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Do you know what the number 1 killer of startups is? Traffic.

Do you know why? It’s our constant fixation on generating and building traffic that ultimately kills a startup or prevents a blogger from writing full-time.

Here are some common mistakes entrepreneurs and bloggers make regarding traffic:

• No matter how much traffic you have, Google Adsense will never bring you significant revenue
• Getting a lot of traffic is NOT a business model
• Bloggers do NOT click on ads
• A blogger CAN make money without depending on traffic and advertisements
• Focusing on traffic, rather than building community, will ultimately lead to a failed startup

Think about it. How many internet startups get started without a clear business model? How many internet shows die because they never reached a huge amount of viewers? How many bloggers are afraid to make money w/ their blog because they feel they don’t have enough traffic?

Do you want to be a full-time blogger? Do you want to have a successful internet startup? STOP FOCUSING ON TRAFFIC!!!

Great, we’ve gotten that of the way now. So if you’re not focusing on traffic, then what should you be focusing on?

The Startups Focus

The internet startup should focus religiously on cultivating and maintaining current user relationships.

This does two very important things:

1. Your first-mover users will have a very high chance of recommending your site (word of mouth) to their friends if they’re happy with your company
2. When there is a community already established on the site, first time users will get instantly immersed in it and will have a higher probability of sticking

Do you know what I absolutely hate? I hate when AT&T, the cell phone provider I use, has fantastic promotions for first time customers, but completely neglects long time customers. The same exact thing applies to LA Fitness - my gym membership. LA Fitness has tons of promotions to get people to sign up, but has nothing for me, a 6 year member.

Do NOT become these companies. If you focus 100% of your energy on building a community for your website, then your members will do the marketing for you. Just take Twitter as the best example. Have you ever seen them market their product? NO WAY! All of their traffic has been from Tweeples blogging and evangelizing the site like crazy.

How to reward your current members

Contest and Prizes

Create a weekly contest where your members have to participate to win a cool prize like a free iPod or free Flip Cam. Get the company to sponsor the product so you don’t have to pay for it. When a member wins, make sure to get a picture of them, and put them on your website’s Hall of Fame so that they feel further attached to your website.

Unexpected Milestone

People absolutely LOVE surprises. Reward the devoted, hardcore people on your site by giving them an unexpected prize when they reach a certain milestone. If you’re an ecommerce website, give a surprise reward to someone who orders their 10th product from your website. If you’re a community based website, give an unexpected reward to someone who has reached 1,000 friends.

The point here is that if you give your diehard fans an unexpected reward, then they will tell your casual members about the potential rewards they could be receiving and thus have more active participation on your site.

The Blogger Focus

I have done my share of SEO and strategic Stumbling. I’ll be perfectly honest with you, I have spikes in my traffic due to both, but rarely does my traffic significantly increase after the spike. Inflated traffic like Digg, Stumble, and from Google just do NOT stick.

I don’t want to give you the same boring advice like “write quality content” or “comment on other peoples’ blogs.” I’m sick of it.
If you want to take your mind off traffic and build a stronger community with your blog, do the following:

1. Reward the people who are currently your readers (similar to what startups should be doing)
2. Promote your readers
3. Introduce your readers to each other

What I wrote above for Startups applies to Bloggers in terms of rewarding them. Use the Top Commentors Plugin to reward your readers who comment the most; occasionally give out prizes to your readers based on a contest you develop.

How to Reward Your Current Readers

Feature your readers with an Interview

If one of your biggest fans has a great blog of their own, then invite them as a guest onto your blog and do a video interview with them. To make sure that the interview doesn’t bore your readers, make sure that the interview has a clear goal and objective. For example, if your blog is about fashion, feature a reader with a very cute fashion sense and talk about where you guys get the best deals and what to wear this coming season. If your readers can learn something valuable from the interview, then you should definitely do it.

Make introductions

You can safely assume that your blog readers share similar qualities. This means your blog readers would love to meet each other because people love to meet others of similar interest.

When appropriate, introduce one of your readers to another via Twitter. It’s quite simple actually; something like this would suffice:

@Yu-kai_Chou thx for the comment! Great ideas. Would love to introduce you to @Joseph_Yi. I think you guys would hit it off

Your readers will instantly become grateful to you and will not hesitate to introduce their network to your blog or Twitter.

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Traffic is never the answer. Focus on your current user base or readership and you will become much more successful.