give a new business.  So if you went into this with unrealistic expectations, you will be disappointed.

I get an amazing number of emails from people who claim “affiliate marketing doesn’t work.”  And when I ask them how long they’ve been at it, the answer is often two months or less.

Are you kidding me?

It took me months before any worthwhile money started to roll in. And even when my income didn’t equate to the hours I was spending online, I never stopped writing and strategizing.

If you haven’t generated a steady stream of traffic yet, one thing you have to work on is building momentum with consistency.

If you’re a new blogger, you need to establish a rhythm.  Posting once a month is probably not going to cut it.  This is a business so you must commit to it and take it seriously.

There are so many blogs and websites out there with great potential, but they’ve been abandoned by impatient owners looking for too much too soon.

I know it’s frustrating when you feel no one is reading your content.  But if you have a solid concept and believe in your site, you will be amazed at what will happen if you just stick with it and produce solid content on a consistent basis.

Set goals for content and video production. Make your presence known. It’s time for you to get serious. Let’s make 2010 a great one!

One of the biggest challenges I face with teaching people how to market their sites online is the constant comparing.  People want to know exactly what I did to draw in so much traffic over the years because they are convinced if they do the same, they’ll have the same (or similar) results.

One guy even accused me of keeping my REAL traffic tips a secret because he just couldn’t seem to get enough traffic to his website.  He requested that I write out a list of everything I did from day one to generate traffic to 2 Create a Website.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to learn from someone who is already seeing success, but you have to remember the Internet has evolved.  Yes, many of the techniques I used years ago still work, but a lot of them don’t anymore.

In the video below I discuss why new Webmasters have to be careful about doing direct comparisons with more established websites when it comes to traffic building…

And just for the record, there are no secrets when it comes to building traffic.

In the last site review I mentioned how offering e-books from my site has really helped boost my traffic and income over the years. So I thought I’d create a video showing you how simple it is to create an e-book using Adobe Acrobat Professional.

Adobe Acrobat is quite expensive and may not be in the budget for everyone, so if you have experience with more economical software solutions please feel free to comment on this post.

Just remember that you always get what you pay for and some of the lower cost solutions may not provide the benefits that Adobe does like securing the book from theft and creating feedback forms that people can complete and print right from the book.

However if those features are not important to you, you can use a more economical solution for creating your books. I would still recommend using the PDF format, however, because they are compatible with both Macs and PC’s.

E-Book Creation Video

Watch the video on how to create an e-book with Adobe Acrobat Professional.

E-mail subscribers, click this link to watch the video.

I just logged into my YouTube account today and noticed my videos have handy little “Add to MySpace and Facebook” buttons below them.

Now anyone who likes your mini flick can post it on two of the most popular social networking sites with greater ease.

I’ve toyed with using another video hosting service because I’d like to have more control over the playback options.

However, it’s hard to give up on YouTube considering the benefits…

More Traffic

Since I started making YouTube videos in August 2007, I’ve received an explosion of traffic to my sites. Almost every day I get an email from at least one person who has recently viewed my videos.

Not to mention you can now add hyperlinks to your description so people can click over to your site from YouTube in a snap.

The viral benefits are the best. Look how simple it is for anyone to embed your video into their site or blog. YouTube makes it ridiculously easy to spread your message around the Web for free.

If you’re struggling with traffic, you might want to tap into the video market and see if you can generate some interest to your site.

Videos don’t have to be elaborate or professionally done. Just presentable. It’s like writing content in a sense. Provide useful, relevant information to your target audience, only with video.

Google Owns YouTube

As I wrote in a recent post, why wouldn’t you want to make use of as many Google tools while they are dominating the Web in search and other Webmaster arenas?

Don’t you think Google is keeping tabs on the YouTube channels with lots subscribers and number of video views? Especially since you can list your website address in your channel.

Yup… I believe it all links up.

Video Sells

One of the biggest challenges of marketing online is trust. People want to know they can trust you before they buy. Video is an excellent way to help your audience get to know, trust and like you.

Get Ahead of The Game

While video is getting more popular, most Webmasters still don’t use it. So those who are, have an extreme advantage right now.

I definitely believe video will become the standard in years to come, so if you haven’t jumped on the bandwagon, it’s time to start considering it.

It’s Easy

If you’re worried about the technicalities of video, don’t. Uploading videos to YouTube couldn’t be easier. The only tools I use are my camera (Sony HD) and Windows Movie Maker (free with XP and Vista).

Don’t put off using video any longer. Get yourself a piece of the viral traffic storm YouTube can bring.

In case you don’t know, Yahoo! Answers is a free Q&A community that allows people to ask and answer questions on virtually any topic.

I was doing a backlink check on Yahoo the other day. (A backlink check is a way to see how many other sites link to you. Go to Yahoo.com and type in linkdomain:www.yoursite.com to check your site’s backlinks.)

And I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people who posted a link to my site on Yahoo! Answers when answering questions about website creation.

Wow! Free traffic and I didn’t have to do a thing.

This further drives the point of how important it is to build the most useful site you can in your niche. Whether you reach golfers, doctors, stay at home moms, you name it. If your site is useful, people will link to it voluntarily.

The other benefit to this is that the search engines will notice these multiple one-way links and reward you with higher rankings.

So don’t just put up a 3-page site and hope for the best. Build a site with a wealth of useful information.

Check your competitors and offer tools and advice that they don’t. Get people to remember you, and you will be rewarded long-term.

Here’s a book I wrote on traffic building. It’s called “20 Ways to Build Traffic to Your Site”. In this eBook, I discuss various methods (most of which I still use) that will help bring in more visits to your website.

I’ll admit some of the tips are pretty elementary if you’ve been marketing on the web for a while, but it’s amazing at how many people still ignore the basics.

You’ll also find a handful of innovative ways to promote your site that you should take advantage of (screensavers, contests, etc.)

If you have a website, you’re free to offer this book as a free download from your own site.

Download it today.