More subscribers. More traffic. More followers.

It’s easy to get caught up in the race for more. More is better, right?

We all want our businesses and blogs to grow. But not all growth is ideal or even beneficial. Sometimes blind growth can be harmful.

More contacts and more eyeballs doesn’t always mean better eyeballs. Would you rather have 1,000 people’s eyes completely glued to everything you do, or 100,000 with an attention span rivaling a fruit fly on amphetamines?

More traffic isn’t always better either. New traffic is great, but if 99% leave without subscribing or taking some kind of desired action, does it really matter? Wouldn’t you rather have a few new followers join you every day as lifelong customers, than a few thousand who window-shop and quickly move on?

How big is “big enough?” Have you thought about this? Incredible size easily leads to overwhelm of too many good ideas. I’m sure there are quite a few “big people” out there who wish their businesses were smaller and simpler.

It’s not that growth is bad

Growth is natural. If your product or service is first-rate, if your content is terrific, if you spend lots of time building quality relationships, and if you learn to effectively promote yourself, you’re going to grow.

But we could always do more. We hit one milestone number and immediately we start wishing for the next.

We have this idea that in order to be successful we need to be as big as possible. So is that really true? I don’t think so.

• Charlie Gilkey has a blog of just over 3,000 subscribers. And with this relatively “small” following, he has had no problem carving out a niche for himself helping creative entrepreneurs launch and develop their products. He regularly partners with peers who have five times or more the size of audience he has.
• Adam Baker runs another profitable, agile business with a few thousand subscribers. He’s managed to stay lean enough to travel the world with his family while he runs his business.
• Yusuf Clack has built a successful business by targeting a small niche and speaking to them in a way that no one else has. He doesn’t have a huge online following. But he has a passionate one.

These are just a few of the many people out there who are doing quite well with a relatively small but highly engaged audience.

How exactly do you make this work?

Instead of playing for numbers, you play for depth. Think knock-out punches instead of a torrent of annoying fly-swatting jabs.

Okay, maybe that’s a bad analogy, you don’t make friends by hitting them in the face.

How about if I just tell you a few ways to deepen your reach?

• Do less, better. It’s much easier to make an impression when you focus on doing a few key things incredibly well. Become known for helping people by doing something amazing.
• Create high-value products and services. If your product price range is under $20, you’ll have to move a ton of inventory. But if you focus on valuable, higher-priced products (like awesome consulting or private training) you won’t need as many clients.
• Make more intimate connections. You can create a deeper connection with someone in a five-minute phone call than you can in five months of twitter conversation. The more you can connect on the phone and in person, the better, and the more likely you’ll create relationships that go beyond the surface level.
• Build a referral based business. When your focus is on people (not just numbers), more people will want to refer you to their friends and peers. This means you need to offer excellent customer service and you need to always exceed expectations. Also, if you have a service or product that complements someone else’s, it will be a natural fit for them to refer their people to you.
• Make yourself accessible. So many people create unnecessary distance between themselves and the people they help. They have filters, gate keepers, and barriers to communication. One benefit of staying small is it’s much easier to engage with your audience. Show that you’re someone who really cares and wants to help. The more you do that, the greater depth of connections you will build.

The more you focus on depth, the more you realize that breadth is only relevant to a point. If you become obsessed with growth for its own sake, it can be hard to keep perspective.

Sometimes being small is just fine. Sometimes, in fact, it’s fantastic.

About the Author: Jonathan Mead is a martial artist and self development writer. He just released a guide called The Dojo that helps you get amazing things done before most people finish breakfast.

Earlier this week on TechCrunch, Michael Arrington wrote an alarmed post about “fast food content that will surely, over time, destroy the mom and pop operations that hand craft their content today.”

Mom and pop operations and hand-crafted content sounds an awful lot like you and me, doesn’t it?

So is this actually something we need to worry about? Is what Arrington calls “the rise of cheap, disposable content on a mass scale, force fed to us by the portals and search engines” going to destroy the businesses we’re building on a foundation of high-quality content?

Arrington is deeply concerned about sites like AOL and Demand Media, which scrape and mash real content into something that’s theoretically legitimate (since it was compiled by a human being rather than a piece of software), but in practice gives no value to the reader.

This “mainstream spam” can be efficiently optimized for search, or thrust onto the unsuspecting eyeballs of AOL users. (Haven’t the poor things suffered enough already?)

Arrington believes there’s no hope against this onslaught of junk content, which is going to overwhelm all of the good stuff.

Clearly, we’re all doomed

Arrington advises content creators (that’s you and me) to:

Figure out an even more disruptive way to win, or die. Or just give up on making money doing what you do. If you write for passion, not dollars, you’ll still have fun. Even if everything you write is immediately ripped off without attribution, and the search engines don’t give you the attention they used to. You may have to continue your hobby in the evening and get a real job, of course. But everyone has to face reality sometimes.

Apart from the whining, the exaggeration, and the hysteria, the problem with Arrington’s argument is it’s based on a number of bad assumptions.

Specifically:

Bad assumption #1: Search engines and mega portals are the only way to get traffic

AOL is feeding their content slop to their “massive” audience (which, in fact, is shrinking at rates that would make Biggest Loser proud). Arrington makes the assumption that those AOL customers won’t come find your non-crap content, because the fast food stuff is the only thing on their radar.

This then leapfrogs to another bad assumption, that the only way anyone sees content is to find it on a mega site like AOL, or via a search engine like Google.

Links from your favorite bloggers count for nothing. Tweets from a friend count for nothing. Facebook pointers count for nothing. Email from your mom counts for nothing. No one ever points a friend to genuinely valuable content and says, “Hey, you should check this out, you would like it.”

The entire direction of social media and content sharing indicates otherwise.

Bad assumption #2: Readers will keep reading crappy content

AOL’s user base is still big enough that I’m sure they’ll get some readers at least skimming their stuff.

But when it comes to content, Darwin rules. If content doesn’t meet the needs of users, it dies. We can’t even force grade-school kids to read what doesn’t engage them. What makes us think that AOL can “force feed” their users anything?

And what makes us believe that even if those users do skim AOL’s lame content, that they’ll never read anything else, or that, when they have a particular need or concern, they won’t go actively looking for something more useful?

Business tip for TechCrunch: when you find yourself afraid of a stumbling dinosaur like AOL, there’s something gravely wrong with your thinking, your business model, or both.

Bad assumption #3: Google would rather serve fast food content than your content

Now I hold no illusions that Google is a benevolent, all-knowing deity that rewards the just and punishes the wicked. But based on observation, it’s pretty clear that Google would rather serve good content than scraped and mashed junk content.

Google wants their searchers to find a good experience on the other side of their search result. If sites like Demand Media, a video producer that slaps together 4,000 videos a day in what amounts to content sweat shops, can deliver content worth watching, they’ll do well.

If they don’t deliver something worth watching, they don’t give Google’s searchers the experience Google wants to deliver. Which means Google becomes less valuable.

Google can’t be “force-fed” any more than readers can. There’s no reason to believe they’ll treat this “hand assembled” spam more kindly than the bot-created kind.

Bad assumption #4: Content means news

Arrington also says that sites like the New York Times are “outright stealing” his content and passing it off as their own. (And he warns you, little mom and pop, that your content’s going to be stolen without attribution as well.)

By “stealing,” Arrington apparently means that when TechCrunch publishes a breaking story, the New York Times often writes a story on the same topic, using their own reporters and neglecting to thank him for his tireless journalistic efforts.

If you’re not TechCrunch, this is not a problem that you need to spend even four seconds thinking about. You already know from hanging out on Twitter and reading blogs that news spreads more quickly than anyone’s ability to control it, and that nobody “owns” a breaking story.

For those of us who create “hand-crafted” content, what we say isn’t nearly as important as how we say it. We rarely break news (although occasionally we become the news.)

If readers want the latest news, they rightly go to a site like TechCrunch, the Times, or, increasingly often, Twitter.

It’s when they want useful knowledge, insight, or analysis that they come back to us. Plus, there’s a reason we get you to focus on delivering educational content versus commodity news, right?

We’re valuable precisely because we can cut through the noise and give them only what’s useful and relevant to them.

I’m sure it’s irritating to Arrington not to get a linkback from the Times, but that’s his headache, not ours. He seems to be doing ok without it.

Bad assumption #5: You need millions of eyeballs to make a living

There’s an implicit bad assumption behind all of the explicit bad assumptions in Arrington’s post, which is that the only way you’ll be able to make a living with content is to attract huge amounts of traffic.

In other words, the only possible model is to attract enough attention (via search engines, for your breaking news) to monetize your site with advertising.

But you already know that’s not a business model for the real world.

Let’s say you have a blog that gives business advice to yoga teachers. You’ve paired that with a simple but effective marketing system to sell group coaching, individual consulting, and information products to readers who want to go further with what you’re teaching. You only need to find a few hundred customers a year to make a very nice living.

• No fast food content generator on earth is going to outrank you for “how to run a yoga studio.”
• If a cheap, scratch-the-surface video or post does outrank you for that #1 spot, the reader quickly finds out that the fast food content doesn’t meet her needs at all. Click goes the back button, and she’s looking for you again.
• Your content collects links from like-minded people, because it’s cool and valuable.
• Other yoga teachers (and herbalists and organic co-ops and past-life regression therapists) will spread the word about you faster than Google ever could.
• You have no reason to run advertising for anything other than your own products. So you don’t need to pull hundreds of thousands of “eyeballs” to make a decent living. You just need to make a great connection with the right 300 people.

So what should a “whole food” content producer do?

Exactly what you were doing yesterday.

Keep your eyes on your audience, not Chicken Little pundits telling you (again) that you can’t make a living.

Keep following the First Rule of Copyblogger. Keep creating content that rewards the reader for consuming it. Keep cutting through the clutter and noise by being smarter, more relevant, and more interesting.

Fast food content is just the latest incarnation of an old affliction — spam. If it hasn’t killed us yet, this new version isn’t likely to make much of a dent.

For content-based marketing strategies that work in the real world, sign up for the free Copyblogger email newsletter, Internet Marketing for Smart People. It’s packed with the information and advice you need to create real business success, and it’s 100% hysteria-free.

About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.

Next in the Affiliate Marketing Tips series, is how to get traffic and make sales with your niche affiliate sites…

@TaylorMarek: How to get eyeballs and people to buy?

I could start out by giving you specific internet marketing strategies, and I’ll share a few of those with you too.

But the key is actually in how you approach the market. It’s not complicated, but it is unique to each market and to each type of niche affiliate site. I’ll share some methods that I use to create a winning marketing plan for any site…

Step One: Market Research

Market Research is not the same as Keyword Research. That is where it starts, but not where it ends. Keywords tell you two things – they tell you what people are searching for, and they tell you the depth of the market.

Let’s take a look at an example of that so you can see what I mean. We’ll go back to that french braid hairstyle example, and look at that next to quilting:

Comparing these two sets of results side by side, just from the first 20 keyword phrases you can see a major difference in the market depth. Obviously “quilt” is more broad than “french braid”, but even if you narrow that search down to “quilt patterns” you still get more than 10x the overall search volume.

You also want to look at variations of your primary keywords. In the case of “quilt” and “quilt patterns”, next I would look at the keyword phrases for “quilting”.

I realize these screenshots are small. Open WordTracker’s Free Keyword Tool and type in the words/phrases to see the same results in true size.

There are 2 types of keyword phrases:
informational and commercial

Informational keyword phrases are searches for information – and usually for free information. Examples: “how to quilt” and “free quilt patterns”

Commercial keyword phrases are searches for products and represent potential buyers. Examples: “quilting magazines” and “quilting supplies”

Both types of keyword phrases are important to your overall marketing plan. Searches with commercial intent are used to create money pages with a specific recommendation and strong call-to-action.

Informational search terms are used to create free content that appeals to your target market, strategically leading them into your funnel and ultimately into a buying decision.

Commercial = immediate sale.
Informational = build rapport and work up to the sale.

The search volume, or the market depth, is important as this is how you are going to reach your market. It’s also how you are going to figure out the best ways to serve that market.

If you choose a micro-niche with very few keyword phrases to work with, even if those phrases have great search volume, you’re going to run out of creative ways to reach your market.

A niche with market depth and a wide variety of keyword phrases gives you many more opportunities to reach (and ultimately serve) that market.

Every single keyword phrase is an opportunity to meet and engage with your ideal customer. You use that keyword phrase to determine exactly what they want, and to deliver that one thing to them. Each keyword phrase should be considered a mini-marketing plan in your overall business strategy.

Going back to our quilting niche example, which has great market depth, you would analyze the keyword phrases and separate the informational searches from the commercial searches. The information phrases will be used to reach your market, and the commercial phrases will be used to make sales.

You want to ask yourself 4 questions:

- What are they looking for?
- Where are they looking for it?
- How can I enter that conversation?
- How can I best serve this market?

The obvious first step is to optimize each page of your affiliate site to rank well in the major search engines, so your ideal visitors can easily find you when they search those keyword phrases. See: Web Page Optimization (free tutorial & checklist).

You’ll use the keyword phrases to create content, and to frame your offer so that it appeals to your target market. If they are searching for “free quilt patterns” you give them that, and offer a new free pattern every month by email (build a list).

If they are searching for “quilting supplies” you recommend specific products they will need and the best places to order them online (via your affiliate links, of course).

A keyword phrase like “how to quilt” can be used to create a content page that leads into your pages on free patterns and supplies. This might be used on your site, or may be used as an article you submit to EzineArticles.com or publish on Squidoo.

You want to group all of the related “how to” keyword phrases and use those to create lead-in content to your how-to page on your own site. Not every piece of content has to be a monster essay either.

Those keyword phrases might be used in the subject line of a new thread on a niche forum, a short 500 word article you submit to article directories, used in an email subject line for a ‘quick tip’ message (that gets archived online), or used to open a discussion on Facebook or Twitter even.

The goal is to create various types of web content that strategically lead your visitor into your list, or to your money page. The email list will use a softer approach, building trust and rapport with your readers so that you become their go-to source for all things ‘quilting’ (replace with your niche, of course).

So the short answer to “how to get eyeballs and make sales” is this: know what they want, meet them where they are searching for it, deliver a specific targeted solution. Period.

That is marketing. Things like social bookmarking, article marketing, SEO, paid advertising – those are just methods to achieve your marketing plan. Most people mistake the methods for the marketing, and use the methods without a strategic marketing plan at all. Don’t make that mistake.

Marketing is about knowing and serving your market.

The methods are a means to do that.

So let’s talk methods real quick before we close. I’ll share some resources & tutorials with you as I’ve discussed most methods in great detail already:

• Choosing Keywords & Phrases
• How to Write A Product Review
• Twitter Marketing
• Creating Viral Short Reports
• Article Marketing For Beginners
• Forum Marketing: Signature Tip to Increase Clicks & Sales
• Blog Interviews & Guest Blogging
• One Way Link Building (7 Simple Ideas)
• Email Newsletter Ideas

I have tons more resources, so if you have any questions at all simply leave a comment below. I’d be happy to answer your questions, or point you to a free tutorial here at ClickNewz.

Best,

p.s. Enjoy this post? Subscribe below for more free Affiliate Marketing Tips