Shall we play a game?
Name your single favorite web traffic generation tactic at this very moment by posting it as a comment below.
Be sure to explain why.
Bonus points for uniqueness and/or extra details on how you do it.
When you post your favorite traffic tactic, here’s what you’ll get:
EVERYONE: I’ll compile a list of every traffic tactic and email it to everyone who participates with a legitimate comment below. (Along with all the secret tactics that I add in there too!)
TOP 3: I’ll paypal $250 cash to the best post, at my sole discretion. $100 to 2nd place, $50 to 3rd place.
Thanks for playing! The end result should be fun and valuable to us all.
- Matt Gill
Trafficology.com
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{ 28 comments… read them below or add one }
Let’s see here…
Articles
Press Releases
Blogging
Cost Per View(CPV) or Pay Per View (PPV) This is where you pay a small % to a network to have your website shown as a pop under or pop-over. The people in the network have downloaded a web app and agree to get adware. not to be confused with spyware. Adware is the good kinda ware.
SEO (search engine optimization)
PPC (pay per click)
Social Media, Ie Facebook twitter, myspace, linkedin
Social Book marking
Back linking
Banner placements
Content network placements
Media buying
Post cards
Direct Mail
CPA networks (Cost per action)
TV ads
Video
Viral traffic
Joint ventures
Affiliate promotions
That is all i can think of right now.
JC
Justin´s last [type] ..Are you an honest online marketer
In my book email traffic to warm lists is VERY powerful. Looks for people with newsletters in your niche. Just go to Google and type in (The Niche You Want) Newsletter and you will find TONS of people with lists who are ready to mail your offer or whatever out.
Joel Peterson´s last [type] ..A Real Way To Make Money In Your Sleep In 60 Days Or Less
Hmmm let me see.
Joint ventures
Affiliates
CPV/PPV
CPA networks
SEO
PPC
Video
Direct Mail
Post Cards
TV ads
Media Buys
Banner advertising
Content network
Social Book marking
Social Media
Viral
Back linking
Blogging
Articles
Press releases
Private banner placements
That is about all i can think of off the top of my head.
Justin Christianson´s last [type] ..Are you an honest online marketer
Favorite traffic tactic…here’s a good one if you like to mess around in local geo-targeted traffic markets. You go to a site like CraigsList and then post an offer. BUT, here’s the trick, instead of posting your offer like 98% of others on Craigslist (boring with no marketing prowess at all), your offer is designed to be attractive to Google, i.e. KW rich headline and KW specific message.
Then, because CraigsList has such a high Alexa and PR rankings your listing can easily go to Page 1 on Google because you are in less competitive local markets. People click on your link, are taken over to your listing on CraigsList, and then BOOM they click and go to your offer…CPA, Squeeze Page, or whatever you use to list build or conversion funnel, etc.
I learned this and many other similar great tactics for local markets from my coach, Jack Mize at OfflineXFactor (closed…but I know a back door
Dave Foran´s last [type] ..Welcome to InternetBizGuycom
Traffic Tactic:
By far (BY FAR) the quickest, fastest, most lucrative way I have ever driven traffic is by skipping “prospects” and going after “customers”. There are many ways to skip through prospects and target customers. However, for this post, I’ll give ONE way and perhaps the best way!
It is by “borrowing customers”.
You see, there are possibly thousands of people & businesses (depending on your niche) who already have “customers”. Therefore, you simply get your product promoted to THEIR customers. You do this by giving them a huge percentage of the sales made of your product to their customers.
Let’s use Matt “homer king” Gill as an example. He has customers on his lists. I could contact Homer…err Matt… and make a value-proposition. I tell Matt that I have a full blown product already created, all the bells and whistles, everything is done. All he has to do is slap his name on the product as a co-creator with me, and promote to his customers.
Let’s say I offered Matt 75% commissions. I keep 25%. Matt makes a bunch of money by offering his customers another product (from him with his name on the product) and he makes that money doing nothing but pressing “send” on his autoresponder account. I do the rest. I make 25% on those sales, but more importantly, I get a list of “customers”.
Imagine having a list of 1,000 customers. Imagine those 1,000 customers average buying $100 per year from me (that’s 100k). Imagine them spending $300 per year with me, that’s $300k. A $1,000 per year?? Yep, 1 milllllllllllllllllllion dollars (with pinky in mouth like dr evil from austin powers).
Also, together, me and matt can go get others to promote that Matt Gill Homer King product too by setting up an affiliate program for it. The core problem that all marketers have (in any big niche) is that they cannot possibly create products fast enough to meet the “buying demand” of the customers on their lists.
Therefore, bridge that gap by doing the work for people who already have customers. Skip prospects and go for customers. This one tactic can make you wealthy. This one tactic can change your life. This one tactic can make you a home run king too!
Eric Louviere
PS – you already got my paypal email address, but instead of sending me the prize money, just send people to my badass free journal.
Eric Louviere´s last [type] ..Site Announcements
Brilliant insights and perspective Eric. You should teach this for a living!
I have to agree with Joel in regards to email traffic to warm lists. That’s how I really broke into the Internet Marketing world… I created what I now call a “massive joint venture” project. Basically, I got 12 other experts in the field to participate & created a win-win-win-win for everyone involved. Part of the deal was that each expert would also mail to their newsletter members about the project. This built a list of something like 9000 very interested people in just 3 weeks.
Anyway, just to throw some more in there… This is what I’ve heard is working well for some of my friends lately…
All of these with the caveat “if you know how to get the traffic to convert”…
Facebook ads (facebook.com/ads)
Banner ads on the Google Content network (adwords.google.com)
Targeted ads on Plenty of Fish (ads.pof.com)
The bottom line – there are 100′s of ways to get traffic to a website (offline methods as well). Each method has the potential to bring you tons of customers — HOWEVER — each method also requires it’s own ‘framing’, tracking, etc. (Framing is basically the path of how the visitor got to your site and what frame of mind they’re put into by your marketing creatives).
Harris Fellman´s last [type] ..The “Instant Site” That Got My Wife on OPRAH
I remember that Harris. I was brand new newbie then and that was one of my first introductions to most of those guys you interviewed. Seems like about 30 years ago now, but was not that long ago. I think Jay Abraham was one of the one’s you interviewed right? I know Mark Joyner was one of them. Gurilla marketing dude too? Nicely done BTW.
Eric Louviere´s last [type] ..Site Announcements
I remember that too Harris. I was a very old newbie! lol
Oh yeah – I meant to put this in there –> great little article and graphic from SEOMoz that gives a great explanation of what I was just talking about.
http://www.seomoz.org/blog/the-12step-landing-page-rehab-program-infographic-10488
Harris Fellman´s last [type] ..Lemonade Stand Lessons
Hey Eric,
No, it was Jay Conrad Levinson … not Jay Abraham.
Tellman had Jay Abraham on his “List Crusade” though.
Honestly, that 12 Week Intensive project attracted a *lot* of really good people as subscribers. Was pretty amazing.
And Matt – baloney – you were no where near a newbie in December of 2005. LOL
Harris Fellman´s last [type] ..Creative Toys for Creative Kids
I use all the traditional way to get traffic, but I also use Wikipedia to get good targeted traffic. It is a variation on making article submissions.
Everybody knows that Wikipedia is created by users and can be edited by anyone who registers with Wikipedia. The basic tactic is:
1. Search : Do a search on Wikipedia for whatever subject or product or service you want to promote.
2. Research: Read the wiki page about that subject very thoroughly. See what is already listed by the people who are passionate about the subject. Research the subject on Google and get valid information to create a short digital information product or article or high someone through GURU or ELance, etc.. to write one for you.
3. Write : Create an “article or PDF” that is free to everyone and post it with access through your landing page.
4. Edit : Edit the wiki page with some valid information using a text anchor to the product or site and list the landing page with PDF article as a REFERENCE to the information.
5. Promote: On the confirmation page or the download page or the email link, put a short small link to the product you want to sell. Promote to the new list you built, the product or service you wanted to sell when you send out the free PDF link or in later emails.
That’s it.
The text anchor and reference creates a link from a very high traffic site to your landing page. Make sure the information is valid and valuable to the wiki page. Otherwise, people who are passionate about the subject will edit your edit out.
Some wiki pages are the DOMAIN and KINGDOM of some very guarded people who do not allow any interlopers to create edits to their kingdom. Don’t fight it. Just move to another wiki page and another subject.
This tactic is best used for global information, but it can be modified to be used for local business advertising also.
Seeing as people have covered all the basic ones, here’s my personal favorite.
We all know of joint ventures to email lists and it’s effectiveness, but of the 100,000+ top sites online, very few have a list and even less have a list that’s worth anything – especially to direct response-style offers… but they all have good traffic (and usually very targeted traffic).
The deals I like are where I’m working out a specific deal with them to “siphon” their traffic. Obviously some placements are going to be better than others, for example, a thank you page vs. a guest post vs. a banner ad. You’d be surprised what people are willing to do if you can show them that you can make more money than they can (it’s easier than you think).
Most of these sites aren’t making much money to speak of so be creative, but it’s true set and forget traffic – and a few strategic deals can keep traffic (and sales) coming for a LONG time.
It’s a little legwork upfront, but once you get it in place it’s instant, consistent, and honestly probably the single fastest way to start getting “set and forget” revenue flowing in. FAR more lucrative outside of IM and I guarantee you that if you spend a few hours a month on this you’re going to see your revenue keep climbin’. Just a couple smart deals can be huge free money.
Sam
It appears that between JC and everyone else… most of the tactics have been revealed
But if you want mass traffic, just buy text ads at AdBlade.com, AdSonar.com, Pulse360.com and find a channel that is profitable. Way more traffic than you can get on Google and there’s no quality score.
Be prepared to spend a little (between $1K and $5K) to find the winners.
For mass traffic via banner ads, CPMatic.com and AdBuyer.com are two that have tons available. As above, you’ll have to spend to find out what’s working and what’s not, but with these two companies you can tell them what your ideal CPA is and they’ll pixel optimze for you.
For the type of traffic I’m talking about, your offer needs to be very generic, i.e. no internet marketing products. General biz opp, health, and CPA offers work best.
I’ve saved the best for last: FFA’s. JK – if you even know what that is then you’ve been around as long as I have.
Fabricio
The best traffic is traffic that’s already looking for you, so SEO is always going to be my favorite way to reach people. The problem is that most people go about it all wrong.
Research is the most important piece. First, take your perfect keyword (no matter how competitive it is – should be a direct comparison of what you sell) and put it into your favorite keyword tool. Find five keywords that contain the original term, but are less competitive. Build your links with all 6 terms. This gives the appearance of being natural and every link containing the main term will give you a better shot of getting it eventually. I refer to this is a “keywheel”.
Spin your freaking content. Text based content still gives you the most “juice” when building links. When you write something, rewriting it to be able to target more than one keyword term is simply logical. If you don’t rewrite it now, you’ll simply be writing a different version of the same article 6 months from now anyways. When I spin content, I do it by sentence. My focus is on creating different lengths of each sentence while saying the same thing in different words.
Articles aren’t just for article directories. If you spin your articles, you can put them all over the internet. Hosted blog sites and blog networks are my new favorite way to build links. With one article, I can build hundreds of backlinks.
Link wheels don’t work anymore, at least not the way most software programs do it. Instead of a massive group of blogs with a single post on them, set up 5 of them. Keep adding content to each one.
Ross Goldberg´s last [type] ..Losing The Battle To Win The War
cause a chain rxn through specific yahoo news topics and youtube advertising combined with a hook involving politics, the economy, or Justin Beber.
Press Releases and SEO are great.
Esp the PR sites that allow full anchor text. (And if you put your link in the first sentence, you also get a fair chance of that link being syndicated autoblogs, etc.
YouTube is great also – esp if you cut a video specifically for a youtube search and leave a cliffhanger
Andrew Murray´s last [type] ..SEOpressor Puts Me On 1st Page In Google in Under 24 Hours
Articles
Write closely related articles on your niche subject. Original articles with new valuable information on the subject will drive taffic to your website.
In my experience, SEO is still king of the traffic generation strategies.
Sure, it takes time and practice to get it right, but when done correctly
and you bring high quality content to the table, the search engines can
reward you with BIG traffic – and it’s all targeted and best of all: FREE! =)
How to go about it requires too much info to fit in a blog post, but here
is a short summary of how I like to do it:
a) Set up wordpress blogs on keyword-relevant domains.
b) Post quality content on them with links to the target site
c) Optimized pages on target site for each keyword (one page per keyword)
d) Links coming to the main site and to the surrounding blogs (2.0 sites)
e) Massive links coming to the 2.0 sites
f) Lather, Rinse, Repeat.
Cheers!
Miguel Alvarez
SEO it the way to go if you know what you are doing. You can definitely get traffic from PPC, etc but Google is a pain the butt.
Clint´s last [type] ..Why is Google Broken Paid Traffic Utter Horse Crap
Personally, I still like blog commenting.
I’ll give you two examples, I used to be very active on JoelComm.com So active as a commentator that he sent me a personal note thanking me for being so engaging. Now, since that blog is aged, it was written in “Movable Type” as the CMS – so no link juice, etc.
But… that does not mean that I don’t get traffic. No! When I do comment, I make sure that the comment is relevant to the post, and I always leave my comment “good, but incomplete”. I always make sure to tease the reader so that they are compelled to click onto my name.
Another example was when Traffic Geyser launched their newest service. As I am still learning list building, all I did was post comments. One of the sites I posted comments for this launch on was for someone elses product launch. All told, I got a few 100 hits in that two week span and 15 of them were from the product launch site. This happened, again, because I commented on the launch, tied in a teaser for the Traffic Geyser launch, and got hits.
Thanks for this contest, Matt!
I disagree. SEO is the most expensive form of traffic since it requires your TIME. If you’re using someone ELSE’s time, then my opinion is different. Also, IMO, most people on the planet cannot GENERATE traffic. Michael Jackson’s funeral generates traffic. The BP disaster generates traffic. The rest of us can merely REDIRECT traffic. I’ll trade my money in stead of my time any day. Best.
I have a lot of success targeting offline businesses with offline campaigns in order to drive traffic to my SEO Company site.
As much as online traffic generation methods are successful, migrating offline customers to your online assets can be as valuable as any online traffic generation methods.
Sending postcards and standard direct response letters works well and provided that the offer is relevant, in many cases even from mailings to local businesses I am able to get multiple visits to my site and collect opt-in details for ongoing communication.
As an example, over the past 5 mailings of around 100 letters @ $0.50 here in Australia costs me just $50 and each mail out has generated a customer worth over $500 per month plus additional signups (normally converting at around 20-30%) to the mailing list which have yet to be realized to their potential value.
Hope that might give someone some ideas.
Cheers
Brad
Brad Davidson´s last [type] ..Using Title Tags Is Important To Your SEO Success
My favorite traffic generation technique is by far word of mouth referrals.
While word of mouth referrals may seem like an unconventional way of generating web traffic, it’s turned out to be the highest converting and most targeted traffic I’ve ever had hit my website.
It does take time to build a pool of satisfied clients/customers and interact personally with substantial amounts of people in the market but once the foundation is built, the traffic drips in steadily and converts like crazy.
Over N Out,
Chris Elliott
Hi Matt,
My personal favorite has been exit traffic.
Thank you,
Michael
I use only three main sources to bring visitors to my site (PPC is really not an option any more):
1) Internal SEO of blog post. That includes having:
- main keyword (and title of the post) link back to front page,
- bold and italic variations of keyword text,
- keyword.jpg – you get the idea – on the same page,
- attached PDF of the post (easily with OpenOffice Writer), keyword(s) in meta info,
- audio podcast or even a video of the same post (named with keyword(s)),
- podcast feed (I use PodPress) and
- videositemap.xml regulary updated.
2) I create profiles on sites I got from Angela backlinks. But I do not use all of the sites – only those which are related to my (keyword) site. I really haven’t found that “just any link” helps. And also when I post a link on blog or forum I do take care it has relevant context ten words left and right to the keyword link.
3) For social exposure I ask friends with lot of followers to post a link to my site. If it has to be affiliated (e.g. profit to my friend) I go for extra mile. But I do it very simply – I create custom field in aWeber for the list and redirect via .htaccess to non-affiliate display link but I cookie the visitor. If he subscribes, the value of the cookie goes to custom field in aWeber and if he buys, my friend(s) get a commission based on – you guessed it, custom field of buyer(s) in aWeber.
I go for more expensive systems when I have guaranteed funds and customers – loosing money to buy several IM products and then not use them is simply not an option in Internet success.
This brings me enough traffic for now to several sites. I’ll use more paid techniques when I need them, not when I feel I need them.
You crack me up dude!
Hi Matt,
My favorite strategy and one that is working well at the moment is distributing branded pdfs to various ‘free to download’ websites.
Not only is it bringing in a steady flow of targeted traffic, but I am also making a few bucks in affiliate commmissions too
All the best,
Nick.
nick@brandablepdfs.com´s last [type] ..12 Step Autoresponder Sequence