Traffic - I need good advice on buying traffic

[Tommy]

I allways thought of selling high category links to tgps that are starting up

like maybe 30 days for 500.00

so they have some start up traffic to trade with

[msanchez]

This is a pretty cool topic so thanks Simon for bringing it up.

Ill add my 2 cents from what little experience I have had.

Traffic Out is really nice for bookmarkers and from what I have bought I usually make enough sales to pay for the traffic.

I use clicked choker traffic to feed certain sites and these surfers do seem to click around but not so much with using the credit card to buy. Sometimes Ill see a sale but mostly I still use this to trade off somewhere else for better traffic.

I like the clicked choker traffic also becasue alot of times theres a pretty wide variety of pre filtered niches to choose from so you get filtered traffic for your niche.

The traffic comes in nice and slow so $100 will last me over a month. Im just cheap like that.

As far as I know choker traffic and chicken traffic are different versions of the same thing.

Well anyways thanks for the good read everyone.

[Simon]

More good replies...thanks!

Tommy - Nice idea. I'd hate to see your nice traffic get wasted in somebody's CJ network. On the other hand, if you decide to try it, I'd definitely want to talk with you about that. I can see how it would be good for sites with real content and no skim and it certainly could still help feed real trades.

Gary - I'm glad to hear they have (and you're on) their PPS program. Check some other boards or search "awempire pay rebills 15 days only" on Google if you want to check out the earlier problems. Congrats on the good start on August.

Fonz - Sounds like another good vote for traffic-out to me. That's the other kind of productive I meant. I'm thinking that with some sites, if you can get surfers to visit enough of your (good) pages after they arrive, you have a good chance of gaining more bookmarkers.

Juggernaut - Thanks for the additional traffic source to check out. I wonder if there'd be some correlation between the free signups you're getting and the free bookmarkers I'd be looking for. Seems like there would be. Plus they might sign up for other free things here if I offered some.

I know what you mean about the Internet being iffy, Jugg. If we hadn't gotten started so long ago, I'd be looking pretty hard at whether I thought there was still good money to be made for someone trying to get their foot in the door here now. It definitely does take money, hard work, lots of time, and some luck (see also: good relations with others). In the meantime, nothing wrong with some free ice cream.

Mike - Another vote counted, thanks! That's what I'm looking for. And thanks for the choker/chicken feedback. They do seem to have lots of niches covered, which could be good for some things I'm thinking of doing.

I expect that most traffic will leave without bookmarking, and those who bookmark won't buy right away. I've always been kind of a community builder, so my interest is in getting people to keep coming back. Making some sales from purchased traffic would be a bonus I'd love of course. But if they keep coming back I'll find them something they want badly enough to pay for.

To update the list, we now have these sources that have been mentioned so far:

AdultGalleria
Adult-Site-Traffic
AskJolene's Topspots
Traffic-Out
TrafficHolder
Spotbrokers

If anyone has other good sources for traffic, please feel free to mention them. Or if you have a horror story about some source to avoid, definitely come talk about it.

Still plenty of room in this thread for more feedback, so come talk traffic if you feel like it.

[emmanuelle]

I've always found that the best traffic is free- it takes some elbow grease, but you can find pure, interested surfers who convert much better on your own. You know your product better than any traffic broker.


The odd time that we purchase traffic, we get the best value by sending it to targeted toplists which in turn send back better quality (more targeted) traffic.

[digifan]

It all depends on where do you send the traffic. Nice topic, Simon

The best traffic comes from traffic-out, Hunter's I second that. If you promote teens, you should buy clicked toplist traffic from Rowan at doggieteens and you'll be happy with the results. His sites have great prod. He wrote a free trade script so you can install it, disable the site sdded and see how much they can send, url is http://www.slothtrader.com and like I said it's free and even I could install it
I gave a test to traffic-holder too and they are ok in my book.
I have bought traffic to my tgp so I could feed the brand new site and my trades. when you learn the ropes of skimming you don't need more feeder. First click to galleries, very low skim so you don't annoy the surfer and when the site is growing you can always switch to no skim taking all risks.

No experience with elbow grease sorry

[nekrom]

In my experiance, I have done well with sending traffic to a landing page of sorts, ie: a portal. Which gives the surfs something to bookmark as well as feed a selection of toplists.

From a micro niche perspective (ie: not teens) toplists always seem to return highly targeted and non cj'd traffic. Which yeilds both high productivity & convets nicley.

I'm currently working on a massive portal project atm and plan to use trafficholder and a few of the others to feed it and I'll see how that goes.

-N

[Simon]

Hiya digifan Good point about where the traffic is being sent. I've been noting what each poster has been saying about the different sources for purchased traffic, and I can see that some traffic is good for certain things while other traffic is better for others. I appreciate the lead to doggieteens. We don't do a lot with teens, but there are always category pages that can use more attention. Thanks for the info on the trade script too. That's another thing I've never done, use a trade script. Maybe one day I'll try something like that to learn more about it, but for now I'm only looking to send traffic to no-skim sites where I hope the surfers will hang around awhile. I guess that means I'm already taking those risks.

Hi nekrom - Thanks for the input. I see I'm going to have to learn a bit more about toplists sometime soon. While we've used them, I've never done it with purchased traffic. I can see how the return traffic would be nicely filtered, but I need to find out more about how we can send the traffic to the toplists. I'm wondering if some toplists let you send traffic right to them, or whether using an interim/landing page isn't only a good idea, but actually a requirement.

I appreciate all the feedback so far. I'm probably going to start some tests this week, so feel free to jump in if you have some thoughts, opinions or caveats.

Simon

[nekrom]

In releation to sending traffic to toplists, the vast majority that I have dealt with don't really give a brass razoo, how you send to them.

The basic most used requirment is that the site/traffic you are sending is the specific niche, ie: they get the shits up when you send teen to a gay fisting toplist.

And as for the linking most again don't care so long as they can see the recip link back to them, (which you use natuarly to send the traffic to them) Be it off your main page or catagory pages.

I've sent it to them by skim, trade, blind click and all have been fine for me. The only thing I can think of, is that blind click sent, would be a pox prod% / return, rather then a link that says "click here for more 'niche' sites"

-N

[Simon]

Nekrom - Thanks for more info on toplists. Looking around, it seemed that most of them are like what we've used in the past, meaning that they want the traffic to the toplist to come from someone who clicks their button or text link on our page. I'm still not clear on whether someone can send purchased traffic directly to a toplist link. Sending it directly and getting better-filtered traffic back would be nice, particularly from toplists that send more back than they get.

[emmanuelle]

Simon- you are right, most traffic brokers are fussy about the page they send traffic to. Just set up a page that meets their expectations, and throw in a traffic splitter file to redirect it to toplist codes.
PM me if you'd like a copy of one I've used in the past.

[LB]

I have dealt with bought traffic as the main part of my business now for over 2 years. It ranges from cpc, cpa, cpm (impression), general banner/link buying, dealing with the traffic brokers etc etc. Most traffic has been purchased to make an immediate profit off after being filtered down. I don't buy traffic to feed projects .. eg tgps.

Having bought the odd click or million recently, I can give you a few bits of advice without breaking the bank

- No one in their right state of mind will suggest a traffic source that makes them a lot of money. Some may give it in general terms but don't expect to get any specific information from webmasters unless you feed them a lot of drinks

- Broker traffic is simply the worst stuff i have dealt with. I have tried most of them and at best can break even if I pull out ever traffic handling skill I have access to. In my experience brokers have already gotten the best traffic skimmed off before it reaches you.

- Some brokers don't deserve the term 'traffic broker' though .. and actually can send good traffic. These are usually cases where you can see which site the traffic is coming from and you aren't just looking at a black box wondering what is happening inside

- After thousands of traffic purchases I have either broken even or made a loss on 80-90% of traffic sources. The 10% that you profit on usually last for at least 6 months. You need deep pockets if you are going to do this in a big way as you find the good sources and bad.

- Don't buy traffic from tgps that skim clicks.

- Don't buy traffic from traffic sources that need to spam or need to go looking for buyers. Everyone is desperate for more good traffic, so its always odd that some places constantly need to try to get clients. You don't see good traffic sources going looking for buyers, its quite the opposite.

- Run your numbers. Work out your expected ctr, your expected impressions, your expected clicks and ratio. Then allow room for error. If the numbers dont come out at a potential profit then don't gamble.

- When asking for impressions or expected clicks from traffic sources they will almost always give you a value inflated 20-50%. Factor that in.

I hope that helps.

[Simon]

I meant to reply here the other day but I got busy and thought I posted this already.

Hi again Emma - Thanks for confirming what I was seeing at some traffic broker sites. They say they want to know the page where they're sending the traffic, and they want that page to meet certain criteria. I'm guessing that the better the traffic, the tighter they may want to control things...but that's only a guess at this point.

Hiya LB - Thanks for joining in on this thread. You mentioned some very good points in your post. We've bought banners and links at times, and have used cpm and cpc programs. We've been offered traffic from brokers many, many times. One of the reasons I started this thread is that I believe there is a difference, in general, between the folks who actively try to sell traffic to you and those you need to search out to find at all.

There definitely are more sources for traffic, sources that haven't been mentioned specifically in this thread, and I appreciate all the information that's been passed to me privately since I opened this thread. There are some folks out there I might think of trying to ply with drinks, hookers, or whatever else it took to learn what they knew about these things. But my guess is they'd save the best information for those they called 'friend' anyway.

That said, I'm interested in the mechanics of making a profit on purchased traffic after you're done filtering it. I understand that make be something you won't want to post to the world, but if you're willing to say anything privately, please let me know. I'm really not adverse to the liquor and broads approach if that works for you.

I think the same way as you do about general brokered traffic, which is why we've always said no when brokers have approached us (or worse, spammed us) with "great" black box traffic. The kind of purchased traffic that really interests me at this point is the type you mentioned, where you can actually know the exact site sending the traffic (and the link generating the click).

I'm not sure if we'll do this in a big way, but even if we do, we'll most likely grow into it slowly. I'd like to know more about using purchased traffic, and I don't mind buying some to learn more than I can learn just talking about it. If what I learn can be used to manage a system that creates 'free' bookmarkers for new projects, while running at or near breakeven, I'd be happy with that.

Excellent advise on running the numbers on what you expect. Another reason for this thread is to get feedback on what reasonable expectations we might want to use for projections before we test anything. From what I've read here (and been told) so far, running at or near breakeven would be doing pretty damn good.

Thanks again for the input you posted, LB, most appreciated.

One thing about this thread is noticeable by its absence. I understand why those who don't have enough "good" traffic now for their existing clients wouldn't have any need to post here. But anyone else find it strange that no traffic brokers/sellers have stopped by to talk with us about any of this?

Oh well, their loss if they don't want to.

I think this has been a great thread so far, and I want to say thanks again to everyone who's taken time to offer their opinions. I'm still looking to learn more, so I'd be glad to hear more from anyone willing to keep it going.

[emmanuelle]

Originally Posted by Simon

I'm really not adverse to the liquor and broads approach if that works for you.

Your loss Not all of us are into broads

[Simon]

Originally Posted by emmanuelle

Your loss Not all of us are into broads

Now, now... I only made it liquor and broads when I was addressing LB directly. Before that I'd said "liquor, hookers or whatever else," so not to worry, I have you covered.

Besides, you're on my 'special rewards' list already anyway.

[LB]

Originally Posted by Simon

Thanks again for the input you posted, LB, most appreciated.

Sure no probs.

I am pretty guarded with information on this subject especially on a public board, but if you wanted to grab me on icq 1556 seven 120 I could help with some questions you may have.

Glad to see you thinking about traffic buying instead of taking the gambler route and just jumping in throwing cash all directions.

[Simon]

Thanks LB, I'll add you to my icq list and touch base there in the next couple of days. If you want to add my icq it's 269zero43zero19.

I think I'm too much of a control freak to go the gambler route. Even in real gambling I prefer to be the house in most cases. Plus it pisses me off when I waste money, especially now that it's worth something again.