If you’ve ever had your own website, you probably know that the first thing you need to do in order to promote it is to get traffic. Then you can install Google Analytics and track that traffic, learn more about visitors, where do they come from etc.

The need for getting traffic is emphasized a lot. Actually, it is emphasized to that extent that people forgot one fundamental thing:

- A visitor to your site, by itself, is useless. If a particular group of visitors from a traffic source don’t do anything then why bother attracting them in the first place? Yet, millions of webmasters do it every single day. They put traffic before money. All of this because of one fundamental assumption.

If you have traffic, you’ll eventually make money. THIS IS NOT TRUE.

How do I know this?

Because I’ve taken this concept the extreme. I created a site which ranked in the top 10.000 most visited websites in the world (according to Compete.com). I got all my traffic from Digg/StumbleUpon, thousands unique visitors per day. I actually got on the Digg front page 5-6 times and frequently got 30.000+ views from Stumbleupon on each of my articles. The whole site got over half a million unique visitors in 6 months.

My assumption was: Boy, I have so much traffic, once I put something like AdSense, I’ll be making decent amount of money. Maybe like $10 a day. So I put AdSense and waited for 3 days…

…and I made less than $1 a day. The CTR was less than 0.1%. Ouch! The sad thing was that I was working on the site for more than 6 months (you think getting into top 10.000 on Compete is easy?) and was operating under this flawed assumption.

I could have also made money via pay-per-view (some sites pay max. $2 per 1000 views) but still that would have been less than $1000.

Traffic = Money Sounds EASY

This is the reason, I think, people accept this assumption without being critical of it all. It sounds easy, comforting. Something like having a day job, you know that if you work for a month you’ll get the salary. Same here, just work on the traffic and the money will come. As we’ve seen, this is far from the truth.

What about Facebook?

There are exceptions, though, and this is where traffic is taken to the extreme. If you capture an enormous number of visitors (20.000+ a day) then you should make some money. Facebook has millions of visitors per day and they make a lot of money. What about Twitter? Well, they also have a lot of visitors but haven’t figured how to make money yet. Some people take Facebook/other high-traffic sites as an example that traffic = money. However:

a) Not everyone can have millions of visitors on their website per day. The number of people online is limited, so you’re way better off focusing first on monetization and then on traffic.

b) You will need a lot of luck to get to the size of Facebook. You also have a big competition for traffic. Many people are myopic in terms of blindly competing for traffic without realizing that, if they were to have a business online, their first priority should be MONEY, not traffic.

And if you think about this, the sheer amount of volume Facebook got allowed them to attract a whole different range of advertisers a smaller site would have no way of attracting.

5000 Visitors Per Day and Making $1  or 500 Visitors Per Day and Making $20?

I met people who are making barely $300 with 100.000+ visitors coming from Stumbleupon/Digg. On the other hand, I’ve met people who are making $10.000 with around 30.000 visitors coming from Google/other high-quality traffic source. The idea I want to propose here is to focus on MONETIZATION first and TRAFFIC after that (like most businesses do).

When was the last time…you’ve seen a fastest growing business focus on getting prospects first without selling anything? Most of them actually have their own products which is (and will probably always be) the best way to make money in any industry. The reason for this is probably because you have the most opportunities when you’re making your own product: you can do PR, SEO, paid traffic, pay bloggers to blog about your product etc. You can then carefully analyze and see which traffic source brings most sales and focus on that. Then you have the word-of-mouth advantage, you’ll have people that will spread the word to their friends and you’ll also have repeated customers.

How to Focus on Money Using Google Analytics

There’s one great feature in Google Analytics called GOALS. If you have an Adsense account, you can automatically link Analytics + AdSense and the goals will be set up automatically for you. In case you’re selling a product you’ll need to do the setup yourself.

For example, you can count as ‘goal’ the moment someone gets to the ‘thank you for purchasing’ page. What that means is that they’ve gone through all the steps like taking a look at your product, going through the shopping card, entering their payment details and purchasing.

Google Analytics can then tell you what referrers sent you the biggest % of people who completed a goal (purchased your product). For example, if you’re selling an anti-virus software, you might discover that 3% of the people who type ‘good antivirus software’ on Google but your product. You might also discover that you did a recent PR campaign and people coming from some famous magazine tend to buy more  than average.

In that case, you’ll want to do more work for those traffic sources. Let’s take the previous example. If you rank #4 for ‘good antivirus software’, you might want to get to #1 in order to receive a bigger number of people who will eventually convert at 3%. Or you might want to create a deeper relationship with that famous magazine so they do more cover for your software.

Another good strategy is to focus on the low-hanging fruit. Identify traffic sources outside of the top 10 that brought you a sale or two. Do some research on them and see if you can bring more visitors from these traffic sources to see how they convert at a bigger scale. For example, you might notice that you got 2 sales from some old guest post you did. What about doing another guest post on that blog? Let’s suppose you did another guest post and saw that people convert consistently from that blog. Here’s an opportunity for forming a deeper relationship and posting regularly there.

Mark Joyner, the founder of Simpleology told one really profound story. While Mark was in the U.S. Army Officer Candidate School, they had an instructor whom they called Yoda because of his superior skills/accomplishments. One day they had a class from Yoda. He asked his students “What is the one skill that defines a leader?” Many people tried to guess. Some guy said “Communication skills!” Yoda replied: “Oh really? So let’s have you have a suicidal tactical and you communicate it oh so clearly to your troops. That makes you a leader?”

Another fellow student tried to guess: “It’s charisma!” Yoda replied: “Oh, are you joking? So you’re a tactical moron but you look good in your BDUs. I just wrote your tombstone for you. No charge. Next!”

And so it went and nobody was able to say what’s the defining characteristic of a leader.

Then Yoda finally told the answer:

“The one skill that defines a leader is the ability to see the battlefield”.

A really profound lesson. When you think about it, it might have been obvious…what’s the use of communicating clearly or having charisma when you can’t figure out what’s going on the battlefield?

In the business battlefield, money is the main way businesses keep score. But can you see the battlefield? Can you see where money comes from? You decide. Focusing on traffic for a long period of time without focusing on promotion is ignoring to see the battlefield for a long time.

WHEN to Focus on Traffic

Of course, you should focus on traffic but always ask yourself whether it brings you money/any other benefit. For example, you might want to test some traffic source. Bring some visitors from it and see whether they buy your product/affiliate product/click on ads.

The main point is, traffic does not always equal money. The best way to see whether a particular traffic brings money is to test and not just assume.

“Freelancer” – a title very self explanatory. You wouldn’t need a dictionary to understand what it means. Being such, you work on the comfort of your own home & time. No one is the boss of you – just yourself. But let’s face it, two heads or more is always better than one. Getting ideas and opinions from other people always helps much. Especially working in the industry where impressions always matter, Working alone can get very exhausting and lonely. You may come to a point that you just black out and run out of ideas. Build a group to help you on your struggles.

In this article, I will be sharing the essentials of accountability groups and why freelancers should take advantage.

What is an Accountability Group?

An Accountability group is a circle of selective people (at least 2-5 people) who have  good working relationship, trust, high reliability and have the passion for excellence together as a group. Just like family, helping, goal setting and looking out for each other’s welfare is the basic mind set of the members of this group.

How can  your Accountability group be effective?

Accountability groups must be -

• SYSTEMATIC – essential for goal setting and time framing those goals.
• PICKY – quality means everything. An accountability group needs to have people with the best quality that the  business needs.
• RELIABLE – every working relationship needs that high standard of trust. Make sure your group is built with strong foundation of loyalty.
• COMMITTED – Members should take the group seriously and bring out their duties as members.

Yes, an Accountability group isn’t about simple social meet ups. It’s a group made up of serious, diligent, dependable, success makers.

Why should I get an Accountability group?

1. It’s super fun!

You may be wondering – how can a serious group of freelancers be fun? Well if you enjoy being on top of your game and winning it, then that’s the reason. It is fun, basically because with an accountability group, you accomplish your goals and expectations for your success. When you get such a positive impact on your business, wouldn’t you consider that fun? – I thought so.

Just like when you plan a vacation. You huddle for exciting ideas that would make your plans a success. You will find it very thrilling after gathering all the great ideas your friends shared, then putting it to action. It’s the same with setting goals and sharing ideas on how to make your business more profitable every time you have a meeting. Success is always fun.

2. It challenges you.

Because you work in your own comfort, there may be times – or maybe most of the times you don’t do things on schedule. Working at home can be tricky (I should know, I’m a work-at-home lady). I try to discipline my self to work on my set time like working in an office. It’s tough to really keep yourself on track.

Accountability is one way to challenge yourself. If the rest of the members keep pushing you, it’s never impossible you get motivated to do what you have to. If you make a formal working schedule and fail to follow it, take a look on your weekly goals to motivate you and keep you focused.

3.  It’s supportive (two thumbs up)!

People around you who doesn’t understand what you do may question – what’s keeping you busy staying at home and sitting in front of the computer all day? Others may think that your job is unstable and that you can walk out on it anytime or it may walk out on you.

You maybe missing all kinds of events in the world, but don’t worry because you’re not alone. Having an accountability group makes you aware that there are people facing the same situation you are in right now. It’s better to keep yourself busy for a reason – profit!

4. Business growth.

Anything you feed, grows. So the more you feed your self with new ideas and strategies you will surely  double or triple your profit. Which means business is good! It also gives you self growth as well and makes you feel you’re learning new things every time.

Complimenting accountability groups share and refer clients. Freelancers in the group partner each other but still preserve the harmonious working relationship. Joint ventures are being underutilized to grow business.

5. It makes you work your business and not the other way around.

Proper goal setting, boundary setting  and prioritizing can keep you out of that messy, crammed schedule. If you have an accountability group, there will be people who can help you manage your time and organize your goals for every week. You will have people to share your extra load.

Be on your business as well as in it. It is important if you look forward to a healthy  growing business. For sure, taking things up to the next level wont be long.

Freelancing doesn’t mean you have to completely work by yourself. It’s taking things under YOUR control but not isolating one’s self. Working with an accountability group is a plus! It shows how you can work with people as well. So go and build your own accountability group, you’ll see it’s for the good.