Traffic from Scratch

SUBMITTED BY: Sonnash4747

DATE: May 21, 2020, 10:34 p.m.

FORMAT: Text only

SIZE: 55.3 kB

Raw Download

HITS: 476

Report
  1. Traffic from Scratch
  2. How a new website can build a massive traffic base starting with zero
  3. Traffic From Scratch
  4. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  6. Traffic From Scratch
  7. INDEX
  8. 1. Understanding Traffic
  9. 2. Mainstream Lessons from the Adult Industry
  10. 3. Can Adult Industry Tricks of the Trade be used in
  11. Mainstream?
  12. 4. The Secret to Making Your Traffic Grow
  13. 5. How to Effectively Trade Traffic
  14. 6. How to Turbo Charge Your Trades
  15. 7. Content is the Key to Traffic Building
  16. 8. How to find Traffic Trades
  17. 9. Getting Fringe Traffic
  18. 10. How Large Can Your Site Grow?
  19. 11. Other Ways to Send Traffic to Your Trade Partners
  20. 12. Tools of the Trade
  21. 13. Where To Get Starter Traffic
  22. 14. Glossary
  23. 2
  24. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  26. Traffic From Scratch
  27. Understanding Traffic
  28. Traffic! Every website needs it – Every webmaster wants more of it. We are all looking for that one secret traffic trick that will turn our site around.
  29. I’ve been doing online marketing for over 20 years. I started with BBS systems in the 80s, then marketed on online services like ComuServe in the late 80s. I used the internet’s ALT forums in the early 90s before the World Wide Web, and created my first website in 1995.
  30. In all those years I’ve noticed a constant pattern. The adult capitalists are always ahead of the mainstream entrepreneurs when it comes to using the available technology for marketing. Their marketing innovations and traffic building techniques are envied and loathed at the same time by the mainstream.
  31. Yet most of the mainstream giants became that way by borrowing techniques used by adult websites. Amazon.com, YouTube, MySpace and many others all owe their success to tricks of the trade that were developed by adult webmasters.
  32. This book is designed to show the average webmaster how to dramatically increase his traffic using solid traffic building systems that are common in the adult internet community.
  33. The Six Sources of Traffic
  34. On the surface, traffic generation seems like a simple process. Especially since there are only 6 possible ways that traffic can come to your site – Start-Up Page Traffic, Type-In Traffic, Bookmarks, Linked Traffic, Redirection, and Software Routing.
  35. 1. Start-Up Page Traffic - This is also called the browser’s homepage. It’s where everyone starts their web surfing. It’s the web page that shows up by default when you load your Internet browser. Most of this traffic goes to search engines like MSN.com, Yahoo.com or Google.com.
  36. 3
  37. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  39. Traffic From Scratch
  40. 2. Type-In Traffic – Type-in traffic is considered the most valuable traffic and the hardest to get.
  41. Most type-in traffic comes from surfers typing in domain names of specific sites that they have visited before. Sites like Google.com, Yahoo.com and Ebay.com get a lot of this traffic. Some type-in traffic comes from people visiting sites that they see in TV, radio, and print ads - ticketmaster.com gets a lot of type-in traffic from its advertising.
  42. Type-in traffic from advertising is considered the most expensive way to get traffic to your site. Word-of-mouth is also where much type-in traffic comes from. Much of YouTube’s traffic came from word-of- mouth.
  43. 3. Bookmarks – When a surfer visits a site and wants to return later he will usually “bookmark” the site. Clicking on the bookmark or favorites icon on the web browser generally does this. By book marking a site, a surfer can easily find and return to his favorite sites.
  44. 4. Linked Traffic – This is where you will get 95% of your traffic. Link traffic can come from a link on a search engine, another website, a directory, or even an email.
  45. 5. Automated Popups and Redirects – A visitor can be sent to another website by “Popping” up a new window or even automatically redirecting them (sometimes against their will) to another site. There are many legitimate ways to use pop-ups and some ways to avoid. If the user is not clicking on a link to trigger this event then it is considered automated.
  46. 6. Software Routing – There are many software packages that have built in browsers that take surfers to sites without them clicking on a link. For instance, a tax preparation package may pull up relevant pages from the IRS website or automatically open your browser window with a relevant page from the web. Many software packages also have their help function open a web page. While most software packages have a legitimate reason for sending the computer user to a website is should be noted that illegal devices like spyware and viruses can fall under this category.
  47. 4
  48. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  50. Traffic From Scratch
  51. Mainstream Lessons from the Adult Industry
  52. A few years ago I was invited to meet with a man that at the time was considered to be the person that had made the most money of anyone on the internet. That man was, Ron Levi, the inventor of the affiliate program... and he was also an adult webmaster; the founder of CyberErotica one of the world’s largest adult websites. Read his bio here on Luke Fords site: http://www.lukeisback.com/stars/stars/ron_levi.htm
  53. I met him in Las Vegas, in his suite at the top of the Mandalay Bay Hotel. It was giant suite with 30 foot ceilings. While we talked a butler came in and went to the bedroom to turn the sheets down and put a chocolate on his pillow.
  54. I later read that he owns a 30 million dollar house on the ocean in California with a 10 car garage full of exotic cars. He’s a race fan so he bought his own racing team. He’s living the life that most of us dream of. And he built his life by understanding traffic.
  55. It was amazing to hear him talk. He knew the internet industry backwards and forwards. And I’m not talking about the adult internet, I’m talking about mainstream.
  56. He told me mistakes that he felt that he felt many mainstream sites were making.
  57. That’s when he told me the secret to his websites. It was one of those moments when I thought, “Duh... that’s so obvious”.
  58. 5
  59. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  61. Traffic From Scratch
  62. Can Adult Industry Tricks of the Trade be used in Mainstream?
  63. After that meeting I realized that the reasons many adult sites generate traffic is not because of the type of content, but because of the way they use their traffic to create more traffic.
  64. I went back to my home in Atlanta determined to talk to a few more adult webmasters about how they generate traffic.
  65. You can’t swing a stick in Atlanta without hitting an adult webmaster. Many of the leaders in the industry are here: The Buffet Brothers live here, they are the inventors of the TGP traffic system that revolutionized the adult industry. The guys from Consumption Junction lived here at the time. Consumption Junction used to be a mainstream site and is considered to be the first YouTube style website. One of my neighbors runs one of the largest adult traffic trading sites and a friend of mine from the old BBS days operates one of the largest adult webmaster forums.
  66. After talking to many people in the adult internet business I found out one thing. For every super successful adult webmaster out there, mainstream has an even more successful webmaster. Just look at the guys from YouTube. For every webmaster in mainstream that can’t pay their rent, there are 5 just like them in the adult world. If an adult webmaster does not understand traffic, he will fail the same as a mainstream webmaster.
  67. I was introduced to. Paul, a man that owns a hosting service for amateur adult websites. He also does their credit card processing, so he knows how much they make. He showed me a printout and I was stunned!! Out of 500 active websites, the average website was making less than $100 per month.
  68. I asked him “Why are they making so little? I thought people were getting rich with adult websites”. He replied “They don’t know how to bring in the traffic. Most of those sites only bring in about 100 visitors a day. Their conversion rates are good, but that doesn’t mean squat without the traffic.”
  69. 6
  70. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  72. Traffic From Scratch
  73. I started looking at the stats of the sites that were getting 100 visitors a day. The sites, on the surface, looked just as good as sites I had seen getting 100,000 a day. Why was there such a huge difference in traffic?
  74. I realized immediately what their problem was. From first glance it looked like they were doing everything right. A search engine optimized page, some backlinks, a decent PR, some link trades., everything they were told to do. But while they were trading links, they were not trading traffic. These webmasters were forcing all their traffic to their sales page and had no Plan-B for the 99% of the visitors that did not buy.
  75. 7
  76. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  78. The Secret to Making Your Traffic Grow
  79. There are many names for it like “Traffic Leveraging” or “Traffic re- investing” but the term I like best is “Traffic Compounding”. Essentially it means that you take the traffic you have and trade it for more traffic. Repeat the process a few times and through the magic of compounding you have a huge traffic base.
  80. We’ve all heard the brainteaser “For the next 30 days would you rather earn $1,000 per day or 1 penny the first day, then 2 cents the next, then keep doubling it for the rest of the 30 days?”
  81. It’s an exaggerated but effective example of a way to show the power of compounding. Let’s convert the pennies to visitors and ask the question would you rather have 100,000 visitors a day for 30 days or 1 visitor the first day, two the next then 4, and so forth.
  82. Examples of Traffic Compounding
  83. Compounding Fixed
  84. Day 1 1 10,000
  85. Traffic From Scratch
  86. Day 2 2
  87. Day 3 4 10,000 Day 4 8 10,000
  88. 10,000
  89. Day 5 16
  90. Day 6 32 10,000
  91. 10,000
  92. Day 7 64
  93. 10,000 128 10,000 256 10,000
  94. Day 8
  95. Day 9
  96. Totals 511
  97. 90,000
  98. At the end of 9 days taking the 10,000 visitors a day seems to be the better deal. By compounding your traffic you have only received 511 visitors. If you would have taken the choice of 10,000 visitors a day you would have received over 175 times more traffic. Let’s look forward to day 20.
  99. 8
  100. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  102. Traffic From Scratch
  103. Day 10 Day 11 Day 12 Day 13 Day 14 Day 15 Day 16 Day 17 Day 18 Day 19 Day 20
  104. Days 10 - 20
  105. Compounding
  106. 512 1,024 2,048 4,096 8,192 16,384 32,768 65,536 131,072 262,144 524,288
  107. Fixed
  108. 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000
  109. 200,000
  110. Totals 1,048,575
  111. After 20 days the tables have turned. We can easily see the power of compounding. The compounding method is yielding over 50 times
  112. more visitors per
  113. Day 21
  114. Day 22 Day 23 Day 24 Day 25 Day 26 Day 27 Day 28 Day 29 Day 30
  115. Totals
  116. day and will continue to grow.
  117. Compounding
  118. 1,048,576
  119. 2,097,152 4,194,304 8,388,608
  120. 16,777,216 33,554,432 67,108,864
  121. 134,217,728 268,435,456 536,870,912
  122. 1,073,741,823
  123. Fixed
  124. 10,000
  125. 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000 10,000
  126. 300,000
  127. By day 30 we are getting half a billion visitors a day. Now let’s leave Fantasy Land and return to the real world.
  128. Obviously it’s not possible to double your traffic every day for 30 days, the above was simply an example to show the compounding effects of re-investing traffic.
  129. 9
  130. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  132. Take a look at the above charts and think about what would happen if at day 5 you stared taking away just 10 visitors a day and started sending them to an affiliate instead of re-vesting them? The effects would be devastating. Yet, if you wait until after 20 days you could send thousands of visitors off every day to affiliates while still having a massive traffic base.
  133. While it’s not possible to double your traffic every day for 30 days, it is a reasonable goal to increase your traffic by 40% every month for 12 months. Suppose you have a low traffic website getting just 200 visitors a day (or 6,000 per month), let’s take a look at what would happen if you increased your traffic by 40% every month for a year.
  134. Example of 6,000 visitors a month compounded by 40% per month
  135. Compounding Fixed
  136. January 6,000
  137. 6,000
  138. Traffic From Scratch
  139. February 8,400 6,000
  140. March
  141. April
  142. May
  143. June
  144. July
  145. August
  146. September
  147. October 123,966 6,000
  148. 11,760 6,000
  149. 16,464
  150. 23,050 6,000
  151. 6,000
  152. 32,269
  153. 45,177 6,000 63,248 6,000
  154. 6,000
  155. 88,547
  156. 6,000
  157. November 173,533
  158. December 242,974 6,000
  159. 6,000
  160. Totals 1,048,575
  161. 72,000
  162. By the end of the year just moderate compounding is bringing you in almost a quarter of a million visitors a month or about 8,000 visitors a day. That is a realistic one year goal that has been achieved by average webmasters.
  163. If you don’t have even 200 visitors a day to trade with, there are strategies listed in the chapter “Getting Traffic” that should easily get you that many visitors or more within a few days.
  164. 10
  165. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  167. Traffic From Scratch
  168. There seems to be a brick wall of 8,000 – 10,000 visitors a day for many niches. This is because of market share economics. There is only a certain amount of surfers for each niche. The broader your market, the larger you should be able to grow your traffic.
  169. If your website is in a broad market, like dieting or physical fitness, there is no reason why you can’t achieve traffic numbers like adult sites that have the same market shares.
  170. If you website is in a limited market niche, you may want to consider starting other websites that target other markets.
  171. No matter what your website size, trading traffic makes sense: Your visitors are not going to stay on your site forever no matter how much content you have. Sooner or later they are going to leave. The question is... are you going to let them leave on their own or control the way they leave your site in a way that will bring back more traffic?
  172. 11
  173. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  175. Traffic From Scratch
  176. How to Effectively Trade Traffic
  177. Now that you understand how traffic grows we can start understanding how to effectively trade it.
  178. If you’re like the average webmaster you have built a site or two, made a few link exchanges (maybe even hundreds) but have noticed that no one is sending you any traffic. You contact the webmasters and they tell you that it’s because you are not sending them any traffic. You have no way of knowing because all you know if that you have put their link in a prominent position, you don’t know if it’s getting clicks or not. Maybe the other webmaster is cheating you out of traffic? How can you tell?
  179. This is not a problem that adult sites with huge amounts of traffic have. Why? Because they automatically track all their traffic coming in and going out. These mega traffic sites didn’t become traffic rich by making bad traffic trades. Nearly all of the major traffic sites use a traffic trading script.
  180. What is a traffic trading script? A trading script automates the process of trading traffic with other websites. It tracks your hits coming in and controls your traffic going out. A good script will filter out websites trying to cheat you. When I researched several sites that had a traffic base of 1 million or more visitors a day I found that the common denominator was that 95% were all using a traffic trading script. And 90% of them were using the same script.
  181. Why use a traffic trading script? It will allow you to grow your traffic exponentially. You can make traffic trades all day and not worry about how much traffic your traffic trading partners are sending you. If they can only send you a little traffic then it adjusts and sends them a little bit in return. If they send you a lot then you can send them a lot of traffic in return.
  182. 12
  183. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  185. Traffic From Scratch
  186. If your site is designed well, then you should be able to send your trading partners 2 visitors for every one they send you and still have plenty of traffic left over. This technique is explained in detail later in the chapter “How to Turbo Charge Your Trades”. By having the ability to over deliver traffic, you will soon find webmasters seeking you out wanting to trade traffic with you.
  187. Another great feature of a traffic trading script is that it automatically lets other webmasters sign up on your site to trade traffic. While link trade scripts are popular on mainstream sites, traffic trading scripts are used on high traffic adult websites.
  188. While it’s tempting to want to accept all traffic trades, you should try to stick to your niche (or fringe niches as described later). Lots of non targeted traffic will do you no good.
  189. 13
  190. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  192. Traffic From Scratch
  193. How to Turbo Charge Your Trades
  194. Before you begin trading you must optimize your site for traffic trading. A traffic trading optimized site should have lots of pages and lots of content.
  195. Keep the visitor clicking: If you have an article that is extremely long, break it down into several pages. You want to keep the surfer holding his mouse in his hand at all times and clicking as many links as possible. If the entire article is all on one page your visitor is likely to let go of the mouse while he leans back and reads. Or worse, he will print it out and read it away from the computer which means he won’t be clicking any of your links at all.
  196. Embed links in the article to promote clicking: For instance, let’s assume you have a website that sells pet supplies. Your site may have an article about dogs. When the article talks about dog food, hyperlink the words “Dog Food” and set the outgoing link to a site you are trading with that sells dog food. You can fill a page full of links this way encouraging your visitor to click on several links while reading the article. Open up each link into a new window and your visitor will view the site then come back and read more of the article.
  197. By the time your surfer has finished the article he may have clicked on 5 or 6 links. Each link went to a traffic trade so each hit should be returning at least 1 visitor back to your site. By doing this you have turned that one visitor into 5 fresh visitors. You can then take these 5 new visitors and repeat the process.
  198. Use Blind Links to Balance Outgoing Traffic: How do you deal with a site that is sending you a lot more traffic than you are sending back? You have his links up on the site but they are not getting clicked. This is where a blind link comes into play.
  199. If the article on your site is 5 short pages long, instead of having the words “Next Page” at the end of each page use the words “More...”, “Continue...” or “Next...” then when the article is finished still have the word “More...” even though the article is done.
  200. 14
  201. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  203. Traffic From Scratch
  204. The surfer will be in the habit of clicking and will click it. Have it linked to your trade script with the command to send it to a trade partner that is in need of more traffic; in a new window of course. Never send traffic away in the same window, you will lose the surfer and they will stop clicking your links.
  205. Now before you say “Blind Links are Bad”, just take a look at Google’s AdSense program. They have two types of ads; “Ad Units” and “Link Units”. The “Link Unit” ads are essentially blind links that send the visitor to a Google page of links.
  206. There are many places to put blind links; at the end of articles, at the end of menus. Blend the links into your site so they look like normal content.
  207. Don’t overload your site with blind links or people will leave. You can ensure productivity by sending at least 70% - 80% of the clicks to real content on your site. As long as all your trades are with similar sites the surfer will not mind because you are showing them another site in an area they are interested in. However, if a visitor realizes that clicking on 10 links opens up 9 trades then they will most likely stop clicking. The 70%-80% rule seems to keep the visitors happy and clicking.
  208. Another way to keep them clicking without annoying the visitor is to hyperlink items that normally don’t have a link. That copyright notice at the bottom of the page. Link that to your trading script so if a surfer clicks on it a browser window will open up to a trade partner.
  209. Get creative. Put a graphic with a question mark onto your page. Visitors will click on it. Put up links that say “My Favorite Site” and link it to your trade script.
  210. 15
  211. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  213. Traffic From Scratch
  214. A Top Referrer List is also very common on adult websites, and almost never used on mainstream sites. A top referrer list is simply a link list on your website that says “These are the top 10 sites that send me traffic”. This is a very easy way to send your top traffic trading partners back some traffic. Some larger websites even take the list as high as 100. These list also encourage other sites to send you traffic because they want to be on your top 10 list. Never underestimate the ego of another webmaster. Nothing will make him want to send you more traffic than seeing his competitor on your top 10 list.
  215. Many of the traffic trading programs will generate a top referrer list.
  216. 16
  217. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  219. Traffic From Scratch
  220. Content is the Key to Traffic Building
  221. Earlier I mentioned that I had “Duh... That’s so obvious”. It had to do with content. Content is everything, it drives the traffic.
  222. We’ve all heard that sites need “fresh” content updated frequently to get surfers to come back and to keep the search engines happy. But that day I learned a more valuable lesson about content.
  223. Lots and lots of content keep the visitors clicking and clicking. The secret was that the clicking is more important that the content.
  224. Also, All your content does not have to be fresh. If a web surfer likes a site he will frequent it for an average of 3 months before he becomes bored and stops returning or returns infrequently.
  225. What many adult websites do is called content rotating. A mainstream site could duplicate the system in this manner. The webmaster could buy or write 12 months worth of daily articles that are not time sensitive and that relate to his website’s niche. Six months worth of articles are visible and six are not; those articles are in a que ready to be published.
  226. Using a content management system, everyday a new article from the que is posted as new and one of the visible articles is removed and goes into the que to reappear in 6 months as new. With the turnover in visitor loyalty very few visitors will ever know and you will have a lifetime supply of fresh content. Of course you are also free to add articles as you see fit that are timely, but by using this system you are not a slave to your website.
  227. This is what the founder of Cybererotica told me. He said that they have so much content that a person can click all day, for 24 hour straight, and still not see everything on the site. And, they never will because so much is added everyday that the a person could never click and see everything. The site have everything; movies, pictures, comic, stories, etc.
  228. 17
  229. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  231. Traffic From Scratch
  232. How to find Traffic Trades
  233. The key to start your traffic trading is balance. If you only have 200 visitors a day, don’t offer another webmaster to trade 1,000 visitors. You don’t have the traffic to send back since all your traffic is coming from him.
  234. As a rule of thumb, never make a traffic trade larger than 5-10% of your total average daily unique visitors.
  235. So if you have 200 visitors a day, begin contacting small websites in your niche and offer to trade 10 visitors a day. Tell them that you guarantee them a 1 for 1 trade. Make as many deals for 10 visitors per day as you can, because many of them won’t pan out. It may take a few days but after a while you should have made at least 20 solid trades. Now you are getting in 400 visitors per day.
  236. You are now ready to step it up to larger trades and start going after sites that can start sending you 20 visitors a day. Follow the same routine. You will start coming across sites that will say 20 isn’t enough; I only trade with sites that can send me at least 100 uniques a day. Be honest and tell them that at this time you don’t want to commit to that, but can you contact them again when are at that level. Once you have another solid 20 reliable trades you should have at least 800 visitors per day coming in.
  237. It should be clear now how the magic of compounding is beginning to work.
  238. The one advantage that adult webmasters have over mainstream when it comes to trading traffic in this fashion is that they are already setup for trading. They have their traffic trading scripts installed so when you contact them and ask to trade 40 unique visitors a day the can say “Sure, no problem” and then tell their system to start trading with your site.
  239. Many adult webmaster forums are even setup to facilitate trading. You can find posts where a webmaster with a lesbian site wants to trade 50,000 unique visitors daily with another lesbian site.
  240. 18
  241. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  243. However there is a tool that can help. It was developed by.... Adult webmasters of course. It’s called a T3 Report. When you order a T3 report it will give you a breakdown of your competitors website. Who links to them, who they link to, and more importantly... in what quantities. It’s easy to find out who is linking to your competitor by going to a site like www.linkpopularity.com but a T3 report will show you how much traffic each site is sending. This information is invaluable when looking for trade partners.
  244. T3report.com just came out with another product. It’s called a T3 lead. Instead of analyzing your competitor, it will analyze your market and tell you which websites in your niche are sending out how much traffic. This report will allow you to zero in on the website that can actually send you traffic and have proven to do so.
  245. www.t3report.com
  246. If you keep working and making daily traffic trades your site should exponentially grow as you are able to make larger and larger trades. Just remember that 20 solid trades at 5% of your daily traffic average will double your traffic.
  247. Traffic From Scratch
  248. 19
  249. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  251. Traffic From Scratch
  252. Getting Fringe Traffic
  253. Fringe Traffic: This is where you will start to find even more targeted traffic after you have after you have traded with every other website in your field.
  254. What is “fringe traffic”? It’s the traffic that comes from sites that are close to your niche but not in your niche. For example, if you have a site sells wheelchair parts, you may want to trade traffic with a site that sells handicap bathroom fixtures. If done correctly, the traffic coming from this site will actually be better than traffic coming from another wheelchair parts site.
  255. Here is why fringe traffic is great targeted traffic: If David is searching for bathroom fixtures to make life easier for his wheelchair bound mother, his mind is focused on bathroom fixtures. But if he see’s a link that says “Discount Wheelchair Parts” he may think, “Hey, Mom’s chair does need new parts”. If he clicks on your link then he is considered a very motivated visitor. He went out of his way to click on your fringe link. That makes him different from a person that is on a link list full of wheelchair parts websites. What makes Bob valuable and targeted is that you are the first wheelchair parts site he’s been to AND you were recommended by another site.
  256. The key to fringe traffic is not to use blind links. Blind links work well on sites in your own niche but for fringe sites It needs to be a permanent link.
  257. The great thing about fringe traffic is that now you have opened up a world of new traffic. You just need to be creative and figure out what other niches your customers are surfing in.
  258. 20
  259. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  261. How Large Can Your Site Grow?
  262. Due to economic principals like market share, competition, supply and demand, your site can only grow so large. You may be tempted to get traffic from outside your niche but that traffic would be virtually worthless.
  263. Some niches like dieting can grow to be quite large. Many webmasters have built dieting sites that get over one million visitors a day of targeted traffic.
  264. Some sites that relatively low volumes of traffic are still successful if they are living up to their full potential. For example, One of my sites is a regional forum that caters to a specific industry. Using the techniques described in this book it gets 3,000 visitors per day. Not a lot of traffic compared to my other sites but a very successful site considering it’s niche based and targeted to a single city.
  265. Your ultimate goal should be to grow to the same size or larger than the biggest site in your niche. There are exceptions to this rule however. If you are trying to build a news site it’s not feasible to think you can build your traffic to the size of CNN; however Mike Drudge did build the DrudgeReport.com to a site that gets ten million visitors per day.
  266. Blogging is another very broad market. There are currently several personal blogs ran by everyday people that get over one million hits per day.
  267. To get a general idea of how much traffic you competitor is bringing in, you should do an Alexa search. Alexa however is a horribly inaccurate system, but it’s the best thing around that’s free. www.alexa.com
  268. You can also try Ranking.com for sites that are larger. It’s more accurate than Alexa but has a smaller database.
  269. www.ranking.com
  270. Of course there is always a T3 report. It will cost you a little bit of money but is worth it.
  271. www.t3report.com
  272. Traffic From Scratch
  273. 21
  274. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  276. Traffic From Scratch
  277. Other Ways to Send Traffic to Your Trade Partners
  278. Pop-Ups (Recommended)
  279. Pop-ups when properly used can be a great asset.
  280. A Pop-up is perfect for a site or page that has multiple sub-niches. For instance, a pet site might get traffic for Dogs, Birds, Cats, and Fish. If the surfer decides to leave your site by a means other than one of your exit links, then you can pop-up a console with four links – dog, bird, cat, and fish. Get them to click on one of those links and you have filtered them to a niche before sending them to a trade partner turning them from a random traffic to targeted traffic.
  281. Corporate America has gone nuts over pop-ups. It’s hard to go to a large site and not see a popup -- MSNBC, CNET, CNN, they are all using them. These companies would not be using them if they did not work.
  282. Back Button Redirect (Not Recommended)
  283. This function is hideous and annoying. If you have ever encountered one it makes you want to never visit that website again. Here’s how it works: Normally when a surfer clicks their back button they are taken to the last page they visited. However, it’s possible to Hijack the Back Button and send the visitor anywhere you want, to an affiliate, a traffic trade partner, or even just back to the current page trapping them there forever. I thought it was a technique that corporate America would never use until one time years ago I was on the PizzaHut.com site and guess what? I could not back out... they trapped me there with a Back Button redirect.
  284. 22
  285. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  287. Traffic From Scratch
  288. It’s ironic that I don’t recommend using a back button redirect since I was one of the first webmasters to develop one. Back in 1995 I joined an affiliate program and on their website they listed creative ways to send them traffic. It listed blind links, and various other methods that wouldn’t fly in today’s world. I called them and spoke to the founder asking him if I could use a Back Button Redirect. He said to develop it and let them review it. So I did and they approved it. Later when I went back to their site they had stolen my code put it into their webmaster help area for other webmasters to download and use. This is now a very large affiliate program.
  289. 23
  290. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  292. Traffic From Scratch
  293. Tools of the Trade
  294. Tools are a vital part of the traffic systems on the major adult sites. It’s staggering to realize the 95% of all sites getting over one million visitors per day use a traffic trading script.
  295. Traffic Trading Scripts
  296. It is often asked, “If trading scripts work so well, why are they not used on more mainstream sites?”
  297. Here’s one of the reason’s why: When traffic trading scripts were first created by adult webmasters, they were aggressively used to slam visitors to sites they may not want to visit and to put the visitors into a “pop-up hell” (an actual term) which was a loop of pop-ups the surfer could not break out of. This gave the scripts a bad reputation.
  298. Add to that the name the industry gave to it’s creation. Traffic trading scripts are known as “Circle Jerks” or CJ for short. Although the scripts in reality are used to help webmasters handle their traffic trades, webmasters in the mainstream shy away from a product called “circle jerk”.
  299. The same products, under a different name, have been developed and are used by many of the top mega mainstream sites.
  300. Here are some of the most popular traffic trading scripts
  301. All these tools can be found at: www.trafficfromscratch.com/bonus
  302. Randout.cgi - While most traffic scripts can get complex, My friend Jerry, who gave the interview in the report “Mainstream Traffic Lessons From an Adult Webmaster” successfully used a simple PERL script to trade traffic that he wrote himself. This script, randout.cgi, can be found in the bonus section along with all the other tools.
  303. 24
  304. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  306. Traffic From Scratch
  307. GB-CJ – This is a free program that provides traffic exchange by blind links, direct links, pop-ups, and can create a top referrer list on your page.
  308. The script uses unique algorithms for analysis the quality of the traffic coming from other sites (including the analysis of friendliness of the visitors, payment ability, their languages, uniqueness of the traffic and much more) and distributes your traffic on these sites and pay sites by the most optimum way. The system generates detailed hourly and daily stats for each site. GB CJ can process up to 400 thousands hits/day. Note: even though the program is free, it will take 1.5% of your traffic that you send out. However, they have an affiliate program that will pay you for that traffic.
  309. UCJ – Once you get beyond 400,000 hits a day you will need to move up to UCJ. This traffic trading system has all almost any feature you need, but is pricey. $600 for your first domain, then a price break after that. It must be worth the price since many of it’s customers are running it on 20 or more sites. They keep buying it.
  310. X3 Traffic Trader Pro – This one is highly recommended for mainstream sites. It has raw and unique counting for all in and out traffic, intelligent surfer-site cycling (Won't send the same surfer to the same site twice), productivity tracking (view trade productivity for each trade) and 5 different ways to link to sites. This one is also on the high end price range of $650 per domain.
  311. Here are some essential scripts
  312. All these scripts can be found at: www.trafficfromscratch.com/bonus
  313. Make Me Your Homepage – If you have a blog or other site that updates constantly then you need to add this script to your site. It allows the visitor to click it and make your site their homepage.
  314. Since many visitors like to start out on the homepage of a search engine like Google, simply add a Google search box onto your site and that will increase the odds of your visitors making your site their homepage.
  315. 25
  316. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  318. Traffic From Scratch
  319. Full Window – This script will make sure that your website opens into a full window when loaded. Many times a site will send traffic to your site as a new window which is not maximized. This simple script will solve that problem and is essential for all websites.
  320. Pop Under – This script will allow you to send traffic to a site using a pop under. It works by opening their site in a new window then under your sites window. It’s seamless and very effective. Be sure that your trading partner is aware that you are using a pop under to trade traffic.
  321. Bookmark Me – Bookmarked traffic is a very essential part of any web site. Most times visitors forget to bookmark sites they visit. This script will remind them.
  322. Tell a friend – This is a PHP script that will allow a visitor to enter a friends email address to send them a note to visit your site. Many websites, like YouTube, have grown quite large using this viral device.
  323. 26
  324. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  326. Where To Get Starter Traffic
  327. This chapter is for the newbie webmaster that doesn’t have traffic to his new site. If you are an experienced webmaster then you probably know most these techniques.
  328. It’s hard to trade traffic if you don’t have any to begin with. But by using these common proven methods, you should yield a couple hundred visitors a day in just a few of days.
  329. Getting Traffic from a WebRing (Recommended)
  330. WebRings are perfect for a new website that wants targeted traffic. A WebRing is a group of similarly themed websites linked together. Surfers like WebRings because they target their interest. If a surfer is looking for antique pocket watches and they find a WebRing featuring antique pocket watches there’s a chance the surfer will visit every single site in the ring.
  331. Two of the bigger ones are www.ringsurf.com and www.webring.com
  332. The biggest problem with WebRings is that they are never very big. But with an upstart website, every bit of traffic helps. When signing up for WebRings you may find 20 or 30 different WebRings that fit your niche. Feel free to sign-up for them all but only put two or three each onto a separate doorway page. Any more and you will overwhelm the surfer and they will leave the site instead of picking a WebRing to click on.
  333. Monitor your traffic going out to a WebRing, because as your traffic grows you will start sending more traffic out to the WebRings than they are bringing in. That is the time to remove the link and stop the traffic leak.
  334. Traffic From Scratch
  335. 27
  336. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  338. Traffic From Scratch
  339. Getting Traffic from a Toplist (Recommended)
  340. A toplist is a site with a lot of links to it’s traffic trading partners. It’s a very effective way to boost your current traffic by trading away your non-productive traffic for fresh traffic.
  341. What makes the toplist trading system unique is that it rewards the partners that send the most traffic by automatically putting their links at the top of the page. Some times a toplist site will have multiple pages and the partners sending in the most traffic will be on page one and the ones with the least on the last page. Some sites won’t even list a partner until they have sent in one or two hits.
  342. Not all toplist are good. Many webmasters, even seasoned ones, avoid toplist because they have not had success with them. Some toplist are so poorly designed that the instant a visitor see’s it they click their back button instead of clicking on a partner’s link. Many toplist sites show the Clicks-In/Clicks-Out stats so you can see if it’s worth trading with. Obviously if their trading partners are getting back more hits then they are sending then it’s a good toplist.
  343. A good toplist get return traffic and is laid out in a fashion that it encourages it’s visitors to click on it’s partners links. The best types are what’s called a “Friend’s style” page. It’s a grid of 150x100 graphics research has shown encourages surfers to click. This system was so effective that MySpace adopted the format and put a friend’s area as a default onto every new MySpace page. It’s one reason that MySpace is now the third largest website in terms of traffic. Visitors keep coming back to click on those friends pictures.
  344. The chapter “Mainstream traffic lessons from an adult webmaster” gives more information about toplists and how the adult industry has been successfully using them for years.
  345. If you have an IM product, you may want to consider the toplist at www.nesteggbooks.com . It’s a friend’s style toplist developed by the author of this book.
  346. 28
  347. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  349. Traffic From Scratch
  350. A good toplist strategy: One very successful technique is to use pop-unders to trade traffic.
  351. To do this simply include code on your website that pops up a toplist in a new window but puts that window under current browser window. So when someone goes to your site, they still see your site, but the toplist is in the window behind it.
  352. When the surfer stops is finished with your site and closes the browser window, the toplist will be there. It’s not obtrusive like a popup and many toplist allow websites to send traffic by pop-unders. The advantage to you is that the surfer generally only sees it after he is finished with your site so you are losing nothing.
  353. An “Exit Popup” is another way to trade traffic with a toplist. An exit popup will allow your visitor to surf your site as normal, but when he leaves your site a new window comes up with the toplist. Since the surfer has left your site anyway you have lost nothing.
  354. Examples of code that will do both these strategies can be found at:
  355. www.trafficfromscratch.com/bonus/codes
  356. 29
  357. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  359. Traffic From Scratch
  360. Getting Traffic from a Banner Exchange (Not Recommended)
  361. There are several services out there that promote banner exchanges. While you might be able to generate a little bit of extra traffic, statistically it’s a losing battle. You are giving up valuable real estate on your page in exchange for a little bit of traffic that probably does not fit your niche.
  362. A banner exchange works this way: You put a piece of code onto your site that rotates banners supplied by the banner exchange site. For every two banners you display, one of your banners is displayed on someone else’s site. So already you are in a negative trade situation.
  363. Today, web surfers have programmed themselves to ignore banners. The click-thru rate on banners gets worse every year. Your web space would be better used by putting up a Google AdSense ad then using the money from those clicks to buy targeted traffic. That strategy is called “AdSense Arbitrage” which is described in a later chapter.
  364. Getting Traffic from a Forum (Recommended)
  365. If you are not already a member of forums in your niche you need to become one. Seek out as many high traffic forums that fit your niche. Begin posting in the forums with posts that make an ACTUAL contribution. After a few days, if the forum rules allow it, put your website URL into your signature profile. Do not spam the forums. Most administrators will ban you as a member if you do.
  366. Getting Traffic from Blogs (Recommended)
  367. Many blogs allow users to make comments to their articles. Do a search on http://blogsearch.google.com for topics in your niche. Find appropriate articles and blogs and post a response. It’s acceptable to include your URL in your signature.
  368. 30
  369. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  371. Getting Traffic from Articles (Recommended)
  372. There are many websites setup that allow users to upload articles are numerous subjects. When you write an article make sure that it has a couple of links back to your site in the article and submit it to article submission services like www.ezinearticles.com or www.goarticles.com
  373. Getting Traffic from RSS Feeds (Recommended)
  374. If you have a blog, make sure your RSS feed is turned on and use a Ping service like Pingoat (www.pingoat.com ) to notify others when you have added items to your blog.
  375. Getting Traffic from Sales Sites (Recommended)
  376. You can drive traffic from sites like eBay and Craigslist to your site. If you run auctions on eBay simply put your website URL into your About Me page.
  377. You can also visit www.craigslist.com and place free advertisements for almost anything. Make a posting offering your services or looking for a service and make sure that it’s in your website’s niche. Be sure to include your URL in the ads.
  378. Traffic From Scratch
  379. 31
  380. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  382. Traffic From Scratch
  383. Get Traffic From Expired Domain Names
  384. (Recommended)
  385. Every month almost a million domain names expire. Many of these domains have an existing traffic base, a high Google Page Rank or a good Alexa rating. By doing a little research you can start receiving traffic from these expired sites within hours.
  386. An expired domain is one that has been purchased in the past and for whatever reason the owner did not pay his renewal fee. The former owner may have built a web site, made link trades, and even advertised the site.
  387. Just because the previous owner did not pay $8 to renew his domain name does not mean the domain is not getting traffic.
  388. Why would someone let a domain with traffic expire?
  389. - Many website owners lose interest because they are getting
  390. traffic but have no idea what to do with the traffic.
  391. - The domain may have been owned by a company that is no
  392. longer in business.
  393. - The former domain owner may be sick or has even passed away.
  394. - The former owner simply forgot to pay the renewal fee.
  395. How to find expired domains:
  396. Go to www.deleteddomains.com and click on “Power Search”. The free search is a crippled version but still valuable. I would recommend joining for the added features. Pick a keyword that describes your business and put it in the “Contains the letters” field. Select to only view domains deleted in the past 7 days and click the search buttons.
  397. You will now have a list of deleted domains that may have traffic targeted towards your niche. You can now begin to research these domains. While you won’t be able to know exactly how much traffic these domains are getting, you can get enough information to make an informed decision.
  398. 32
  399. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  401. How to research expired domains:
  402. To start your research cut and paste the domains into the rank- checker box at http://www.iwebtool.com/multirank . You can plug in up to 10 domains at a time. iWebTool will then give you Alexa rating and the Page Ranking for the domains.
  403. You may also want to check the link popularity at: http://www.linkpopularity.com/ if undecided. The domain may have some recent backlinks from high PR sites that may not be reflected in the domains current PR status. So you may be able to pick up a domain with a low PR ranking only to have it raise when the next rankings are completed.
  404. And finally, check to see if the previous owner was approved on Dmoz or paid to be listed in Yahoo or Looksmart. It’s not uncommon for a webmaster to pay the fee for a Yahoo! listing only to let his domain expire. It’s easy to check, just paste the full domain name into the Yahoo! search bar.
  405. How to setup an expired domain:
  406. The first thing you need to do with an expired domain is redirect all the traffic from that domain to your new site. Setup the domain on your server as a website and modify the .htaccess file in the root directory to do a 404-redirect to your website.
  407. Add a tracking script to your new domain to find out where traffic is coming from. As traffic comes in, immediately setup a page with a return link to the site that is sending traffic. You don’t know what arrangements the previous domain made for the backlink. By creating a doorway page you are covering your bases. The last thing you want is for a site with a high PR or a site that is sending a lot of traffic to remove your link because they’ve noticed their reciprocal link is gone.
  408. Do a search on Google for cached pages for the domain you have just purchased. You may want to recreate similar pages (Do Not Copy the Page) and put them onto your server in the same spots. Be sure to use the same keywords in your new pages so Google keeps sending the traffic when they re-spyder your new domain.
  409. Traffic From Scratch
  410. 33
  411. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  413. Traffic From Scratch
  414. Getting Traffic from AdSense Arbitrage (Not Recommended)
  415. Arbitrage is a traffic trading system that is successfully used by many webmasters, but it can be risky, therefore it is not a recommended traffic building system.
  416. Since the contextual advertising market is changing on a daily basis, any in-depth strategies listed here could easily be obsolete by the time you read this.
  417. The theory behind Arbitrage is easy to understand; A webmaster can buy keyword targeted PPC traffic from sites like AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, or MSN AdCenter. He can bid low on the traffic, sometimes as low as 5 cents per visitor and send the traffic to a landing page that is optimized to display AdSense Ads related to the same keywords. Since Google AdSense pays an average of 20 cents per click it should be easy to make a profit, especially if you target the high paying keywords that pay 1 or 2 dollars per click.
  418. Arbitrage is not for the faint of heart. You need a pretty good size bankroll to generate a large volume of traffic considering the fact that you won’t see any AdSense money for a couple of months.
  419. In addition, Google has implemented smart pricing which is a process where they will analyze your account once a week and adjust what they will be paying you in the future based on the quality of the traffic you have been sending their clients. So you make make a move based off of last weeks income only to have Google decrease your percentages due to some poor performing traffic from the week before.
  420. If you are still interested in arbitrage we have more information here:
  421. www.trafficfromscratch.com/bonus/arbitrage
  422. 34
  423. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  425. Traffic From Scratch
  426. Glossary of Internet Marketing Terms
  427. Affiliate Program - (also known as associate, reseller ,revenue sharing programs,partnership program.) a marketing program in which merchants sign up webmasters (or affiliates) to resell their product through banner, text or product links posted on their site for a specified commission.
  428. Affiliate - A web site partner that earns commissions for referring sales, leads, or click-throughs to a merchant.
  429. Bandwidth – Is a term that refers to the amount of data that has been sent out or received by a website. Few people realize that bandwidth has to be paid for. Therefore a site that gets 10 visitors a day is relatively cheap to operate. If the same site gets 1,000 visitors a day it can become expensive to operate. Many websites become victims of their own success because their bandwidth cost exceed their income.
  430. Banner Farm - An adult web page which contains nothing but banners. (See banners).
  431. Blur Console – Also known as a delayed popup. It’s a popup window that loads when a visitor enters a site and then hides itself. It will appear much later when the surfer is on another site.
  432. Cost Per Click - Payment system based on the number of users that click on the advertisement compared to the number of times it has been shown.
  433. CPM (cost per mille-thousand) - Popular model to base banner advertising rates for every thousand impressions.
  434. CPS (cost per sale) - Cost of advertisements, administration, and any other variables that led to a sale divided by the number of sales these efforts yield.
  435. CTR (click-through-rate) - The percentage of clicks for the number of banner impressions displayed.
  436. Impressions: The number of times a banner or link is viewed on a website. Link List – A site that has a list of links to other sites. Most link list require a
  437. reciprocal link back. Generally a link list
  438. Merchant: An online service or business that allows webmasters (or affiliates) to resell their product or service through banner, text or product links posted on their site for a specified commission.
  439. 35
  440. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  442. Traffic From Scratch
  443. Niche – The category that best describes an adult site. There are hundreds of niches and fetishes. BBW, Interracial, Group Sex, Teen, Mature, Blonde, etc.
  444. Opt-in: Recipient of email communication is given the option to choose to be on a mailing list. Recipient must make the action to be included.
  445. Opt-out: The list coordinator makes the default for the recipient, to receive the communication via email but offers them the opportunity to remove themselves from the list.
  446. Partnership: Programs which pay you a percentage of each signup or sale referred from your site.
  447. Pay Per Click: An affiliate program commission structure where a merchant pays for any unique visitor referrals by an affiliate site.
  448. Pay Per Lead: An affiliate program commission structure in which a flat commission is paid when a qualified lead is referred to a merchant’s site.
  449. Pay Per Sale: An affiliate program commission structure that pays affiliates for sales resulting from their affiliate link.
  450. Reciprocal Link – A link placed onto a web page that sends traffic to a web site that has a link back. Also referred to as a link swap.
  451. Spam: Unsolicited e-mail sent to individuals who have never opted-in or subscribed. Terms of Service (TOS): Terms and conditions that illustrate the relationship
  452. between a merchant and an affiliate.
  453. TGP - Stands for Thumbnail Gallery Post. These are almost always adult sites. A TGP site is a site that has many links to gallery pages of free pictures or movies. A gallery page will generally have 20-30 thumbnailed pictures that open up into full size or 3-5 thumbnails of movies that play 30-60 long video clips. The TGP traffic system was invented by the Buffet Brothers on the site www.adultbuffet.com and was quickly followed by many others.
  454. Top List – A website that has ranked list of other sites. These sites ranked by the amount of traffic that the site has sent to the top list site. The sites sending the most traffic will be ranked at the top of the list and get the most traffic back.
  455. Thumbnail – A very small picture. When it is clicked on, it will usually open the full size version of the same picture.
  456. Two-Tier: An affiliate program commission structure that allows existing affiliates to actively recruit other affiliates below them to make an additional commission if the new affiliate makes a sale.
  457. 36
  458. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  460. Traffic From Scratch
  461. 37
  462. ©Copyright 2007, TrafficFromScratch.com
  464. Filename: Directory: Template:
  465. TrafficFromScratch_01.doc G:\bookideas\TrafficFromScratch C:\Documents and Settings\Scott\Application
  466. Data\Microsoft\Templates\Normal.dot
  467. Title:
  468. Subject:
  469. Author:
  470. Keywords:
  471. Comments:
  472. Creation Date:
  473. Change Number:
  474. Last Saved On:
  475. Last Saved By:
  476. Total Editing Time:
  477. Last Printed On:
  478. As of Last Complete Printing
  479. Number of Pages: 37
  480. Number of Words: 9,543 (approx.) Number of Characters: 43,994 (approx.)
  481. Xxx
  482. Scott Stamper
  483. 1/26/2007 7:30 PM 5
  484. 1/31/2007 8:20 AM Scott Stamper 4,602 Minutes 1/31/2007 8:21 AM
comments powered by Disqus