Getting Website Traffic – Stuff You Don’t Hear About

So Darren and I are putting together a video series called 10 Minute Traffic Tips. You could ask why I suppose, but I don’t think the answer is very sexy. Darren came up with the idea, well then I really liked the idea. So we decided to do it. Yep, that’s about it. traffic to your website

So at the NAMS conference, I thought I’d take advantage of the opportunity and shoot some video with website owners that  you don’t see in these kinds of tutorials. My goal was to find real website owners who were able to garner massive traffic to their sites. I wasn’t so interested in the likes of Willie Crawford and Lynn Terry – but not because they’re not interesting.

You might say they’re two of the most sought after interviews or relationships in internet marketing.  And they’re both sincere, genuine and interesting people whose success is hard to deny. But I really didn’t want to be another gawker, another coat tail. When you’ve attained success like that – how many interviews do you get asked to do?

I would like our series to be more about traffic tips and less about me trying to ride the tails of success to climb my own ladder. If our readers demand that, I’ll take that demand to them and show them with legitimacy, that our intentions are honorable and customer-driven.

Our series will feature some very high profile internet gurus because we all want that nugget, but the bulk will be the little guys who’ve amassed massive traffic out of the spotlight. When you’re not in the spotlight, your name doesn’t help your traffic – it must be gotten other ways.

Ashton Kutcher, for example, what can you learn from his “traffic methods” that really doesn’t boil down to star power? I’m not saying he’s not savvy. . . but I am saying how can his “conversion rate statistics” be translated into stats the Anyday Man can follow? How many no-names announced they wanted to beat Oprah to 1,000,000 followers? And then how many of them actually did?

So keep your eye out for announcements on our upcoming series. You’re going to learn things no other course has even touched. For example we’ve already interviewed someone who purposely created a video to go viral – and then amassed 60,000 actives in her database. How about someone else who’s mastered guest blog posting to the tune of 4,000 extra hits to her website the day any of her guest posts come out. We’ve also spoken with people who use SEO, affiliates, syndication and more.

It’s fascinating to do the interviews. Wait till you have 10 minutes to watch them.

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Marketing Mistakes: conversion rate blinders

I approached an affiliate network this week to see if I could place some banner ads on my sites for a couple products I thought were cool. And the response I got was “let us review your sites and see if there is a match”.

I thought that was odd. Well, once I totally over-thought it, that’s when I decided it was odd.

The upside for them: It doesn’t cost them anything to e-mail me the url so I can download a banner ad. It doesn’t cost them anything if 1 million people visit my site and no one clicks the ad. And it doesn’t cost them anything if no one visits the site and no one clicks the ad. Therefore the upside is potential sales, actual sales and exposure. If it takes 7 impressions before you buy I could be one of those.

The downside for them: If 1,000,000 people click the ad and no one buys, their conversion rate looks really bad. (see related posts to see the truth behind conversion rates). If they put their ads on porn sites, their reputation may suffer. If they allow everyone to put banner ads on their sites and 95% sell 1 unit, that’s a lot of paperwork to deal with. Legitimate concerns? I’d say so.

But after totally over-thinking it, I believe they’re trying to protect their conversion rate. Oddly enough the conversion rate tells you so little that it really means nothing. A conversion rate that is too low means you’re fishing with too wide a net, driving the wrong kind of traffic or a poorly worded ad. Or finally does it mean that your site isn’t converting good prospects into paying customers? The only way you learn those answers is to get lots of traffic and test new things.

And that brought me to these questions. She didn’t ask a single question about what visitors to my sites have bought before or what is their demographic makeup. Nor was she curious as to the size of my e-mail marketing database – or the response rate I get when I e-mail information to my database.

Which leads me to believe that they’re interested in ads that are similar in content to the websites themselves. For example, they’d be happy to promote an Oprah book on an Oprah site. Unfortunately, it’s often the traffic itself that drives sales. A site about Kite Flying that is heavily viewed by people over 50 may do well with Enzyte ads – but that has nothing to do with kites.

So here are two potential marketing mistakes you could find yourself making. I’m not saying the affiliate company I contacted was making a mistake – you’ve got to run business as you see fit. But if you’re motivated by either of these wrongs, you may be missing out on income.

Don’t limit yourself to products and services that are similar to yours. If you’re a home builder – feel free to send your audience a coupon for tax planning at H&R Block. Homeowners and taxes go together. And stop worrying about your overall conversion rate. Look at it as a function of source – not as a function of performance.

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Mistakes in internet marketing: conversion rate

One of the biggest mistakes in internet marketing is failing to understand the true nature of your conversion rate.

Conversion rate is such a lousy term, but for many business owners it has come to mean profit.

Unfortunately, businesses that want to provide you with internet marketing services will use the term conversion rate to get your attention and sell you services. But that’s precisely what you don’t want to hear.

more Mistakes in internet marketing: (…)

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Your Website Conversion Rate is Meaningless. Period.

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People often ask me what my website conversion rate is, which I think is an absolutely ridiculous question. But before we continue, let’s assume you don’t know what a conversion rate is OR let’s define it so the rest of this post is based on a mutual understanding of conversion rate.

Here it is: Number of Visitors ÷ Number of people who buy = Conversion rate (as a percentage).
Example: 100 people visit the site, 10 people buy. Conversion rate is 10%

Easy enough, right?

Let’s start with a real life example (except I’ve been asked to mask the name of the company) so let’s use www.antioxidantexample.com, which is an antioxidant nutritional supplement that advertises heavily on TV and Radio – but no advertising on the internet.

95% of their web traffic is derived from folks who heard the 30 minute radio infomercial or saw the 30 minute tv infomercial then went to the website to buy the product. What do you think their conversion rate is? Well, it just so happens that the conversion rate is 30%. That means 3 out of every 10 visitors buys the product.

Website Conversion Rates are Meaningless

For a while they advertised using Google’s AdWords program which means they bought ad space on the Google Search Results pages. When they did that they drove thousands of people to the site who had searched the term antioxidant. But guess what their conversion rate was then? Yep, it was .7%

Same website. No changes.

The only thing that did change was the quality of the person that arrived at the site. From infomercials they had 30 minutes of explanation and product examples, but with Google ads they had curiosity seekers, inaccurate clicks and people not getting what they expected.

So the conversion rate is bunk.

What isn’t bunk is the conversion rate for Google AdWords clients who arrive at the site. What isn’t bunk is the conversion rate of the TV infomercial clients that end up at the site. And what isn’t bunk is the conversion rate of the people who found the site via organic search.

Your website conversion rate is meaningless. The conversion rate of your source’s web traffic, on the other hand, is like spun gold.

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