This guest post is by John Burnside of MoneyIn15Minutes.
My name is John Burnside and I am a recovering traffic addict.
I got sucked into the analytics quicksand, and barely got out alive! I used to wake up in the morning and check how many hits I had over night. I used to stay up until after 12, even if I was tired, because that is when the day’s Google Analytics results came out. As soon as I got a mobile phone that could access the internet anywhere and everywhere I wanted that was when I was truly lost to my cravings. I would check at least once an hour and sometimes twice.
The thing with traffic addiction is that checking up on your traffic then leads on to more procrastination. ‘I’ve had one more person on my blog. Maybe they sent me an email or a comment?’ Then you go and check your emails and log in to your admin area. The list could go on and on and you can make that cycle last all day (I know because it’s been done!). This means that you will actually do nothing towards getting more traffic and you will end up just watching your traffic get smaller and smaller which is exactly the opposite of what you watch traffic for.
Hopefully these techniques that I’m about to share will help you, just like they have helped me, to actually get on with something that will help your blog.
Now I know the nature of the traffic addict is not to plan. That is how I got stuck in the rut in the first place. I would say to myself, “I’ll just check this while I am thinking of what to do.”
The way to get around this is to plan out your day to the letter the day before. Give yourself tasks and time limits for the next day that you are going to work on your blog. If you are part-time, then plan when you are going to work and what you are going to work on during that time. Do not use the excuse, “I only have a couple of minutes.” A couple of minutes is enough time to get a bit of exposure for your blog.
Go to another blog and write a comment or have a look on a forum to see if anything interesting has been talked about that, day and if there is anything you can help with. That only takes a second, but that work will stay online helping you for a long time with a backlinks and, we hope, relevant traffic.
This method is very basic and reminds me of dieting or quitting cigarettes. Simply do not allow yourself to look at your emails or your analytics outside a certain time of the day. Write down all of the things that are included in your “procrastination list” and then give yourself a small window of time during the day that you are allowed to check them.
This is the method I use to restrict myself from checking all day. I have allowed myself to look at them first thing when I wake up and then after I have finished my work for that day. Also for the morning check so that I actually start work I actually time myself and give myself a 15-minute limit. I realize this sounds a little extreme, but when I look back over how much time I have wasted when I could have been expanding my blog, I know the restriction was worth it.
This method is very simple and I think of it a bit like shocking the system out of the habit. As soon as you think of going to check up on your stats, redirect your activity. By this, I mean change that thought into something constructive. For example, every time you have that bad thought of wasting time, do something else like write an article or socialize on your networks (yes, this can also be a form of procrastination, but that’s another article entirely!). After doing this for a little while, you will soon get into the habit of doing constructive things.
Once you employ these methods, you will start to see results very soon in your traffic rankings. Keep in mind that everything you are doing instead of checking up on your statistics will stay online and help you for a long time. Checking your stats does nothing to help you.
My name is John Burnside and I am an internet entrepreneur. If you want to learn more about blogging or making money online then please subscribe to my feed.
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