Book Review · Traffic Secrets

Here I am sitting by the pool, dodging mosquitoes, and learning stuff.

Traffic Secrets (2020) by Russell Brunson.  Recommend.  330 pages.  Business, entrepreneurship, and marketing.  I just finished reading this, and I couldn’t put it down.  I also read Dotcom Secrets (2015) and Expert Secrets (2017) by Russell Brunson.  I find his writing funny, at times tear-jerking, and most-of-all, easy to understand yet mind-blowing.

DREAM 100

One of the biggest takeaways I took from this consisted of finding the right audience, what he calls the Dream 100.  Rather than puzzle over how to drive traffic to you, instead, watch where your audience already congregates.  Within these congregations, there exist the 80/20 of influencers to whom you could reach out, making up your Dream 100.  Of course, this means presenting the right bait (hook or offer) and persisting through plenty of initial rejection.

ELIMINATE, AUTOMATE, DELEGATE

The second big takeaway, don’t try to do it all yourself – a given, for the entrepreneurially minded already.  In another book, The Million-Dollar One-Person Business (2018) by Elaine Pofeldt, the theme with scaling goes as eliminate, automate, and delegate.  In Traffic Secrets, Russell shares a dichotomy on whether to grow via SEO and brand-building vs. PPC and direct marketing.  Why not both?  How?  Delegate through affiliates.  Let those with talent in those areas do what they do best.

ALIGNING VS. HACKING

Third, align instead of hacking.  On platforms such as Google, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, Russell asserts that rather than “hacking,” it works better to know the history and mission of the platform, and then align with it.  Hacking, or attempting to defeat the algorithm to affect ranking, serves the short-term.  The algorithm continually changes; think of the various “Google slaps.”  Give the platform what belongs to the platform. It’ll return the favor.

CONCLUSION – FREELANCERS AND BOOK HOMEWORK

After I wrote my book, I wondered how to get it into as many of the right hands as possible.  If you’re also an author, I think you’ll enjoy the examples that Russell uses in promoting a book.  Russell gives worksheets that he uses.  These worksheets look amazing.  I plan to outsource via Fiverr.com and Upwork.com to get help filling out the sheets for the Dream 100.  I’ll let you know how that goes.