3 Simple Concepts to Follow for a Successful Website or Business

Simple ConceptsPeople are the ones who make you money. They click on your ads, hire your services, buy your products all the while helping you to grow your business and make it profitable.

They do this in two main ways: By visiting your site or making purchases, they are helping you generate immediate revenue, which you can then reinvest for more income.

Secondly, they indirectly benefit you by providing publicity and leads: people are the ones who will talk about and recommend you to others they know.

Every promotional or advertising campaign has a limited budget and will not be sustainable if you do not have sufficient revenue coming in consistently. You cannot possibly make yourself known to every person in your demographic market through a standard marketing channel. Your reach will inevitably be limited.

Where ads cannot penetrate, people can. If you’ve owned a popular business or website you will eventually notice that others come to trust your brand or visit/use your site because others talk about you in their own clustered communities. You will start to notice traffic streaming in from forums, blogs and social networking sites.

The focus on attracting people and converting them into supporters is of utmost importance. Appealing to interested audiences and securing their patronage is an important factor to consider when you are trying to make your site profitable.

Three Essential Steps to Really Grow Your Business

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Image Credit: Thomas Hawk


The profitability of every online enterprise depends on the amount of traffic you can pull in and convert, i.e. the number of people you can attract and make into loyal customers and supporters of your brand.

This process can be broken down into three main steps:

  1. Capture Attention. Create a spectacle. Leverage the brand of popular personalities. Piggyback off established websites or current hot topics. Be a contrarian. Demonstrate integrity. Develop a style. Your goal is to go broad and bring in a general audience, i.e the people who have a casual interest in your service/product or niche. Repeat this mantra: I must capture as much traffic and attention as possible.

  2. Sell Yourself. Why choose your site over other competitors? Why bother reading or subscribing to your blog? What makes you stand out? And more importantly, what problem do you solve? Your website must fulfill a specific need or desire and if that fails, create a problem and sell yourself as the only solution worth exploring. You must become essential or difficult to replace. Go deep and build an audience that believes you are one of the best out there.

  3. Nurture Supporters. People gradually come to trust your brand over time. They treat it as a good friend, as something they can rely on to acquire experiences or feelings they want. They become brand evangelists who share their belief in you with many others. How do you gain these fervent supporters? By always selling ideas, philosophies and concepts instead of just products. Generosity, integrity and consistency goes a long way too.

These are general concepts which I feel are essential when you are trying to extend your brand and reach through your audience. Take these three simple points and try to think about how you can apply them to your current website.

While concepts cannot be easily applied directly to a website like a template or script, they are very important because they direct and measure the effectiveness of actions, while influencing your end goals or project objectives.

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28 Comments - Share Your Thoughts
  • Piggybacking off an established website is EXACTLY what I am trying to do with this latest blog. It worked for John Cow.

  • There’s little that benefits your brand better than word-of-mouth. If you can get people talking about you, your product, or service, then you’re landed.

  • Maki, I’m seeing a definite theme to your recent posts – it’s all about the people :) These three tips fit very well with any blog in particular, now I just have to figure out how I can apply them to a little niche site I am building.

  • Well, you can also do what you want and work on increasing traffic. By having good content, and comments, new comers will feel attracted to your site. If one can feel that this site is already receiving traffic they will stick more because they think to themselves that this site has to be of interest for so many people to come to it. That’s what I say to myself.

  • Hi i love your blog. Can i piggy back of your established website? I have linked to you recently in my latest article please have a look. thank you.

  • Its easy said than done. To do this you have to understand your niche and then your audience. I am having a horrid time.

  • ‘Generosity, integrity and consistency go a long way too’ – this is a good advice.

  • If I see a new commentator, I go out of my way to thank them for commenting, and invite them to come back again.

  • Piggybacking on Dosh Dosh would be a great idea:

    Posh Posh could be a blog about Victoria Beckham.

    Gosh Gosh could be a blog about surprising news items.

    Nosh Nosh could be a blog about food.

    Squash Squash could be a blog about insect control!

  • It takes so much more than piggybacking of an established site. As you mentioned, you have to give your readers a reason to pick you over the next guy. This means you have to have compelling content that is relevant to your target audience and give the readers a reason to choose you as the expert in your chosen field.

    We have just started our blog, but from the conception, we realized that the three steps you outline in this post are critical to our success. It takes more than just focusing on one – you must do all three, and do them well, or you will just be another blogosphere statistic.

    Another great post, but then again, what else do we expect?

  • So it was all about Coca Cola versus Pepsi Cola

  • I think this is a great list. I always re-read your posts, they pack a lot of chewy goodness in a small package.

    That link to “what problem do you solve” is especially brilliant.

  • (smiley)

  • Wow, Courtney Turtle. Hadn’t seen that one before.

  • Hm, maybe I should start an all-slams blog called Mosh Mosh.

  • Maki on October 18th, 2007

    @Caroline,I had a little mini-epiphany about how its really all about people in the end and I’ll writing more about it. Hopefully I don’t repeat myself too much..

    @Courtney Parody is all fun and games and may work as a piggybacking method although I’ll much prefer to piggyback off the brand strength of another site/personality through JVs or reciprocal marketing than just doing up a site that sells the same product/content. Good luck with yours. :)

    @Sonia .. yes, that’s a pretty cool little link (wink).

  • Excellent points – I love “what problem do you solve” – that’s huge. I’m going to be thinking a lot about how to clearly and accurately define that one… not just for my blog, but for business too. Having a clear vision of this makes for a better product/service/blog and being able to articulate it well is the beginning of a very convincing powerful value proposition.

    ~ Christing

  • Sell yourself. That is EXACTLY what I should be applying. (Although my site isn’t a business or how-to site, but I can tweak it to suit my visitors’ needs.) You should make it clear to your visitors why they should keep coming back, make them see why your site is unique among thousands of the other ones. In other words: Know what tickles their fancy and do things to keep on tickling those. =)

  • One important dilemma for me is to time new posts..i run a humor website…that has earned me 89 cents till now….While content is okay..i get huge swings in readership when i post otherwise traffic gets low..how do i make sure my archives are interesting to read too.. using a dosh dosh theme though at iwannacrib.com/

  • I agree with Anna. You really have to sell yourself and keep your readers coming back. Just make sure you cater to the needs of your audience and they’ll keep coming back.

  • What I’ve noticed is that where one site or blog becomes successful, hundreds more try to replicate that same formula, but like what was mentioned….A successful site should be one that has a unique selling position to compel visitors to go to your site rather than visit another. Don’t recreate the same wheel…Instead, ADD RIMS TO IT :-)

  • Maybe someone can start a new piggyback doshdosh with anime avatars on everypost, any takers?

  • Thanks for this great article Maki. I have been reading your site for awhile but I feel like you have begun to kick it into a new gear. Im having some good success with the information that you are posting here.

    There are alot of people that are doing Personal Development sites which makes it a competitive niche. I welcome all the people writing but it does seem to be some piggybacking going on.

    Over time I believe your commitment to your subject will begin to shine through. This is attractive to your readers. As the saying goes, “catch fire and people will come watch you burn.” I am a student of the law of attraction and I have made my mind transparent so that others can follow my course of thought.

    Look forward to growing with you Maki!

  • I think I need the third one most, which is nurture supporters.

    Any tips on that?

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