Sometimes we forget that not all publications are online and there’s still thousands of magazines printed on that paper stuff… and getting a mention in those can drive substantial traffic.

A few months back, I started experiencing a spike of a few thousand extra visitors a day on Taming the Beast and it was really targeted traffic - all making a beeline for a particular page. This continued for weeks. Extra visitors are always welcome, but what was particularly pleasing was the ka-ching factor. The additional revenue was by no means chump change.

What I couldn’t figure out was where this traffic was coming from - there was no single source; it appeared to be type in traffic was coming from all over the world. It drove me nuts for weeks trying to locate the source until someone emailed me a question and mentioned in passing they’d seen the site in Magazine X. It seems that TTB was listed as a resource in an article; just a couple of lines in a standard column was responsible for sending tens of thousands people our way.

I avoid offline marketing like the plague, it’s just not my thing; but it did get me thinking a little more about utilizing print magazines as a traffic generation strategy. I’m not referring to paid advertising either; but to actively seek out and offer print publication journalists my services as a research source.

While I haven’t had a lot of time to put into this, the little I’ve done has really paid off; so it might be something you’d like to give a whirl yourself. Research all the popular print publications for your industry sector; get the email addresses of journalists who write for the publication and drop them a line.

By the way, I hear newsagents and newsstands really hate people browsing through magazines and not buying them ;). If you’re too short on cash to buy the publications, just grab the name and find the companion web site as most magazines have them.