Traffic, To buy or not to buy..
By in Internet Marketing on 9th March 2008Thats the question every webmaster asks himself at one point where his site isn’t exactly getting the exposure it is supposed to, this is where almost any webmaster would give in to buying traffic, I know I’ve spent a few hundred dollars on traffic not ppc and from several different media types as well, every type of traffic has its own ups and downs, heres a little break down of it.
“10,000 visitors” type deals
You can find tons and tons of these deals on digitalpoint mainly if not there then try google, basicly the traffic is from those get paid to click kinda site more famously known as autosurf, the only thing you would get is more pageviews/hits on your site but remember that these are not potential readers, they are just their to view your site for 30 seconds (for some its 15) and then move on to the next one.
I won’t say that this is a bad deal but i run blogs and i need readers not just viewers, the kind of traffic these systems send you is really unresponsive, if you are running CPM ads you could earn more, although this is perfect in theory I haven’t tried GPT traffic on CPM ads.
Stumbleupon Ads
Stumbleupon ADs is a good alternative to the GPT option, although they just stumble off after they see your site they do leave a review or a positive/negative review of it which you can view in the advertiser’s panel, the data is somewhat helpful but most importantly Stumble upon doesn’t send you irrelevant traffic, every site has its own category and only the people which are interested in your site/page’s category will stumble to your page.
This traffic might help in downloads/reviews, but i don’t think they can convert into readers for blogs, although its a good boost in alexa for ya, and 2 out of every 5 visitors from stumbleupon ads make atleast 2-3 clicks besides the stumble.
Google Adwords
I have tried this once or twice and i gotta say the traffic from adwords is really really targeted and the conversion rate here is around 60% , John Chow’s main advertising tactic in my opinion has to be adwords, the traffic is driven from relevant blogs onto his, and there the visitors convert into readers because of the massive useful amount of info that JC has.
If you have a large budget then go with adwords, their price is high for a reason.
Private ADs
Advertising yourself on other blogs can get you somewhat targeted visitors but visitors non the less, the amount of CTR here is really high if your blog is really relevant or a competitor of the blog you are advertising on then you might get even more traffic through this, alot of blogs including mine offers advertising. Alot of this traffic converts into sales, as far as I have seen it does convert quite well you would atleast get your money spent on it back, Its all about choosing the right product for the right blog.
March 10th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
Unfortunately, I’ve tried buying traffic myself in the past only to find out the hard way that it’s not worth the money. I’ve even reported a few such stories on my blog. It seems like 9 out of 10 of these bulk visitor wholesalers either sell traffic that is fake, or robots, and/or useless traffic where the visitor closes the window to your site as quickly as it opens. Even expired domain re-direct traffic isn’t worth the money, IMO. Good ‘ol fashioned quality content & SEO is the only way to go.