How I Increased My Blog Traffic By 189.4% In 30 Days
Well, I gotta tell ya, Last month was a darn good month for traffic (and sales) to a little test site of mine from Pinterest. What I’m doing to get more traffic and clicks from Pinterest is REALLY WORKING! I even impressed myself…haha!
I managed to increase the traffic by 189.4% in ONE month.
Yes, that is almost TRIPLE the traffic in only 30 DAYS!
Let’s talk about how I got an additional 15,133 blog visitors for FREE.
I have a little test site that I’ve used in the past to demonstrate cool ideas for blog posts, share my neat ways to increase sales and conversions on your site, and other fun stuff I share with my Private Bonus Guide Club members.
The site has always been a “learning and testing” site for me so when I set out to learn and test another free traffic source, it made perfect sense to use my little test site.
The Stats
From July to August, I more than tripled the traffic to that site – and August was a pretty darn good month!
The site is… well, it’s where I test. It’s a small site about “everything”. It doesn’t really have any personality – and at any given time I am prone to change things up and put a new test in place.
Before testing this new (to me) traffic source, I was quite happy with getting about 2,000 visits a month.
Nice steady traffic from Google with nice steady Amazon sales – and that magical spike in traffic and sales during holidays.
But whoa – from August to September just went crazy!
I’ve heard traffic from this source takes a bit of time to “take” and build the momentum – but good golly, what a drastic improvement!
Best part of all…
Each and every pin I’ve already made is out there working to bring me traffic day after day with no real additional effort on my part.
It’s not like Facebook where you share a link and get (hopefully) a surge of traffic and then it’s gone.
This traffic continues long after the “work” is done.
A Passive Traffic Stream – and FREE traffic!
Naturally, aside from my strategy to make it work, I also have tools to automate things for me (I’ll talk about the tools in a moment)
What Traffic Source Brought All This Traffic?
Pinterest, of course!
I had heard others online show amazing results from Pinterest, but I just didn’t get it.
And it was annoying me that I didn’t get it… so I set out to learn it completely – all the way down to the source code.
And, I did =)
Everything I do to get lots of free traffic from Pinterest is found here.
The August Numbers
August brought 7,989 visits total.
Google was still my top traffic source and sent 3,254 visits.
Pinterest came in as my #2 source of traffic and sent me 2,077 additional visitors.
Now I’m sure there are some folks reading thinking, “2,000 visits? That’s ALL?”
But remember, this is a test site – it’s not a site I am working or anything like that.
Plus, I’ll take 2,000+ extra free visits to my sites any ol’ time – that’s fine by me.
But Take a Look at September!
September brought 23,122 views – that’s almost TRIPLE the month before!
And now, I have a NEW #1 traffic referrer source: Pinterest.
Pinterest sent 6,070 visits in September.
Google brought 4,067.
I also found another easy-to-use free traffic source that surprised me by sending 4,521 visits to my site in September.
I talk about the source of those traffic spikes here.
That’s an additional 10,591 extra visitors in September from 2 FREE traffic sources I took the time to learn.
Works for me!
What’s even better – that little test site still had a good CTR on my affiliate links AND my conversion rate was still really good.
If you know how to make a blog post that converts to sales, all you need is MORE targeted eye-balls on it to make even MORE sales, right?
Right!
Pinterest Stats
Take a look how my stats were with Pinterest for the month of August… even though I was already seeing really good results and traffic, the number is kinda sad.
But look at the average stats for the month of September!
Now THAT is a big improvement, isn’t it?
And to think it gained that much momentum in only a month… magical!
Pinterest even lets me see my stats on a daily level.
Here is my number for the last day of September (yes, for ONE DAY):
And it keeps growing and growing – so much fun!
15,133 more FREE visitors in September than in August – I consider that a win!
…but it’s just the beginning.
How I Did It
In order to really get Pinterest to work for you…
First, STOP making the FATAL mistakes on Pinterest.
Once I corrected those mistakes, it felt like half my battle was won with Pinterest.
For example, if you’re only pinning something ONCE, and that’s it forever, you’re seriously messing up and missing out on a wonderful free traffic source.
Second, learn how Pinterest really works and get a strategy to follow.
Third, get the tools that automate almost everything for you.
I use 2 tools:
__ Tailwind and
__ BoardBooster
(well, I also use this awesome image tool, but that’s to make awesome-looking images to pin on Pinterest. It is THE easiest image tool I’ve ever used – no more downloading and then UPloading images – just right click and the tool grabs the image and lets you edit it.. AND Pin it/share it on social media sites.)
Tailwind does a lot of amazing things and it’s the first Pinterest pinning tool I used.
It’s really neat – Tailwind learns when the best time is for YOU to pin things and creates a pinning schedule for you. Then, you just use their browser tool and load up pins to schedule for the next week or next month… whatever works for you (so you can work LESS).
Tailwind also has really great stats for your Pinterest account:
That Brings me to BoardBooster…
This Pinterest tool really confused me at first so I kept putting off how to REALLY use it.
But wow, now that I have figured it out and put it into action, I am VERY impressed by how easy it makes my Pinterest “work” – and the great increase in my results since using it my way.
There are main pinning tools on BoardBooster (see all the tools here)
BoardBooster Campaigns – in a BoardBooster campaign, you tell BoardBooster to take pins from one board and repin them to other boards.
For example, repinning pins to group boards you contribute to – that can all be done automatically.
I also use BoardBooster campaigns in a little different way that I figured out and that really works well for me.
==>> Here are the step-by-step details for how I use BoardBooster
Let’s say I have a Pinterest board about Crafts.
I made a secret crafts board and whenever I’m on Pinterest and see a craft pin I like, I repin it to that secret board… and then BoardBooster drips those pins out to my public board for me.
I have tons of campaigns like that. It was a little time-consuming to set up, but now that it IS set up, it’s all SO easy – and I’m not flooding my account with binges of mass-pinning…lol!
I have these campaigns set up so that everything I need done on Pinterest is done auto-magically.
For example, BoardBooster will take a pin from one secret board, and then repin to one public board…and then 2 days later, repin it to another relevant board… and the pins on that relevant board has it’s own campaign that repins those pins to relevant group boards over the next few weeks, and so on and so on.
When I make a new post on my test site, all I have to do is pin my images to related secret board(s), and BoardBooster does the rest.
It’s pretty confusing to explain with words, but it works so well.
BoardBooster Scheduler
With a BoardBooster Scheduler set up, BoardBooster MAKES a secret board for you.
You repin things to that secret board and then BoardBooster drips those pins out based on the specific schedule you set.
BoardBooster Looping
Looping has got to be the coolest automated pinning strategy yet.
When you set a board to “loop”, BoardBooster takes the pin from the very bottom of the board and REpins it to the TOP of the board (which gets it back out there in front of people).
Then, after an amount of time you set, BoardBooster will delete one of those pins if you want it to.
BoardBooster is VERY cool and cuts out SO much of the work and TIME needed to make Pinterest work if you did it all manually.
Try BoardBooster for Free Here
Tools make the world go ’round =)
No one has time to consistently pin on Pinterest ALL DAY LONG, but that’s what it takes to build your account momentum and get all that free traffic coming – and it KEEPS coming.
Summing Up
By using my own personal Pinterest strategy and using tools that automate that strategy FOR me, I tripled my blog traffic in about 30 days.
I’m very, very happy and can’t wait to see how October does.
Do You Use Pinterest? How are Your Results?
Why not follow me on Pinterest?
Or, follow my “What I’m Reading” board on Pinterest…
that’s where I share all the great posts I’ve read lately.
Maybe your post is on that list =)
If you’re wanting to learn how someone makes 6 figures a year from ONE blog as an Amazon affiliate, you really need to read this. It’s VERY impressive!
Thanks for sharing these tips. Pinterest seems like a great place to share stuff but the right tools definitely should make it easier.