More Traffic
 

Hello All! Hope Internext was fun for all those that went. |roses|

Have a question about traffic. I submit to close to 400 LL's (which I am serously reconsidering) I seem to be in a traffic slump. Meaning, I am getting about the same amount of traffic every pay period. Obviously if I want more sales I need more traffic. I havent dabbled a whole lot in seo yet but I was wondering how well my sites are optimized for any search engine traffic. My main url is http://www.naughtybabs.com. I have no idea how many hits I get to each freesite or how many continue on to my sponsors.(percentage wise anyways.) As of right now I have 1855 hits to my main sponsor for the 1/1/05-1/15/05 period.
Seems like alot of free sites for the same amount traffic. I do a minimum of 1 freesite per day.

" Obviously if I want more sales I need more traffic. "

Actually, if you submit to 400 LL's and get accepted at most, then you need to work on your sales pitch instead of more traffic.

400 link lists? Damn! How the hell did you find that many? I currently submit to 12. I'm an under achiever though. Just call me Bart.

Are you using just one sponsor? Dabble around a bit. Build a couple sites for sponosr A then a couple for sponsor B. You have to see what works for you.

You can only get so much traffic to free sites. If you want more sales you're going to have think about where your traffic is coming from and what it wants.

O.K. Useless, If you only submit to 12 LL's how much traffic can you possibly get? I have read on several occasions that most people only submit to a handfull of LL's and do well? I attempted to do this with some of the bigger named LL's and my traffic dropped dramatically? I submitted to R.R.,Jays,Hoes,Penis Bot,WetPlace,Green Guy,and several others. Something just isnt clicking for me here. I believe my text links have gotten much better in the last several months. I have seen a up swing in my sales. But I am not gaining anymore in traffic. I get about 3500-4000 hits per period to Nasty Dollars. Last period I had 6 sales. My main sponsor is Nasty Dollars. So Far I have made 3 sales in 7 days. Maybe I am sounding greedy here but I feel like I should be doing better than that? Where else can I go for traffic with my sites?

binxgook,

I am currently doing the reviews for 6 links lists that you submit to (I dont have time for the other 394 :D )

Your sites were getting listed... but the last couple you are using a banner that looks like it has clickable thumbs... and your sites have been declined.

My advice would be to look closely at the actual banners you choose from Nasty dollars... pics within banners that look like clickable thumbs in the banners will probably be decline by a lot of those 400 LL's

You also need to take some time to look at the rules from each of the lists you submit too... do they actually accept sponsor content? If its clear in the rules that they dont... you probably wont get a notification from the link list that you are being declined.

400 Link lists is a lot of time to spend on submissions (I am sure you do those manually of course :D )... so make sure that the time is wisely used.

Good luck with your future submissions, I hope they do well for you :)

Some quick math:

Lets say you have 10% CTR: 3500*10 = 35000 hits per month
You said you made 1 site a day, but lets count low in case you miss some days: 35000/20 = 1750 hits per site per month

Now I've only counted as if it's only your new sites that receive traffic. The real number should maybe be 1000-1200 hits per new site per month, depending how long you've been doing sites for ND.
That number is very low. So you're either not getting accepted at 95% of the LL's or you get listed at sites that doesn't have any traffic or your ads have low CTR.

WOW! Something is definitely wrong. Other board members will be able to give you better advice if you post some links to your free sites here.

I agree with all of what's already been said. When I build a free site I submit to about 55 LLs, but 95% of my traffic comes from my "top 12." While hits will always vary from one niche to another across different LLs, I had ONE SITE I subbed last month that got 18k visits to the warning page with my top 12 LLs on it.

A few tips for you:

--You MUST BE getting declined at a lot of the LLs you submit to. If you're autosubmitting that may be the problem. Even the "good" autosubmitters regularly screw up one thing or another on my submit form and I can always tell |bat| You're probably better off manually submitting to about 1/8 of the LLs you currently submit to.

--Use better stats to determine where the hits are going and where they're coming from within your site. I use AW Stats, which is free from sourceforge.net or may already be available from your host. Good, easy to read stats. Once a month I go through my stats and revise my submit list to drop the LLs that aren't sending me any hits...either because they're not listing me or they just don't have any traffic. Only about 35% of the LLs I submit to actually send acceptance/decline emails.

--See if your sponsor tracks referring URLs on the clicks coming in. That will tell you which pages on your sites are sending traffic to the sponsor, which will help you streamline your sales pitches and advertising.

--When I go to naughtybabs.com, I see a page with some sponsor links but not a list of your free sites. Hub that page out. I don't even really promote my hubs, but I still have about 5% of all my surfers checking out the root and looking at my other free sites.

HTH

Max

No, Actually I have a pretty good exceptance rate. I would say probably almost 90%. Im sure alot of the LL's I submit are smaller ones but like I said before I tried only submitting to the bigger ones and I watched my traffic piddle down to almost nothing.

Like MadMax said. Get good stats, then it's easier to figure out where the problem is.

I've probably been submitting free sites only a bit longer than you, but I also don't build one every day. I don't do only free sites though. I submit the occasional TGP gallery and own a couple TGPs of my own. Plus I'm working on another site that I haven't quite finalized my plans on.

So, what I am saying is, I don't rely on free sites alone. I have a bunch of logs on the fire and I'm trying to get them to burn at the same time. I only submit to 12 lists because I didn't notice much lift in traffic when I was submitting mirrors to 30-some lists. If I had more time, I'd submit to more, but it just isn't in the balance right now.

I think there are people who make a comfortable living who only 'do' free sites, but my guess is that they are a whole lot better at it than me.

binxgook,

That's a lot of time spent submitting.

Like MadMax the majority of my traffic comes from a few Lists as well. This is probably the case for everyone.

It's pretty important to take a step back once in a while and evaluate what you are doing.

I hope you get access to you log files.

If so then use some stats packages to get a feel for your Click Through Rate.

This one is nice to try http://www.mach5.com/download/analyzer/index.php

Let me ask you- when you are listed at PenisBot and WetPlace- what tier rankings do you usually get?

btw, I'm rarely on ICQ. :)

1st you must make sure your CTR is pretty good, otherwise you are just banging your head against the wall.

Once in a while I take my traffic stats and see how many are going to a particular freesite. Then I go to sponsor stats and see how many uniques I get within the same time frame to get a solid feel for CTR.

There's no magic LL, and we all probably submit to the same 10 or 12 that account for the bulk of our traffic from Lists.

Take a much needed rest from building and submitting. Get some perspective on things. Do some stats analyzin' and evaluate your own work and be hard on yourself.

Then think about your sponsors and the paysites you have picked to promote.

400 really is an awful lot.. I'd try to break them down like this:

a) accepts an fpa and pics on html
b) accepts an fpa but no pics on html
c) accepts no fpa but pics on html
d) accepts no fpa and no pics on html

Now try to build at least one version for each style with 9 or 12 link lists per index page.

Also, when you pick your "smaller" link lists to work with, try to confirm that they archive links *forever*.

I took a quick peek at my oldest domain from 99 or 00 where I built my first free sites, and quite a few of those "smaller" link lists are still sending me anywhere from 10 to near 100 hits per day.. about 5 years after being listed!! Thats amazing, lol.

Do the math over 5 years.. thats not bad, and leads SE spiders on a merry chase.

At any rate, I'd recommend breaking them down like that and building for them all. Definitely get those big ones tweaked for that big surge in traffic and be consistent over the years. But dont forget the small ones entirely, because over time it can build up (if they archive permanently).

Good luck!

hi binxgook

I have been doing this for a year and I can tell you that the more free sites you have up the more money you make I started making decent money after i had about 125 free sites up which took me about 6 months.

Fred

How many different sponsors do you use with your 125 sites?
Do you choose say a group of 5-10 and just build all your sites to promote your group. Is their a formula or certain way to structure your free sites around your sponsors?