Writing For Traffic

It's a model that works every time, but is hard to implement.

February 16, 2019

Writing is a daily discipline that can’t afford to be missed. It’s something that’s incredibly valuable - especially on the internet.

I’m incredibly inspired by the stories I have heard about people getting massive amounts of traffic to their websites simply by publishing authoritative content on a given subject.

Here’s a story about a tea blog that went from 0 to 150,000 visitors/month in just 8 months by writing 4 articles per week.

After looking at the SEO stats on Ahrefs, Flavio Copes has amassed over 200,000 visitors/month after publishing a daily article on web development related topics for 2.5 years.

There’s so many examples of this happening. It’s staggering.

It’s crazy to me how straight forward it is. Simply write good content. Everyday. That’s it.

You can be an authority on any topic. You can have massive amounts of content to any website in just a couple of years of committed effort.

James Clear did this. He’s an authoritative voice on habits, and just became a NYT best seller because of his massive 500,000+ email list. How did he build that list? By writing a blog post twice weekly for 4 years.

It’s so simple. Yet at the same time, it’s so hard.

That level of discipline isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a lot of research. It’s a lot of time.

But, the payoff is so great. We’re talking at least 7-figures annually in traffic with a simple sales funnel.

I’m just thinking to myself - what would I write about? What topic would I want to research enough to be drawing that much traffic? What topic would I want to be known for?

Off the top of my head, I’m interested in web development, indie SAAS businesses, Firebase, being a husband/father, my Christian faith, soccer (Arsenal F.C.), hiking, SEO, and tech (laptops, phones, development, etc.).

That’s quite a few topics, so I obviously wouldn’t choose all of them. But, what’s one or two that I could choose to start writing and studying?

I’m betting a Firebase blog would be well received, it’s still relatively new and unexplored (to the common developer). It would be cool to be an expert on the topic since I use it so much.

Web development is super saturated, and so is soccer. Writing about my faith would probably go well, but I’m not sure that’s what I want to be known for.

Being a tech blogger would be SO fun. I would love that. I love exploring new tech, and I’m not very biased towards brands. I love exploring and seeing all of the features that different brands have for different products.

So, tech blogger or Firebase? I know being better at Firebase development would help me become a better developer. Though, I would probably want to dive deeper into proper JS development before doing that. I don’t want to put out tutorials with bad/not well managed code.

Being a tech blogger would be fun, though it wouldn’t help me out in learning new things. It’s more of a race to get out content for the new devices on the market. That’s not really my thing.

Just looking at the Firebase SEO potential - It’s a mixed bag. I think it’s specific enough to carve out a niche for myself, but I may have to expand it to other Serverless platforms (such as AWS Lambda and Now/Next.js) to get bigger amounts of traffic for tutorials and blog posts.

By nature, for almost everything I write, there will be 10 other articles on the topic. But, that’s the game we play. There will be a few that bring in most of your traffic, and several that are duds.

It all builds up over time to become a content behemoth that draws in targeted traffic that you can use for generating a profit and/or creating successful products.

It’s no question that daily articles is better than even twice weekly, or weekly articles. The quality may suffer at that point, depending on how conscience and impactful you can make an article. If you can pack a lot into a little, then you may be good to go.

I’m excited about the focus on a venture like this. I’ll first be applying it to my startup Closet Tools, but then I will be turning it around and working on it for my own future ventures.