The Importance of Time to Web Traffic

One of the often overlooked factors in traffic generation is the simple fact that time itself will allow a particular page or article to gain natural backlinks and gain importance in the search engine listings. This is one of the reasons that it is often said that it takes almost 2 years on average for most sites to really start to seriously make money and why the graph of earnings begins to accelerate at about that time.

This is why it is important for anyone new to HubPages or to building a new site to be willing to stick with it and keep publishing new content during that 2 year time frame. Posting 2 or 3 articles per week over 2 years will eventually lead to a portfolio of 200-300 articles. While not all of them will be hits, the more articles that you have, the more likely that you will find one that resonates with your readers.

Allow me to share a personal example. On August 22, 2009, I published a Hub on the Irish tradition of eating corned beef and cabbage. Needless to say, it is a seasonal Hub and only really has relevance around New Year's Day or St. Patrick's Day. But it is an evergreen Hub meaning that the content is still true year after year. I have not changed or adjusted the Hub since it was published.

I usually see an increase in traffic to the Hub starting a few days before New Year's with the biggest spike in traffic on January 1st of each year. I went back to look at the number of views that I had in 2010 and the spike was 291 views. In 2011, the number increased greatly to 891 views for my HubPages articles that day. Finally this year on January 1st, 2012 I had a record for daily views of 1167. I suspect that next year will see an even bigger spike.

Because of the spike in traffic, I was able to earn $2.72 with the HubPages Ad Program on that single day. That is the most that I have ever earned with the Ad Program in one day. In fact, since I started publishing more Hubs over the past few weeks, I have seen seven consecutive days over $1. Before that, I had one day in October when I earned over $1. That is what the increased effort and the effects of time are doing for me and my earnings.

I want to encourage everyone who is getting started with HubPages or a blog to not give up. The ability to write content will get easier. The ideas will come easier. Your writing will get better and you will be able to write more informative articles in less time.

Eventually those articles will become a portfolio of content that will populate the search engines or the Facebook or Twitter accounts of your followers. A few visits here and there will add up across hundreds and hundreds of articles.

As another example, I had more visits to my blog, Cash Flow Mantra, in one day than I did for 2 weeks back in June. Of the 97 posts I have on the site, a third of them received some traffic. The more and more that I write, the more traffic I get and the more opportunities that I will have to earn from my blog.

So stick with it, don't give up, write good content that helps people or answers questions they might have, and you will eventually see the traffic just gradually grow and increase over time.