Control the Traffic or Ride the Waves

He who controls the traffic — the mass of Web users logging on each day — is king.

That company or website who can steer and siphon and redirect the majority of Web surfers is Google controls traffic through search.

Now … Google is a verb.

When your brand name is used commonly as a verb, I think you might be onto something …

I think of web traffic, as a whole, as a stream of water … a great big, powerful stream like a firefighter’s hose.

The key is controlling that power and pointing it where you want it …

Digg is a powerful stream of water. Land on the Digg front page and your server gets crashed.

Digg controls some huge traffic … through votes.

Yahoo still controls some huge traffic … I’ve seen it. Only now, they do it through content.

And traffic equals clicks … clicks equals purchases or ad revenues … which all equals money for the bottomline, right?

Anyway, I realized quickly as a fledgling blog designer that if my themes got listed or posted on certain sites, my downloads for those templates would increase exponentially. And my exposure with it.

So the question I ask myself is … how can I tap into the various “kings” of traffic … harness that power and traffic for my goals …

One more metaphor or whatever… I think a lot of this comes down, for you and me, Mr. and Mrs. Average Web Entrepreneur, to just riding some waves.

Traffic waves controlled by the kings …

Waves eventually crash, right?

Even big waves. They hit the shore and dissipate back into the ocean.

Surfers look for the right moment, they catch a glimpse of a good wave coming, pick their approach and go for it with all they’ve got.

They ride that wave … for however long it takes them. They maximize the wave.

For Google’s waves, they might mean the right keywords … Digg, content that gets the right votes … etc. etc.

And the key for us is … we’ve got to be ready to expend all our energy getting to the right approach of that incoming wave.

For most of us … those who will never be able to control those waves, but only ride them … we must watch diligently for upcoming waves … and be paddling out to it.

And when the waves come … ride that baby hard!