Andy asked:
[How do I] get the traffic up to a useful minimum monthly total to claim that a site is a success.
This is a really tough question because it depends on a lot of things.
How do you define what a total success is?
Do you rate things based on how much money they’re making? Or how much traffic they get? Or how many products you’re selling?
What I recommend
Before you begin a site you need to decide why you want traffic.
Is it to sell a product? If it is then figure out how many products you want to sell and that will give you some idea of how much traffic you need to be successful.
I have a website devoted to famous quotes and it gets a few hundred visits a day. I consider the site to be finished and successful even though it only makes a few dollars each day. I consider that to be a success and I have moved on to other websites.
Some of you would be ecstatic with a few dollars a day and would consider that a huge success. Other people would view it as a failure.
