Today I will talk about something that all of you are working hard for, but when it really happens, nobody knows what to do next.

I’m talking about success. Day in and day out you are tweaking, testing, tracking and improving your website to get more traffic and a better conversion rate. Slowly you are seeing better results. You are receiving more traffic. You’re making more sales and that’s what makes you more successful, but what exactly does success mean?

The real phenomenon in an online business is the unconventional way success manifests itself. The increase in traffic to your website doesn’t happen linear. It is more in the shape of a wave and spikes all over the place. You never know when the next wave of traffic will hit your web server.

The first time I experienced one of these spikes was when one of my websites was featured in a member’s only site with a large subscriber base. My traffic stats went through the roof. The site visits were more than tenfold than my average visits per day. This went on for a couple of days, but suddenly the traffic dropped to previous levels again. This is a typical reaction to an announcement like being featured on a respected website. It doesn’t matter if you initiated the announcement or somebody else did.

Once you notice the traffic jam on your website for the first time, it will keep you up all night long. What if the web server is not big enough? What if the shopping cart database crashes? Did I setup the autoresponder messages correctly? A thousand questions and worries are going through your head. Did you do the right thing?

What I just described is also known as “fear of success”. You work so hard to be successful, but when it finally happens, you’re like the deer in the headlight. Believe it or not, but that’s the only difference between you and all the hot shoot internet marketing gurus out there. They didn’t do anything different than you do. They have the same tools and ingredients to work with. The difference is that they know how to capture the sudden attention and turn it into even more attention.

When I experienced the sudden attention I did exactly what all you would have done too. I spend too much time answering every single email. I went out of my way to redesign my website, because I thought that having all the attention I needed a better design to please my new visitors. While I was busy doing all this, the traffic wave hit rock bottom again and nobody was there to enjoy my pretty new design.

What exactly did I accomplish with all this work? First of all my website was featured before I did the total renovation. Therefore somebody liked it for what it was. No need to do anything. Second, I didn’t trust my autoresponder or the quality of my messages. End result; automatic messages got mixed in with emails I personally wrote. You can imagine the confusion I caused with my new customers. Instead of being in a position to create easy follow-up sales, I upset my new customers and my sales plumed to zero.

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