ALERT: Do not believe the “gurus”. The internet is not a push button-operated cash machine that generates money for you while you sip cocktails on a beach in Mexico.

If it was, I wouldn’t be here now and neither would you.

But we are, and that means whether we’re in the business of generating AdSense clicks, marketing affiliate products or selling our own products and services, there’s one thing we need to succeed.

And that’s web traffic.

Much like an offline store, online businesses need a good, steady stream of visitors. Ideally, as many as possible because only a percentage of those visitors will actually do something that earns us money.

How to generate traffic

Before doing anything else, make sure you have the fundamentals in place:

• 1. Create good, useful content that visitors want to bookmark and share
• 2. Use good search engine optimization in the form of post titles based on keywords and phrases relevant to your site and content
• 3. Draw visitors in from social media channels like Facebook & Twitter

You might also consider employing other proven strategies like forum, offline and content marketing (I cover these in detail in my book on search engine optimization).

All these methods work well but they’re long and medium-term marketing strategies that require a time investment.

What we time-starved online entrepreneurs need is some kind of magic traffic button.

The nearest thing we’ve got – and it’s pretty close is – Triberr.

How Triberr makes getting visitors easier

Triberr is like a specialist social network for bloggers.

Inside, bloggers who write about similar subjects form “tribes”. Using the Triberr web app, members can see the most recent posts from each member of the tribe. When they see a post they think their followers will be interested in, they can share it with a single click via their Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts.

It’s a genius idea that puts your content in front of someone else’s audience with minimal extra effort. If you’re in a big tribe with bloggers who have a large number of followers, this kind of sharing can lead to a huge increase in visitors to your website.

Practically overnight, too.

With Genius Startup, I doubled the number of web visitors in a couple of days and shortly after almost tripled it.

As you can imagine, I’m a big fan of Triberr.

There’s one problem.

When you’re new to it, trying to work out how to use Triberr is hugely confusing.

It took me two attempts and three migraines to get it. By looking at the support forums, it’s clear I’m not the only one. It’s a great shame because once you “get it”, it’s an incredibly useful tool.

That’s why I wrote the “missing manual”, Traffic Generation with Triberr.

It’s available for Kindle (and other devices via the free app) here.