Day 12 - Traffic Leaks

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Traffic Leaks - The Final Level​

Preface
I want to dedicate this thread to all those internet marketers like Eli / bluehatseo, Bofu2u, Slightly Shady, and Barman, and others who's blogs I used to lurk around and attempted to drain the knowledge out of for years from the shadows. Sometimes I visit some of the old sites, and it feels like ancient ruins, some are lost forever, only accessible from archive.org now. There are a lot of new characters on the scene, and some of them I don't recognize their faces, but recognize their techniques, it comes from the Ancients, like passing a torch to the next generation, it's a new day for all of us. What new characters will emerge from being a lurker to center stage in 3 months, a year, or even two, maybe they'll emerge from the orientation section, why do you think I'm always down there? I'm keeping my pulse on the future. I remember reading some of you guy's stuff, and that stuff was magical, it inspired me to be better than I am and see things in a whole different light. Thank you!

"It is said that what is called the Spirit of an Age is something to which one cannot return. That this spirit gradually dissipates is due to the world's coming to an end. In the same way, a single year does not have just spring or summer. A single day, too, is the same. For this reason, although one would like to change today's world back to the spirit of one hundred years or more ago, it cannot be done. Thus it is important to make the best out of every generation." - Yamamoto Tsunetomo (Hagakure, circa 1709)​

Traffic Leaks​

"Everything around us seems to be changing. Nothing seems to make sense anymore." - Yamamoto Tsunetomo (Hagakure, circa 1709)​

But this isn't even my final form yet... My story begins during the turn of the 3rd millennium, all I wanted to do was be a marketer, I heard something about some super "search engine" being built, but that all sounded like another Lycos to me. So I didn't get into SEO till much later. I did online marketing in the purest form - went to websites with traffic and studied ways how competitors and other marketers were extracting traffic to their own websites, and what I found, well let's just say was rather basic, 1st grade level methods, but boy did those basics work!

There has always been these vague talks about "other" traffic sources, and I wanted to dedicate this thread to hammering that down and talking about their potential. Delete everything you know about internet marketing - at least for a moment. We're going back, way back, to the beginning. If a website exists and it has traffic - a portion of that traffic can become yours - Period; this is what we call a Traffic Leak. It doesn't matter what website. It's your own creative limitations of how to drive that traffic to your website that stands in your way. So we're going to burst open the pipes, let the leaks become a stream, and then the stream into a torrent.

Definition of Traffic Leak: A lost art, basic concept, really. A traffic leak is when you go to a site, community, or area where people are congregating and funnel that traffic to your own for profit venture - website. Its a technique us Ancients used before internet marketers thought Google was and end all be all to the internet. Once visitors continue to visit your site on a regular basis because of a traffic leak - if the site is sticky of course - you've got them.

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Before Getting Started (Creating A sticky Foundation)

"If one is but secure at the foundation, he will not be pained by departure from minor details or affairs that are contrary to expectation. But in the end, the details of a matter are important. The right and wrong of one's way of doing things are found in trivial matters." - - Yamamoto Tsunetomo (Hagakure, circa 1709)​

There are 2 things to always keep in mind when finally getting traffic to your site with any method.

ONE: Traffic leaks work best when you have engaging content on your site, that's sticky - remember that - doesn't hurt to Big Brand that site either. Make sure to capture their minds, and emails or some form of direct communication with them so you can tap that ass for dollar dollar bills ya'll later on. Once they give you permission to market to them, by giving you their email or some form of communication, Permission Based Marketing, they trust you, you own them. Like a crazed college chick in love with a college professor, you own that ass. That's a devotee - that's potential revenue. But don't hit it the first night of course, space it out.

No matter what type of attack you do to get traffic, the foundation of your websites have to be rock solid. And by rock solid, I mean sticky. Have a clear defined goal, just sending traffic to your homepage is the lazyman's way of doing it. Your site has to have one or more of these objectives engraved on every page of your website:

1. Generate sales/Revenue
   
2. Create Opportunities to re-market
   • Email Newsletter Sign up
     • Make sure your segmenting according to the audience source, demo, location, and as much info as you can get on them - Hint: surveys that feed back into your database)
   • Growing Audience - Sign Up forms (Community, etc)
     
   • Growing Brand Reach
     • Social Media Engagement
       • Followers
       • Fans
       • Connections

When you start out with this mindset and understand the reasoning behind defining each portion, it'll put you on a level playing field with the big boys where you start thinking at the Macro level or in God mode. Being able to communicate in a one to one method with your audience is a major component to your success. If you start attacking internet marketing without this foundation, you're leaking revenue, and not just today, but potential revenue that could be coming to you in the future - re-marketing opportunities - lost forever.

Every website should be doing one of these goals, that way if a traffic leak method dries up - *cough* SEO *cough* - at least you have a growing list of targets and made some money in the process. Yes, even websites in your private blog network need to pay their own rent (direct = revenue, indirect = collecting emails for re-marketing - make sure to tag each email to know the source), otherwise you are wasting their potential by just using them for links.

Segmenting your target audience is key, that can be done by demo, hobbies, likes, or things they gravitate toward - also knowing the source is important. Basically whenever you add a person to your list, make sure to tag them with as much info as possible - "female", "age 18 to 24", "Facebook fan", etc. Constantly find ways to get more and more information by sending out surveys and asking questions from your audience so you can tag them.

Why tag them? Well, it'll help you re-market to them and if you are really thinking at the macro level, if you plan on selling that business or web property it's a lot sexier to say you've got a database of 50K women age 18 to 29 years old, who are avid Facebookers with 50% that have shown interest in insurance, raising children, or marriage, and oh yeah, the website gets 2K to 10K visitors daily. OR you can say, yeah I got a website that gets 2K to 10K hits daily... Which one would you assume is worth more?

If you can't get this comprehension in your head, I got bad news you're not going to make it in God mode for online marketing.

TWO: Automation wins wars. But don't attempt to automate a traffic leak until you know the ins and outs of a platform. Once you know that shit like the back of your hand, get something serious for automation - I prefer CasperJS/PhantomJS with Perl, Perl or Python standalone - but I'm a coder. You might have to hire a botter - the more customized you can get your bots the more creative you can be. Some of these automated tools just won't cut it, but if you are starting out go for it, something is better than nothing.

 

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Philosophy

"You must understand that there is more than one path to the top of the mountain..." - Miyamoto Musashi (The Book of Five Rings)​

Some of you think with blinders on, in a constant rat race to the top, you have to turn on God Mode for a second. What's your end goal of marketing - to increase traffic. Problem is SEO is a rigged game, you're in a constant rat race up to the top of the mountain, and there is no real "end" to it. There is a #1 position that everyone is targeting, and you're all running towards the goal, someone may come out of no-where and overtake you, then you get pushed back, maybe trip and fall and are history. But that race there never ends. Let's explore the thousands of different potential traffic sources, techniques, and tactics we can mix and match to gain better targeted and a greater volume of traffic than Google can ever send us.

I'm releasing these ideas, cause some of you will act; those are the ones we need during these dark times. Once you get away from the SEO backstabbing, disavowing, "let's not link to other people" environment Google has setup - it's better to coordinate efforts, in a group-like setting - a cartel of sorts. Imagine that same mountain has over 100 different trails, but the SEO trail is filled with everyone and their mothers, but these other trails all lead the same way (to revenue); most of these trails are so barren that by seeing another stranger along the path you are more likely to befriend them and help each other out versus backstabbing each other out of existence. There is so much potential on the trail that it's impossible to acquire it all. So you form a group, then a league, then a cartel that dominates a certain technique or certain niche. That's how you rise to power, that's how you take over the world.

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Legend

"Our bodies are given life from the midst of nothingness. Existing where there is nothing is the meaning of the phrase "Form is emptiness." That all things are provided for by nothingness is the meaning of the phrase "Emptiness is form." One should not think that these are two separate things." - Yamamoto Tsunetomo (Hagakure, circa 1709)​

Goals = there SHOULD be a primary and secondary goal. I like primary goals as revenue generating and secondary goals for brand growth, whether that's market share, increasing your reach - growing your communication channels - Email is my favorite since it's the most personal to your audience. Followers and Fans are an additional communication channel to send your message out.

Strategy = The Godmode overview to your goal. Usually defined broadly by increasing sales, market share, brand awareness, or the audience reach by the brand.

Channel = The platform used in a strategy with a tactic. Examples are Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Craigslist, Gumtree, Forums, and so on.

Tactic = The actual method you use to reach your goal. Create content, images, videos, interaction for your target audience.
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With every marketing venture you start with a broad strategy that is supported by different tactics to reach your goal. You use the tactics on the channels available to you - directly or indirectly (Reverse).

Example
Channel: Google
Tactic: SEO/PPC
Strategy: Generate Targeted Traffic from Organic/Paid avenues.

There may be a finite number of Channels, but there are an infinite amount of tactics and strategies. The goal is to get your brains' gears turning by using tactics/strategies that succeed on one channel, and attempt to replicate it on another channel. Example, SEO - tactics on Bing - Channel. Another SEO - tactics - on DuckDuckGo - I LOLed too.

Doing a comparison back in the old days, Radio, TV, Newspaper, and Books were all Channels that people could use to get the message out there. Tactics - Use controversy, sex, or informative content to get the message out there. Strategy = Make money by selling products, ideas, or services. Are the gears in your brain starting to turn? It's difficult the general schooling system is designed to stomp out creativity and create mindless worker drones, so some of these gears have not worked since you were young

Example
Channel: Email Inbox
Tactics: Spam / Newsletter / Sign up / Deceptive bait and switch
Strategy: Email people with offers that generate revenue or send traffic to your site for a special offer or request.

In this example, can you switch tactics or at least the basic groundwork for that tactic? Can you do PPC for Email? No, not really - But you can approach people with huge newsletter lists already, and offer them an incentive, money, deep discount to their base, and then funnel those people to an offer - product/service, OR a signup for a free giveaway, therefore increasing your email base with only people that open up emails from their list.

Doing it reverse, can you Spam Google? Yeah, yes you can. No need to continue on that one.

Can you Use a Newsletter tactic on Google? With PPC - yes it's it's possible, even with SEO and spam. Example, you create a bunch of tripod parasites or something, spam the living daylights out of it, and get it to #1 for a week or so, but when it's #1, you have an email signup popup designed solely for collecting emails so you can re-market to them later on. As the spam gets slapped, hopefully you also made some immediate revenue, you also are growing your email database list for you to communicate offers to - segmented by niches.

So your spamming isn't always a hit and run scenario, there is an email game plan for a bigger objective - growing your email list. Recall all those old school fellas always said, the money is in the list. You can hit your list anytime, anywhere, and make money if you have monetization avenues in place. Use one tactic spam - grayhat/blackhat to grow your organic list, whitehat ​

So the goal is to start mixing and matching as we move forward. Once your brain gets trained to mix and match tactics/strategies with different channels, you open your brain up to a whole new level of marketing thought process. Imagine if you grew your list from spamming Myspace back in the day, and then re-marketed that list with ringtone offers Then as your list continued to grow (people do grow up), those former Myspacers enter college, you offer them student loans or online degree courses. As that list continues to grow in age and in size, they enter the next stage in life, you offer them life insurance, health insurance, mortgage offers.

You see when you understand the source of your list and it's demo, as they grow in life, you can promote newer offers to them. But it's about collecting that list and opening up the avenue of communication first. A website's cool, but the money is in the data. I think LexisNexis big, if you don't know who they are, good luck bro...

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Techniques

"Is it wrong to give people what they want by helping remove their defenses?" - Bill Schlackman​

If a Craigslist poster has a shitty experience with Craigslist, is it wrong for me to send them an email letting them know about another platform where they can get exactly what they are looking for knowing fully well that some will be willing to pay for it?

The key to traffic leaks is understanding the philosophy behind the technique, identifying, watching, and studying people who are in your niche AND outside your niche doing the techniques, and morphing that same technique to fit your niche. If you think about it from a macro standpoint first, it's all about diverting traffic from one place to another - whether temporarily or permanently. Just burn this in the back of your mind: If users can interact with the website/platform, user engagement, they can become YOUR traffic - Period.

Think twitter bots that drive traffic from Twitter to an offer or website. It's the EXACT same strategy of driving traffic from Pinterest to an offer or website. Same thing for Craigslist or Gumtree. Once you understand how a method works, you will start looking at every site as a potential traffic leak, one way or another. Even using 10% of the energy SEOers waste on SEO towards this technique will give them 1000% more ROI since only the top 1% bother to even exploit these different platforms. These are the techniques you will be using:

Technique: Watermarking - on photos without dropping a backlink - Increases brand awareness and direct traffic (also type in search traffic). Think Suddenly_Ass's photos, you know there are several with watermarks that we all type in to get more of that shit, let's be real.

Type in traffic works best if you have a short or simple URL - HowToMakeMoneyInTheTwentyFirstCentury.com is not going to work, too many chances of a typo (If you must get a shorter URL and 301 redirect it then do it - remember fuck that Google shit). Then there are some that we'll use Google Image search to find more from the collection. Watermarks drive in traffic - shit has been working before there was a Google.

Don't be obnoxious with your watermark, sometimes the more subtle the better. It's like you have to be cool about it. That way people like Suddenly_Ass are more likely to post it around the internet and spread it for you.

Seriously think about it for a moment, what niche/subject matter doesn't have photos or imagery at some level? You can watermark everything, videos, PDFs, white papers, put your domain url/brand everywhere. Don't have photos, find some, then watermark that shit for days. We did this for an online entertainment magazine property back in the day - 2003. We went to forums that fit our demo - guys looking at sexy chicks, and just dropped image albums through the forum. It was a common thing to do, so no one thought twice. People took those photos, re-posted them, and till this day we are still getting traffic from those photos.

If you can get people to spread the content for you, that's a lot easier. A little more difficult to do with videos, and content, well that's pretty fucking boring, but photos - people will re-post them, re-blog them, share them, save them to their hard-drives, and so on.

Technique: Commenting - Interacting and dropping a link or your brand in the discussion, the more subtle the better. Appearing like a dis-interested 3rd party helps.

Technique: Videos - A little more difficult to insert into conversations except with platforms like Facebook's commenting system which allows video dropping. You can link to videos in the comments as well. Think Imgur.com or anywhere something can go viral quickly - sauce.

Technique: Content - Creating and distributing to where your target audience congregates.

Technique: Giveaways or Surveys - bait people into interacting or engaging.

Technique: Reverse - My own term, This is where you do something that so out of the box, it disrupts the foundation of the platform. It's like blowing up a dam and creating a river flowing towards your own website.​

When the main roads are blocked off, you have to create your own roads for traffic...​

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Tactics

"To exert oneself to a great extent when one is young and then to sleep when he is old or at the point of death is the way it should be." - Yamamoto Tsunetomo (Hagakure, circa 1709)​

Level - Basic

Niche Forums

If you actually go into other niches, not internet marketing, forum members are very friendly and receptive towards copying and pasting good content and dropping links. We can't do that over here since we would be flooded with 'newbie seo 101' threads copied and pasted from WarriorForum as a traffic leak technique if we didn't frown upon it, but that's to keep the leeches out.

When you exit the "web marketing" field, people loves great content, and 90% of them don't know how to even search if it is copied and pasted and most don't care. Most people don't even know what affiliate marketing let alone all the tactics used. The problem is we've become so jaded by seeing the techniques used on us by newcomers that we completely dismiss it for other niches. That thought process needs to be corrected.

Start off by joining places were your TARGET audience are members of. If you run an insurance website, joining an insurance agent forum is not going to get the attention of your targeted audience. Rather join a mommy niche forum, a new born baby niche forum, a home improvement forum. Places where people congregate which are your targeted audience. If the forum allows signature, put a signature that's low key and straight to the point. Then start commenting intelligently on different topics.

Once you get familiar with the climate of the forum, drop a "I want to give back to the community" thread, and talk about the different types of insurance products available, and how members can ask the right questions to their agents. DO NOT self-promote all in up the thread - no one really gives a shit about a nobody's website just yet but they will take free advice, should be obvious, but people don't get it. At the end simply state if anyone is interested in learning more, just drop me a question in this thread OR PM me for something specific. Now, remember that you've got a nice straight to the point signature - so if you did this right, you've got people in your targeted audience contacting you, visiting your website, and wanting to learn more. And Matt Cutts was no-where in the process.

Rotate throughout the thousands of different forums and niches, and continue testing. You probably won't reach back around to the same forum for months. The key is to think about what these people do with their time, and type that into the search engines '"Hobby" + forum', Cooking, Cat forums, Dog and Pet Lover forums, Cars, Boats, - all shit people love and would buy insurance for. There are lifestyle forums, home decor, you're audience is literally everywhere. If Google is not sending you traffic, you have to go get the traffic. And it's rather simple, you can even do duplicate content with most of these forums and get away with it.

If you can get 100 to 300 visitors a day from your helpful insurance threads to your site, that's just money in the bank. There are literally thousands of forums that have your targeted audience with their own Off-topic/Shooting the Shit sections. The key is to actually engage people and become a member, before hitting them up, like courting a chick, you don't want to pull out the leather bondage outfits just yet... You gotta feel her out. That's basic stuff, Level 1. Even simple PM spamming small networks with custom bots still works, especially if you can customize the links.

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Site to site traffic trading

Different from a link exchange, since we are doing something radical, we actually want our partners to get traffic. Wait wat? Worth noting, Michael_ talks about this here: http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/175948-google-fucked-2.html#post2106775

To stimulate the relationship, I send out a weekly traffic report to partners I've sent traffic to, stating how much traffic I sent them. That keeps my website in their mind, and shows I'm serious about our partnership.

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Level - Intermediate

LinkedIn / Community Groups / Twitter

More engagement is needed here. The more subtle your position within the social structure, the easier it'll be. It's about figuring out how others are getting a benefit out of this. Most of the time whenever you enter a new social structure, there is an established order, and most likely someone exploiting that to their fullest advantage. Watch how they engage and leak traffic to their own properties. It can be posting links to random things and every 5th or 10th link is one to an article they wrote. They are making themselves an authority in that social structure. By doing that, they're leaking traffic to their own interests.

Another type of traffic leak is replying to random people's tweets. If they have a huge following they'll usually reply to you. I used this technique to leak traffic to twitter accounts that advertise my own properties every 10th tweet. The other 9 tweets, I'm usually talking about something within my niche that's interesting, or linking to some relevant, or replying to other people in my niche. I come up for them, and if my avatar is interesting enough, people definitely want to see what's going on. Lean on people's curiosity and human nature.

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Level - Advance

Tactic: Reverse Guest-posts

This is where you attempt to ride the coattail of influential people, companies, or websites in your niche. There is some SEO benefit, but the main goal is getting these people sharing with their audience, your write up thereby exposing your brand to them.

You obviously can't do it to a DIRECT competitor, but maybe an indirect one can help. You can write up something nice and fuzzy about their company, how to navigate their website, or highlight a unique selling proposition they offer OR something unique about their website - the purpose is just to stroke them. Implement that onto your website, and get your own social shares to it, then contact the company a week later and tell them about it. You can elude that they can share it with their family or friends, and followers, the more subtle, the better.

Most likely even if you don't elude it, they will want to stroke their own egos, and send it out to their Facebook fan page, get their employees to do the same, and send it out since it shows they've arrived. It helps if your website looks like a big brand and legit for this to work. They'll be sending you traffic all day and night, and may even backlink your article/content about them from their web properties. Each week do a write up for 20 different companies/websites and implement them onto your site. Then follow up. WORST case scenario they don't respond and you get the SEO benefits of ranking for "Company Review".

Example - Health Insurance Site: If I'm running a website about health insurance, I can do reviews on different types of other insurance like life insurance, mortgage insurance, OR even health related websites - vegan websites, Exercising websites, bodybuilding websites - all that encompasses health. Think about the average blogger that gets their regular healthy eating recipe blog reviewed by a "big brand" or "Mega brand" health insurance website. They'll think they've made it, and start pushing/promoting that one article you wrote on them. Since you aren't a direct competitor, they won't think twice.

Wouldn't people that want to eat healthier or lift weights want better health insurance? Isn't this your target audience? There is potential there. If you get really chummy with certain people, offer to let them join your affiliate program <- you see what I did there?

I'm just warming up... this isn't even my final form... We haven't even gotten to the dialectics...

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Tactic: Resource Repository

Paint Gallery store - So let say you sell paintings (the ones that cost $20 which you hang up on the wall). You can go after different interior designers that focus on office furniture, or home decor and write a reverse guestpost about them on your website. Then let them know about it.

Reverse - Everyone's always crying about copyrighting photos right. Well, how about you turn the game on it's head. Create a huge repository of photos, images, and pictures you have for sale in your gallery store, and watermark them all in a bottom corner. Nothing retarded, cause this won't work if it's a retarded watermark across the whole image - fucking it up. Then reach out to 100 bloggers who update their blog more than once a week, and let them know they can use your photos in your repository for free as long as they keep the watermark in place. If they would like to put a link to the piece of work so their visitors can buy the piece and hang it, that'd be cool of them and their visitors can appreciate it. Leave it at that.

There are going to be some that will crop out the image and remove your watermark, don't waste time or worry about those. The vast majority of them though will appreciate a free repository, and would most likely link back. Even if they don't directly link back, the images have your watermark on them, driving direct traffic. Let say you do this outreach to 100 bloggers a week for 10 weeks straight, that's 1,000 bloggers, and 30% use your image with about 20% of them create links that's 300 bloggers distributing your brand and 200 creating direct links to your website for direct sales - increasing your exposure weekly - since they blog more than once a week.

If you get really clever, you can create an affiliate program and tell them that they can get a commission whenever one of their visitors buys a painting - so it's a win-win for them, and a major win for you. They get free images and can make some extra cash, while you have a growing network of bloggers blogging everyday while spreading your brand and links indirectly around the internet. But, but, but, too many anchors, bla, bla, bla - you didn't tell them what type of links to create, so they'll most likely be custom according to the blogger's desire, damn Google's got you brainwashed...

You see the lies Matt Cluts told you? Not to link or get a link from any website? Links are what drive traffic? If you have no links from traffic, you are then reliant on one source. In my scenario, I've got 300 bloggers creating links, and brand awareness for me. In your scenario, your using Search Engine Pray (#SEP) to pray and hope search engines send you traffic... one day...

If people are already jacking your photos, you can use Google Image search to find them, and let them know that you have a free big repository of images; you ask that you keep the watermark, a link, or even a link to your affiliate program so they can make money. You go from being a dick cause they stole your images, into making them your partner/allies while generating both of you revenue.

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Fake Negative Posts

Sometimes an indirect method to getting traffic may work. Getting traffic may require you to point out something on your own site, obviously not admitting you own the site, and saying some random shit like "Hey, is XYZ's login down for anyone else?", Or "Does anyone know how to find XYZ's faq page" - Xrumer style of spam

Several months ago some random forum in my niche started talking about a top 10 list I had, since someone in their niche started blasting that their company was #1 on Facebook. The forum thread stated the content was drivel, and paid for by the company, etc. Un-known to them, they increased my SEO since they were all linking to my content and I've had a nice healthy boost to my SERPS for that term cause I was getting links form and talked about, even negatively, from an authority in the industry. Thanks.

Today I still hold the #1 or #2 spots for that industry's term, and they still are asking how I'm ranking, lol. Besides the Google factor, the forum is bringing visitors from all over the internet looking and some of those visitors have made me some good money over the weeks, so it's a win-win for me. I went ahead and creates a username on that forum, and if I ever need some bashing, I'll go ahead and stir the pot, and leak that traffic with controversy over to my site.

Level - God Mode

Drown The Competition

Wonder if you can drop traffic leaks when your competition is getting bashed, Hell yeah. Get Google alerts on your competition, anywhere they are getting bashed, let the people know there is an alternative that you've found, you can drop a link if they are not sophisticated, but you can also just drop the domain, the brand, or a photo.

The key is to go where the audience is, and funnel that traffic to your site. After a certain point, that audience will start automatically going to your site, and you can move on to the next target. Rotate them, throughout the weeks, months, and using your analytics, tap the traffic source that brings you the best Revenue ROI, or stickiness in terms of emails.

Every single website is a potential traffic leak, that's the beauty of the web. It's literally a web of pages that interlink together. Your job and goal is to connect traffic sources with your web properties that brings your good ROI. That's how you have to approach every property website, as potential traffic leaks. Sometimes, you can just straight up as the webmaster for a link or even a "guest post", or whatever the kids are calling it now-a-days.

Everything is a traffic source, Go with that mentality, and start exploring the top 100, 1,000, 10,000 and 100,000 Alexa sites. Input your keyword, www.Alexa.com, and see how people interact on that site, can you use that traffic, can you leak it? Do you even have a God mode switch?

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Coattail The Competition

This one is for competition traffic leaks, Ride them beyond the point of annoyance. If they aren't talking smack about you, you aren't pushing hard enough. Setup Google Alerts for every one of your competitor's brands, websites, and domains. You can do the overall niche, but a direct one on one comparison is more focused and has better impact.

Whenever you get a Google alert, you can do one of two things, come in as a concerned 3rd party with a point of view or directly comment as your brand.

3rd Party: Whenever something about one of your big competitors gets alerted to you, drop your brand/link and state, "yeah this is great, BUT has anyone tried YOUR BRAND, it's suppose to be a better alternative, does anyone have experience with it?" - Traffic Leaks.

Switch up the style and flow. To make sure you aren't posting the same thing over and over, try coming up with 20 new catch phrases/intros once a week as practice.

1st Person: The direct route is you come in as a representative for your brand to comment accordingly - tell the brand they did a good job and tell them as a competitor we plan on doing a better one.. You can also act as if you were to confront your competition in a public debate like a politician in one of those town-hall debates. Have your rebuttals written out, and catch phrases ready. The attack can be in the style of a question and answer in comparison to your brand.​

If you want to get elaborate, do what Israel is doing in social media. They are hiring people to comment and curve online views in the comments for positive views on Israel.

If you have a team asking questions and commenting that looks impartial and sometimes asks you the hard questions as well and you answer them with enthusiasm, while the other party doesn't even answer, it only makes your brand look more powerful.

The best scenarios are when the competition is being shitted on.

"If any of my competitors were drowning, I'd stick a hose in their mouth" - Ray Kroc - Founder of McDonald's. 1902-1984

Use the skills from the past in the new digital world. As your competition is drowning, use that advantage to ride the coattail and get new support for your brand by telling people you are completely different. At the fever high pitch of anger towards your competitors, people want answers, if you can use that mob mentality to steer press, traffic, and sales your way you're an exploiter

Obviously, if you do it wrong, there can be some consequences - I like the 3rd party approach in the beginning of campaigns. As you get more and more used to doing these guerilla warfare marketing attacks, you can evolve to using a representative from your own brand in the mix of things. Do what the politicians do, you've seen the TV ads. The controversy creates dialog, which, if you are prepared, can take full advantage of.

Traffic Leaks at the expense of your competition's reputation.

 

[CCarter]

"This is dialectics. It’s very simple dialectics. One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions - you can't travel in space, you can’t go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, with fractions - what are you going to land on, one quarter, three-eighths - what are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something - that’s dialectic physics, OK? Dialectic logic is there’s only love and hate, you either love somebody or you hate them."​

-

Cleaning Dirty Traffic

So you know these cheap traffic sources like Adfly (PPV traffic) where you get these pop up interstitial ads when you go to one of their publisher's websites (The ones where you click "Skip This AD" after 5 seconds). Well there are people making a killing off those ads still. It's really about testing different offers, usually giveaways or free, or unique propositions to get people to fill out their information. Once you get them with a "Free giveaway" or something, they are now in your "lowest tier" email database.

Basically these are the sewage-like quality emails, not going to be high converting, but tag them anyway. Your goal with these emails is to move them to the next level by offering them different channels based on their interests (think surveying them). Once you get some interests they like by sending out a survey to these lowest tier and get something you can worthwhile tag them for, they have essentially moved up in value (as an email), and up a tier. As long as you tag the individuals, and know the traffic source, you can then find cheap CPA offers - which you can then send them.

Once you tag someone as a pet lover, or even more specifically "has a dog" keep them in mind for when you go through your affiliate network's offers, you can find "dog" or "pet" CPA offers that you can then send to those specific tagged email. The whole game is to tag people and send them cheap CPAs. It's really a numbers game. As you tag individuals more and more, and send out different surveys or offers and track which ones they open, and click through, you will be able to continue moving them up your email database tier. You can then create different branded website for certain demos, lifestyles, groups of tags, or approach someone with a CPA offer or brand to cross market.

It's about using every possible traffic source to grow your list of emails, instead of direct selling to them on that channel. The more creative you can get in capturing their information AND THEN earning their trust, the easier it will be to tap that database. So don't discount cheap traffic sources as bullshit traffic. The trick is to find other people's campaigns that are working and successful for them and mimic their behaviors.

Example: TrafficVance is a PPV network who's primary audience are Gamers. So, imagine running advertisements on that network that generates you 10 emails a day of Gamers. Can you imagine all the possibilities. Think WOW CPA offers, LOL ELO boosting offers, Walk through Guides, creating a monthly subscriptions for walk-thrus and a forum for a new game like Final Fantasy (insert latest number) they are on? There are Clickbankers doing that right now. They create walk-thrus, with beautiful designs, then hit up their own gamer database with it, and throw up their ebook guide on ClickBank to get affiliates, ride the wave - smartly adding a recurring monthly membership fee to a forum, create videos, threads, tons of images, and get things going. Most of their affiliate use PPV traffic from TrafficVance to generate that traffic. The great thing about it is, when the game or website dies down - you've been growing your database of gamers, and when the next game comes around, you hit it bigger. People like this are your target:

Knowing your audience is like listening to your girlfriend rambling about her fucking day, you got to do it so you know the signs to look for when it's time to give her the D.

​

It's a hit and run tactic, but with each hit, you grow your list of gamers. Using squeeze pages, auto-responders, and sequential emails, you can automate your whole funnel for your online empire. You can use cheap traffic, your affiliate can use cheap traffic, as long as you are in a niche where there is a heavy broad volume, converting those email to revenue is about imagination.

It's about seeing coming trends and preparing yourself for the on-coming wave, then getting out when the wave crashes onto the beach like a surfer. You gotta sit still in the water, be in the water, be the water, and feel the wave coming...

Check out more info about PPV Traffic (it's an "alright" article): List Building and Monetization with PPV Traffic

Answers Platforms

Yahoo Answers / Various Answers (platforms): There are over 40 answers website some dedicated to their own niche (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_question-and-answer_websites). You can comment and interaction and watch other people who drop their websites and brand do it, and take that role on. If you can figure out how to automate this with creating questions (extracting them from one platform - Yahoo Answers) then placing them on another THEN using another account to answer them and drop some subtle branding, or link to a helpful article that's on your website.

Own Q&A site in your niche OR local language

How about owning your own Q&A site for your niche specifically, sort of how stackoverflow.com does it for computers? Then as the site grows, "advertise" your money site in the ad spots. Take relevant questions from other Answers platforms, throw the answers through a spinner software, and get things started yourself. Then comment bomb other answers platforms, Facebook, Twitter, and others? How about having a bot that sits idly by on twitter, and whenever someone mentions a topic in your thread, you interact with them and let them know the answer may be on your Q&A site (More on this in Automation section).

 

[CCarter]

Channel Incentivization

"When you set out to influence and persuade people to action, when the campaign is tremendous, nation-wide [sic] in scope, don't think that it just happens; something has to be done to get millions of people to think the thought you want them to think and then to get them to act on that thought." - Carl Byoir
​

One of the key components of baiting traffic is the ability to use an incentive for visitors to sign up, give you their information, or buy. I'm a big believer that channel to direct sales is bad form since there is no direct selling process where they experience all the benefits. You can attempt to do this through videos, images, etc, but your website really gives the whole experience. None the less people still practice a channel to direct sales approach and usually have far less success than Channel -> Communication Funnel (to start the soft selling process) -> sales process. In this approach we are going to talk about different ways to incentivize people to give you their information.

Free Stuff: Everyone loves free stuff, especially if you can convey that the thing you are giving out has real value. Most people see value as equating to the cost, so you'll have to play by those lines. Using a channel like youtube, you can have an outro message in your youtube video that asks people to subscribe to your channel (easy to do), or sign up for your exclusive newsletter that offers XYZ. XYZ can be exclusive discounts to members, extra content that guest don't see, more videos, or even a chance to win a gift in a weekly raffle.

The key is to get creative and see what people in your niche are doing AND also look at what other successful marketing campaigns are coming up with OUTSIDE your niche. Remember we're exploiters, so our aim is to use one method that works and try to re-shape it to work in our niche. Trial and error is really the only way to success.

You can do the same thing for classified Ads. Is there anyone blatantly stating "Get Free Discounts on Electronics by signing up for our newsletter" as a simple classified Ad? Sometimes the direct approach is the easiest, test out different tactics on different channels and see what gets people reacting, talking, and oh boy if you can draw up some controversy, you are at least being talked about and starting to enter the grand stage of your niche.

Imagine a Craigslist Ad "See What We Do Differently Than ABC Competitor" that pushes visitors to a Youtube Video completely destroying the competition, and then telling people "to find out how we are different sign up for our exclusive mailing list - ssshh... it's a secret, we don't want the competition knowing our secret sauce." Going from Craigslist you've filtered people that are interested in knowing what could possibly be wrong with ABC Competitor and then gave them a video 100% talking about all their faults. Now you have left them in a daze and wondering how can you be different. But you didn't tell them your whole story and they are now feverishly wondering "Well, okay, how are you different?" - You essentially gave them blue balls, and the only way to answer that question that you put in their mind is to sign up for your newsletter. This further filters people who are more genuinely serious about a resolution. Make sure to tag these individuals as coming from this particular campaign, and then start hitting them with your benefits, and greatness. Depending on your tactic, you'll find these tagged individuals might be more receptive to your services and convert a little higher than the rest of your mailing list.

For each campaign, tag the individuals and make sure to cross check sales/revenue with tags to see what's working and what's not.

Downside, you might find out that one tactic increased sales BUT also increased refund rates. It happens, don't dwell on the refunds too much unless it's an astronomical number. Use the opportunity to ask for feedback to improve your product/service for future customers, and you might even have them give you a 2nd try.

Social Actions: Another example of ways to incentivize people is on a forum for example. If you are attempting to drum up activity and traffic you can do what WickedFire did in the beginning and give away Trip to ASW in a contest for every 500th comment in a particular thread (http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-shit/3651-postwhore-contest-every-500th-post-wins.html). That got everyone commenting in an attempt to drum the brand, and get people talking about it. You can possibly do that for your youtube channel, your retweets, your own forum, or your Facebook fan page. Imagine giving away $500 for every 500th post on your fan page, How many shares, likes, or social traffic will that drum up? You can give them $100 or even switch the prize to gift cards or free stuff from you. What about sending free stuff to everyone that has a funny photo of themselves using your photo to help spread the word? Doesn't even have to be your free stuff, you can strike a deal with someone looking to get more exposure for their own brand and willing to give away free versions of their product.

--

 

[CCarter]

Channels

"To Achieve Victory We Must Mass Our Forces At The Hub of All Power & Movement. The Enemy's 'Center of Gravity" - Von Clausewitz​

Craigslist

People have been using this technique for years - cause it WORKS! Early I asked If a Craigslist poster has a shitty experience with Craigslist, is it wrong for me to send them emails letting them know about another platform where they can get exactly what they are looking for knowing fully well that some will be willing to pay for it? It's what Airbnb's been doing and has been killing it. Airbnb has been traffic leaking craigslist to get their $1 billion valuation:

- Airbnb Farmed Craigslist To Grow Its Listings, Says Competitor - Business Insider
- New Billionaire AirBnB Still Spamming Craigslist, Not Returning the Favor | Betabeat
- https://medium.com/design-startups/ce0b06ee29ee
​

Random Twist: The key with this technique is capturing user's information versus direct sales. Direct selling straight from Craigslist without a soft sale is not a good idea. It's actually not a good idea with any marketing, conversions will be shitty.

From the craigslist add prospects should be send to a lead capture page, then you follow up with them in your email funnels to promote your product(s)/service(s). It's key to know the demo and lifestyle of your customer as well. Tagging them at the beginning is critical - say you place a classified Ad in Portland, Oregon's pet section. When traffic comes in from that - tag it Portland, Oregon, Pets - and any other identifying markers.

Idea, you can offer to give away a free doggy couch, blackhat style, that your "dog" no longer needs. In that scenario, having them email you at a specialized email that goes directly into your database would make sense. Setup an email that is specifically for that section portlandoregondot@gmail.com <- don't make it that obvious, use a spreadsheet if you have to. Get a programmer to write a pop3/imap email script that extracts the email address from anyone that emails that email into your database.

Later on - a week or two giving them enough time to forget about the doggy couch, send them a survey for "Pet Lovers". This survey will start capturing more information, First Name, Last Name, and other interests as a pet owner. State the survey is by "Pet USA" or whatever, in an interest to bring a new Pet Store to the local area. Ask as many questions about them as you do about their own pets. If they have birds, cats, dogs - what species, etc - some questions you may want to add tags as well - "cats", "dogs" in your tag fields. Make it sound like it's from a concerned Pet Store, which wants to cater to their needs. All this information goes back into your database growing the 2nd stage level of your list. Keep sending them different surveys if they respond to them - if not jump them straight to your CPA offers to see what they like engaging with. Each email owner is different, so just because they don't respond to surveys for their info doesn't mean they won't fill out their info if they are about to receive a coupon for their pets. The key is trying different tactics. Sign up for your competitor's newsletters and see what tactics they use and try mimicking their success.

1st level is capturing email, 2nd level is capturing more information. Follow up in a week or two with some story about how in the meantime before you build your new store you've created this awesome website with Pet discounts, coupons, and home delivery. And then you can hit them with CPA offers afterwards, and rotating advertisement for your website, and Pet Lover heart warming stories, etc. Make it seem like they are part of your community. You'll be leading them from here to there and back again by the nose and they won't know or even care how they got there, as long as you are using the data you collected to create a connection with them.

Once the gears in your brain start churning, you'll start seeing the possibilities for your own niche. You can pretend to give free giveaways or just tell them straight up to sign up for your newsletter to get daily discounts on offers in the classified AD. The most unconventional methods usually work - Also if there are options for Paid Advertisements, try that as well. The key is to exploit the technique for traffic leaks to your main site and remember each technique should pay for itself directly or indirectly. This is really for email signup versus anything else, more of an indirect method.

Also, don't spam the shit out of craigslist - never a good idea to get ghosted. Make sure to track everything, and only do one city at a time. You can post 2 and you might be pushing it with 3 posts in the same city a day, but I don't recommend posting ads in different cities on the same days, flags will ensue. Start off slowly with different baits, and monitor the ones that get results, and good capture rates, then scale those ones going city by city - I'm overly cautious so I jump cities every 3-4 days.

If you really want to get more blackhat/exploit style, once you know your capture rate for each Ad/bait style, you can then hire a craigslist spammer to take it up a notch and spam the shit out of these cities.

Craigslist is not the only Classified Ad site. Here are a list of others which you should research - I like exploiting newer ones first since they usually have less spam filters in place:

• Free Kijiji Canada Classifieds | Free Ads | Petites Annonces Gratuites
• Gumtree | Free classified ads from the #1 classifieds site in the UK
• eBay Classifieds (Kijiji) - Post & Search Free Local Classified Ads.
• http://www.backpage.com/
• Marketplace in Dallas
• Used Cars, Pets, Jobs, & Real Estate | Classified ads on recycler.com
• Free Classified Ads . Classifieds . Real Estate, Jobs, Vehicles, Dating...
• Free Classifieds - Hoobly Classifieds
• Classifieds - Free Classified Ads Online
• Free Classifieds - USFreeads
• DomesticSale - Free Classifieds
• Yahoo
• Classifieds For Free
• Atlanta Contractor, Landscaper, Painter, Roofing, Restaurants
• Post Free Classified Ads
• Find and Shop for the best products, prices and online deals on Fashion Apparel, Cars, Home Improvement, Collectibles, Pet Supplies and Merchandise.
• Free Ads 1 - 12: Local City State Homes Vehicles Electronics

Here is also a list of 100 Classified Ads by some Blogspot blogger: TOP 100 BEST FREE CLASSIFIED AD POSTING SITES

You have to remember all these websites have traffic on them - huge amounts of traffic, their owners are working hard everyday to grow their business, so if you can explore and exploit different ways and if you can even automate several of these websites, you can create a system of classified traffic leaks for the long term.

 

[CCarter]

Craigslist - Quicky

Offer to sell an old Ipad for low price. When they contact you tell them "sorry its' taken, but I got my new one at (CPA Offer for Ipad Giveaway), you might get lucky like me ".

Facebook

Alright, this technique is rather simple to do. Hit and run Facebook Fan Pages in the comment sections with your Ads. I've got a digital product that one of my affiliates picked up and started this technique and has been averaging $300 a day in revenue as an affiliate cause of it.

They have a simple regular Facebook account, you probably don't want to use your own, so get hundreds of them if possible - bulk resellers. And visit fan pages in your niche. Subscribe to all of them and drop your link in the comments. Photos work great, links are okay, videos are better, but the most subtle shit is the best.

One affiliate got really clever and was commenting on a random page in the niche that seemed to have been abandoned, "Has anyone heard of XYZ digital product". He worded his question in a way that asked if they thought it was legit or worth it. Since it looked like he was an innocent 3rd party, people commented on it, and clicked through affiliate link. Sales came in like no tomorrow. You can't keep hitting the same fan page with it though, so you have to find several pages in your niches. It's a hit and run commenting tactic. If you eventually get banned, use another account of yours, and keep it moving.

Try it with comments, direct links (CPA and even cloaked - 99% of the audience out there doesn't know anything about affiliate marketing, remember that, only affiliate marketers do), and use videos as well. You can even get slicker and just drop the Brand Name, so people have to go fishing. When people go fishing for shit and find it, they are more inclined to trust it, since THEY are the ones that discovered it.

These small indirect tactics of mind-fucking consumers and getting them to do what you want, taps into the basic curiosities of humans. It's all psychology.

Remember how Xrumer got the word out there? XRumer, They inputted into their spamming software a list of forums, then had them create accounts on the forums, then posted the question "Where can I get Xrumer?", Idiots replied to those threads, and even tried to help out the fake Xrumer member find Xrumer by Googling it themselves. So Xrumer spread the word of it's existence, by using it's own software, That's the level of thinking you need to get to.

You can do these hit and run marketing tactics anywhere, Twitter, Imgur, Forums, Even with bloggers in your industry. At the end of the day, it's about going where your audience is AND pushing your marketing upon them directly or indirectly.

Facebook - Quicky

Find Social Influencers and advertise only to them. Why cause they interact with the niche and are most likely to engage with it. Use them to spread the word.

GoDaddy Auctions

Most people by now know of dropped domain auctions, but they still fail to see the shortcuts I take with this. I go into detail about this later on in this crash course. I don't waste time with the SEO benefits of trying to resurrect them and get that Google thing going cause I don't know what the reason was for dropping the domain. If there is content which I can use I'll extract it from archive.org, and then delete the archive.org entries so no one has access to them ever again. I'll then take that domain and do a homepage redirect or a one to one redirect to relevant pages to my site. I just buy traffic based on the keywords and the subject matter of the domain. If something doesn't quite fit, then I'll re-create the website, and put banner as to my money site, and put the domain as part of my tiers or pyramid of sites. I make sure that each domain is paying it's own rent and move the fuck on to the next acquisition. I only like Godaddy cause I'm used to it, if there are better systems out there, go for it. What's the best type of traffic leak besides a person that's neglected a domain with traffic going to it?

Reddit

There are guys doing 180,000+ visitors a day in traffic from reddit, so if you can master that traffic AND figure out a way to engage it in a meaningful way, that's just money in the bank. Good content with great images work. A heart-felt story also works. Trolling content will also work, but be ready for some push back . Just don't put up self-promoting shit and you can squeak by and peak their interest. There are several dozens (hundreds) of subreddits which your niche fits in somewhere. We go in-depth with reddit during the CC9 Bootcamp: https://www.buildersociety.com/threads/creating-compelling-content.415/. Also check out Karmalytics, for daily mentions of your keywords and niche and then attack with traffic leak methods.

Tumblr

Tumblr's the current haven for teens and young adults that want to get away from their parents and the older audience on Facebook. Anything related to the entertainment niche can go viral. We've seen tumblr tags alone rank in the SERPs, but the power is in the watermarking and creating proper tags. Don't worry, I got you covered, TagsForLikes - Most Popular Top Instagram Tags Copy and Paste, if you cant' think of ideas for tags (can be used for anything), that site will give you categorized ideas. Same thing as other social sites, follow people to get them to follow you back, reblog people's posts, and engage them at their level. Watch how others are watermarking or dropping their brands on Tumblr, then mimic that action. Chances are that if a photo goes viral in Imgur, or Pinterest, or anywhere else and it's the same target, it'll get traction on tumblr as well. Think Automation: Imgur -> tumblr, Pinterest -> Tumblr, Tumblr -> Twitter, and so on. I discuss more of this in the Automation section (special thanks to $MoneyMike$ for the back ground on this).

 

[CCarter]

Automation - How To Build A Bot Army

"They didn't know that it was impossible, thus they did it." - Mark Twain​

Quora, Yahoo Answers, Facebook, Twitter - all these places have user generated content, that can be manipulated, extracted or mashed up. Imagine finding a Yahoo Answers question and posting it on a Facebook page to get a response, then later on dropping an affiliate link of a product that you think is a great fit. I'm going to open pandora's box on one such empire being ran under the radar.

Some tag team buddies of mine have grown to over 50,000 twitter accounts each with 1000+ followers. Currently they're averaging a 12% CTR and 8% conversion. What does that mean? That's about 6,000 people clicking through to every CPA they sends out and 8%, or 480 going on to buy the product. If you are in a niche that gets $15 a conversion, that $7,200 per campaign (they does them in 2-3 day intervals). I've seen their backend and his revenue numbers, it's ALOT more than that. These guys are doing serious numbers daily, this is just a small glimpse into the potential of blackhat automation. It's about seeing an opportunity and playing the numbers game.

First find a twitter account reseller, there are a dime a dozen. The twitter accounts is the easy part. Using your bots you are going to naturally grow these bot's followers by interacting with people, and even auto-following people in your niche. This is about mass exposure. Once you get 100 twitter accounts to about 300 follows, you've got an audience of 30,000 in your niche which you are mimicking interaction with all the time. You can take it a step further and attempt to create real dialog, and I suggest using a text spinner's api for this, but that might not even be necessary, and that's Final Boss level shit you aren't ready for...

You see these bots out here automatically adding you. The more sophisticated bots don't start conversations but enter them and drop links, comments, and create interaction. I've got another guy doing this EXACT same method but with Pinterest . He rents out his bots though, so whenever I need to blast something to the women niche, he's the first person I hit up, always a positive return on investment for me. All this guy does is create bots that interact, re-pin images, follow users, and re-post Niche news, it's honestly one of the most beautiful things I've seen.

But that's Pinterest and Twitter, what about the other niche specific forums, social media platforms like LinkedIn, which are all business oriented? There are so many ways to extract traffic from platforms, and automation is the key. If you don't know a language get someone who does, even basics. I used Perl for most of my bot programming. I use CasperJS/PhantomJS for my bots since they are headless browsers and can interact with javascript - oh wait, anti-spammers don't want to hear that

The first lesson of CasperJS is learning to scrape Google, yeah that's right, Google -> Quickstart - CasperJS 1.1.0-DEV documentation

If you're too lazy to program, at least be the brains of the operation and partner with a programmer that's on top of their game. Here are some quick rudimentary bots that I've seen in action and a beginner programmer can whip up rather quickly:

Friendster Bot:

1. Searches For recent Questions, Mentions, Tweets - Niche
2. Respond with random questions, comments, or thanking the person
3. Check back in 24 hours if they responded, if so - Add them as a friend.
4. Check if they added you as a friend.

The Goal: The goal is to reply to recent questions, mentions, or tweets. You can push CPA offers to these people like "hey, you might be interested in XYZ product - bit.ly/link"

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Random Comment Bot:

1. Find people that have commented on your niche.
2. categorize them by the amount of Followers.
3. If low followers - follow them. (Hopefully they'll follow you back)
4. If high followers simply note them.
5. Send out random comments about the niche and include the @followers_username. 'Have you heard of XYZ PRODUCT for the NICHE? @MercenaryCarter' 'Found a great article on NICHE, www.bit.ly/link @MercenaryCarter'

The Goal: Get some reply back from them and therefore get their user base to see the messages as well.

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News Bot:

1. Setup Google Alerts for your niche to bot@mybotserver.com.
2. Have a the bot check for that inbox, pop3 might be the easiest way.
3. Whenever a piece of news comes into play get the title and link and output a twitter message with it and #Niche.

The Goal: to create hashtag news bots that re-distribute news. People start naturally following these hashtag bots. The goal should be more for exposure so no one bot should have more than 1000 followers. If so, automatically remove the bot them from future messaging. Why? So you don't have all your eggs in one basket. Have tens of thousands of these twitter bots, each with 1000 visitors and when you need a social army to push a new CPA or a discount, bam, you've got a huge social army. If you're clever enough you can even get these bots to trends topics on twitter.

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Spinner Bot:

1. Scrape for recent tweets in your niche.
2. Use Spinner to re-construct the tweets.
3. Re-tweet those tweets from other individuals and use hashtags to get them into the Niche's conversation.

The Goal: generate unique content that will allow you to stay relevant in the social conversation without sacrificing quality.

-

Coupon Bot:

1. Create a database of coupons that you are an affiliate for.
2. Whenever someone in your niche talks about your keywords, send a tweet or even A DM (Direct Message), and let them know you've found a great coupon they might be interested in.
3. Bank.

The Goal: Send out coupons to people who are potentially looking from buying from a company you are an affiliate of or who can possibly pass the coupon on to friends of theirs.

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Enemy Bot:

1. Get a database together of all your competitors.
2. Have a rebuttal promoting your brand over their brands as messages.
3. Whenever someone in your niche talks about the competition, send a tweet or even A DM (Direct Message), with your message of being the better product/service, and to give you a try.
4. Make sure not to message the same person over and over.

The Goal: Competition counter social campaign. Whenever someone mentions any of your competitors, your bots jumps into the conversation, messages them, and tweets to people asking them to do a comparison.

-

Databases Should do the following:

1. Login all twitter accounts and their proxy information.
2. Log All tweets and know the last time and frequency they post at. (Need this for analysis)
3. Know the individual niches you are targeting with keywords to look for.
4. Monitor EVERYTHING!

-

There are literally dozens of ways to attack this. You can start out with 100 twitter accounts, and give each bot access to a portion to the twitter accounts, then creates these bots scripts, use a cheap VPS (CloudAtCost.com for example), buy 100 proxies (may need more as your network grows), and start experimenting with ways to socially interact. Your biggest concern will be getting flagged, so you'll have to randomize and vary a lot of this activity. I'd also assign certain twitter accounts to specific proxies, so Twitter can't eliminate your whole network out of existence. But seriously, don't go create a twitter bot army, that's already been done, there are hundreds of thousand of other websites out there with traffic that might be more targeted which you can use these ideas/blueprints on. Also, those other websites I guarantee have less spam filters and botting protection in place than the bigger aged properties.

-

The goal here is to create an army that you control with different bots that do different things - all with an end goal of either making you money, sending traffic to your site, or expanding your reach (being followed), in your niche. As this bot army grows and you integrate different platforms/websites/portals or data sources(Hint: local government archives), you'll be able to send out affiliate/CPA campaigns that generate you good residual money and traffic to your money sites (or even your tier sites), and whenever you need to tap that bot ass for nice pay days, you smack that shit, and no one will be the wiser.

There are programmers the specialize in botting, so look to them first if you need to outsource this type of project. It's definitely a longer term project, so don't get 50,000 twitter accounts and spam twitter in one week, and fuck up all your proxies. Think long term. Also the key is to take advantage of cross channelling - for example if you can have a "Pinterest to Twitter" Bot, that takes popular photos in Pinterest, downloads them onto your website, then send out a link in a tweet to your audience. Same thing for Tumblr - "Tumblr to Twitter" Bot, or "Imgur To Twitter" Bot - Or "Pinterest To Imgur" Bot. Subreddit to your community through email? anyone? What about Yahoo Answers -> Twitter (other platform) -> Your own Q&A site -> Money site? Just think about all the places something can go viral, and come up with ways to push that viral content on another channel while you profit - with automated blackhat bots of course... Don't forget to monitor, watch, and analyze the feedback from the bots.

--

 

[CCarter]

Random Examples

"You can sell dogshit if you package it right, doesn't mean it will taste good or that your customer will be satisfied, but you can! You can also have a hard time giving FREE GOLD away if it's covered in dogshit or not packaged right" - NCMedia/Norb (RIP NicheChoppers)​

Alright I asked around on skype for examples people want me to go in on and they threw these ones at me, so I'm going in...

Legal Lead Gen
Comment bomb News articles about cases related to article. There is always a constant stream of news articles about legal problems, a simple Google Alert setup and bam you're on the scene like an ambulance chasing lawyer, sorry - I had too. That's direct traffic from people who are involved OR know someone that is involved and can forward them your link. Anyone that's reading that has some sort of connection to the story. Same thing for forums and other viral sources. If the off topic places of the forums or Answers platforms talk about a case, give some critical details about the case and drop your brand at the end (citations ). It'll help you build credibility and trust with your brand before they even get to your site.

Look for family or mommy blogs, or places people share heart-felt stories. Search for the niches your attorneys cover and see if you can drop some quick non-binding advice and drop your brand or link at the end. No need to upsell yourself, since your non-binding recommendations is more than enough to give you credibility. (You are going to want to consult with the lawyers about the campaign before hand to see what you can and can't do).

Family Matters Tribute Site
I'd first do an individual where are they now on each character which includes their current activities, past acting gigs (tv shows and movies), and any additional information. I would also have about 30-50 photos of each individual. (This goes for side characters as well).

​

I would first create some info-graphics about shows in the 90s and connect with other tribute sites to data from them. I'd do site to site link exchange for traffic and distribute the info-graphics around the internet. Then get Google Alerts on the actors and "stalk" them around the internet. I'd make sure to comment and drop the site whenever possible in the user generated portion.

Next I would find all boards/forums and platforms that talk about TV shows and use the info-graphics as content. Interact with the individuals on that board, and connect with other members that own sites as well. Exchange traffic and sidebar links. Afterwards I would do a reverse guest-post on other 90s shows and link to the tribute sites for them. Get the owners to tweet it, Facebook it, and spread it virally and you pretty much have traffic coming in from all angles.

You can take it to the next level and create a parody twitter account of Urkel and talk about random things of the internet and the world in his mannerisms. See how far that goes.

Youtube is also a great place to create clips from favorite episodes or guest appearances by other famous actors on the show. (Going back, I would create an individual page on each guest actor and a where are they know as well). Celebrities sites that allow user generated comments is where you are going to get the best traffic leaks.

Insurance
I've talked about different examples of insurance already in this thread, but this topic is way too vague to get into details, so I'm going to use an example of selling boat insurance. If you are selling boat insurance, become a member of boat forums and engage with customers there - ABOUT BOATS. Then after being a loyal member, drop a big thread about helpful boat insurance advice and ways to protect their boats, at the end a small 1 sentence byline about how you can help people out and link to your website, and you'll have people PMing you and asking for advice all day. Move on to the next boat site, and the next. If there are other boating platforms, go there. Other types of site you want to look into is vacation spots with docks, beaches, and other places people with boats may want to travel.

Now if there is no site dedicated for boat owners to find great destinations... well how about you make one and comment bomb all over the internet about your new site for great destinations? Then have sidebar ads up-selling your boat insurance? You can create your own forum, and use Pinterest to showcase beautiful vacation destination photos. If you don't have a channel then create your own channel/soapbox. How about finding Fishing forums and websites? Most fishers have some sort of boat to fish with? Join that forum and get cozy with the members, then drop your information and advice in the off-topic section. I doubt you'll get flamed like we do here.


Sloth Nice / Gifs
Looks like QLC is in the audience. I'd first find and save all the sloth gifs on the internet. I'd remove all the watermarks then re-watermark them with the new site. Then create a meme generator specifically for sloth gifs, then do a comment forum blitz all over the net. Forums are usually where most gifs are reposted, so that's going to be the main game plan. Bribe a couple of high profile posters and give them access to the repository and the ability to upload their own gifs, not necessarily having to be sloth gifs. They'll use that, and then you can open up the image sharing site to the masses once it becomes popular.

​

I'd hit up tumblr as well, and create a huge repository of the gifs, and tag them accordingly, then connect with other funny meme tumblrs. I'd do a link exchange on there meme sites, and setup an automated email every week to send them stats on how much traffic I sent them. That'll keep us in their minds, and hopefully the grateful ones will prefer sending us traffic over random others.

Gifs, photos, and images are part of the sharing, reblogging, and reposting game. So watermarking is going to be the key to spreading this site.


Car DealerShip
Most places hit up Craigslist, but I'd do a reverse. Since craigslist is starting to crack down and charge for listing for cars on there, I'd create a site specifically for free which allows people to display their cars for sale without any costs - competing with Autotrader. I'd use Airbnb's method of spamming craigslist posts and letting them know of the new website they can list their car.

Once the site starts growing I'd place ads specifically to my dealership in the areas I want to advertise and lock that shit down. Then sell the other cities' ad space to whoever wants to buy it. The site will grow naturally since car dealerships will start posting on there and craigslist as well. The key is to get the competition grow their listings on there, and let them know how to share it on their social media accounts, emails, etc. Send out marketing tips weekly to them so they are pushing the listing site for you, and building your brand as they take full advantage of the free listing, hosting, and display.

Most of these places have someone uploading to Autotrader already, so another listing that's simple to use shouldn't be a problem. Along with the marketing tips, I'd send a listing view and stats on traffic to their listing to show the growth (fake it if you have to). The key is to get them pushing the site for you and if they can use your site as their main inventory showcase versus their own crappy site, all the better. Think it as like a wordpress.com subdomain but for them specifically. This is a more elaborate plan, cause the other plans of attacking selling used cars are sort of overcrowded. Actually you can do this if you are selling auto insurance instead of being car dealership as well. Become the exclusive auto insurance company of that listing site.

 

[CCarter]

Real Estate
People want to see the homes they are about to buy, so I'd setup a beautiful Pinterest board and update it with lists all day for the higher-end properties - that'll get them reposted by people. Also, the website should have a search function for visitors, don't know why most real estate brokers go with the bullshit default ones from their MLS.

I'd then have a maps available of schools, fitness centers, restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, shopping malls, and other attractions in their area. You can do a reverse guest-post on all of the above and reach out to them to let them know you featured them on your site. They'll do the sharing, and pushing for you with their own marketing channels. You can give them marketing hints on how they can share it if you need to.

I'd then do reverse guest-posts on bloggers in the areas you are targeting that do interior design, home decor, paint galleries, companies that create furniture, pet lover blogs, local shops, farmer's markets, local restaurants, and reach out to all of them and let them know so they can push your site to their own individualized target markets. Right there you just planted a strong foothold within the community, by doing something nice for them, even though the end goal is local and targeted traffic to your real estate listings

The key with a viral traffic leak is to get other people to push your website for you, that's the power of a reverse guest-post.

Bar of Soap
Alright, I'd hit up every bodybuilding blog/website and let them know about my affiliate program. When you lift weights, at some point you have to take a shower. So, if you can sell your soap as being natural or getting rid of the acid from sweat - clearly I have no idea what I'm talking about - or something beneficial, and give the bodybuilding sites your affiliate program, that's money in the bank.

You can approach health nuts, vegans bloggers, fitness centers with websites, and do some guerilla marketing campaigns at their physical locations. Selling soap shouldn't be that hard, especially if you can spin a health benefit to your particular soap. If you can angle it, you can hit up mommy blogs, baby blogs, healthy living lifestyle sites, anything that has to do with people taking care of themselves.

To go viral, create info-graphics about germs, dirt, and health, and post those suckers on Pinterest, and get them shared everywhere. You can visit health forums and drop them in the off topic sections to get the conversation going. It's not hard to sell something that's an essential like soap. It's not like candles where you have to pull marketing stunts by putting diamonds in them.

Vegan Blog
I'd approach this one with a more personal touch. First create a map of local organic stories, also ones for pets - yeah they exist, then create an App with that data as well. My App would have my recent recipes and favorites from the internet with an ingredients section so people know what to buy while they are at the grocery store

Then I'd hit up others in my niche and do video interviews on their particular subject, then a reverse guest-post on anything related in my niche and reach out to them to share with their audience.

Afterwards, I'd hit up the healthy forums hard, and drop some health knowledge topics. I'd hit up food forums and drop some health recipes. I'd hit up fitness forums and drop yoga poses. I'd reach out to those in the niches mentioned and tried do site to site link exchanges and send them a weekly update on the amount of traffic I'm sending them - to keep me in their minds. I'll let them know, if they ever want to feature anything of theirs on my site, to let me know - so I got them creating content for me

I'd take the mobile route pretty serious as well. If I can push notify my audience whenever something they are interested in drops, whether it's a new recipe, new local organic store in their area, new video, and so on. My primary mode of communication would be the mobile Apps cause that way they can fall in love with the personality and face of the brand.

--

 

[CCarter]

Strategy - Beyond Websites - Mobile APPs

"Be water. If you pour water in a cup, it takes the shape of a cup. If you pour it in a teapot, it takes the shape of a teapot. Be fluid. Treat each project differently. The best style is no style. Because styles can be figured out. And when you have no style, they can't figure you out." - Jay-Z & Bruce Lee​

Talk about a swan song... I told you this isn't even my final form yet. What's more personal than a mobile device? Really nothing. The Internet allows us to connect with users, customers, visitors at a higher level which we are just now starting to scratch the surface of. A website is not the end all, a website is just the beginning. Mobile APPs are the next level of communicating with brands. We can now transfer funds from one account to another while sitting on the toilet, really think about that. Use your website as the first stage, think about ways to create an APP that's a more personal communication channel to your audience. Look at Facebook's Mobile traffic, surpassing it's regular desktop traffic now. You can move all your content and still generate revenue to a mobile solution, which allows users to no longer have to wait to get to a desktop to connect with your brand.

The first way to generate revenue that comes to mind is purchasing specialized Apps that have a customized solution, but that's leaving money on the table. Free Apps get more downloads, so by not tapping that ass, err app too soon for revenue you can create long term profits down the road. What if you had 10 mobile Apps generating you 1K to 10K views daily, you can create your own mini-advertising network flying under the radar. You can push your own CPA offers straight on your consumers. You can also sell advertising space in your APPs.

The easiest example to showcase the possibilities are mobile games, most are free, but have options to get exclusive weapons or bonuses which you have to purchase with the Ip-App purchasing - generating revenue for the company. Also, don't forget the possibility of In-App advertising. But that's just a small tip of what is possible.

Let's say you have a lifestyle website geared towards women. You can create an App which has exclusive content, data, and so on, only available on your App. You can have some of the best sizzling content in your App with commenting options then do a Reverse and sell guest-posts in your Mobile App to others in your niche/vertical. Wait wat...

Just when they think they have you on the ropes, they keep swinging, but miss, then you show them a new power move they've never seen before, and they're dazed and rattled, and they're like "dude, come on... is this even your final form?" They think they've caught up to you, but then all of a suddenly you're in outer-space mang...​

You can switch it up and create several free ebooks and push them in the Kindle marketplace which helps increase your brand's awareness and reach. Using the free ebook series about your niche to drive traffic back to your main site, capture their information, then drive them back to their mobile App store to get in their pockets.

Once you get a user to download your APP, there is no limit, push notifications of coupons, or limited time CPA offers as deals - is your head exploding yet? Got new content on your main site? How about push notifications to everyone who has downloaded your App, and let them know about the new available content? You are literally in their pockets, as a brand that's the one place you want to be, constantly attached to your customer.

Do it cleanly, and don't spam, you can milk that cow for generations. Imagine you did a huge media buy to get people to download your App, and got 100K people interested, then every time you drop content or a story you notify your audience, similar to email - but Google's doing everything to kill that, so you skip those Google clowns and take it a step further and send that notification straight to their phone, lets be cereal... What if 50%, 50,000 people, instantly viewed your new content cause of the notification? People are addicted to their phones, remember that! What if you did a guest-post for a client on your site, then push 50K instant viewers to his article? Wat, Dafaq? You see how I'm mixing and matching? Come at me bro... What's a better traffic leak, than customers who like your brand enough to download your app, waiting for you to engage with them?

You don't even need to start from scratch: http://codecanyon.net/item/recipes-app/2021676 (Thanks BlogHue)

Code Canyon has APP templates for Android, iPhone, etc, which you can use as a basis for your APP... I mean, the money is jus there right in your face, are you man enough to take it?

What about, what about, what about this... You ever see those marketing tactics where they are releasing cues once a week as an PR stunt. Or rather like a comic book where next week the next episode. How about creating a mobile App that's a book or content series, but the next chapters are uploaded once a week as they are written, so it's like an episode to get word out there. That'll keep readers waiting for the next juicy chapter, and also allows you to create discussions around your site.

What if I released something like a marketing tactic once a week but only available on the mobile App, could I achieve historical numbers? Use the way TV shows schedule themselves to gauge the audience, get advertisers in place for when I drop new content, or even an exclusive CPA offer that's only available within the 4 hour window I launch... It becomes it's own viral tornado. I'm all out of Red Bull, that's a wrap...

-

If you got any niches/topics you want me to brainstorm, feel free to drop it in this thread, and I'll show you how to do this...

--

 

[CCarter]

Welcome To The Final Level

"In the Kamigata area, they have a sort of tiered lunchbox they use for a single day when flower viewing. Upon returning, they throw them away, trampling them underfoot. The end is important in all things." - Yamamoto Tsunetomo (Hagakure, circa 1709)​

As you take a glimpse to all the possibilities on the final level, just remember - this isn't even my final form yet...

This was our internet. We were here first, we conquered it, and evolved it. We, those of us from the time before time, before the Google, before the Guidelines, before SEO... We conquered this world. But then got too lazy. We let Google take over bit by bit, in exchange for ease of usage. We encouraged family and friends to use the Google start-up. We helped spread it like wild fire... Now we look around... and realize what we have done.

We've given up our stats to Google Analytics in exchange for fancy graphics. The untold rule was a beneficial exchange. We give them our website data, they give us the proper data... How's that agreement going as of late? This answer is (not provided).

You slowly gave them more and more control, and now you wonder why you can't live without them? You now wonder why you are at their mercy? It's time to take back control and break the chains of the mystical Google Guidelines. Have you seen these guidelines? I can't even find a link to their mystical writing, yet we are suppose to follow invisible trails - it's like a rat maze, and when you touch the walls you get a nice electric shock. You used to love Google for their free traffic - years ago... That same traffic is not so free anymore, is it? You gave up so much control, now you are a prisoner numbered within their Analytics Code.

You let them crawl your website for content to supply their Google visitors. The best of the best content was suppose to be given priority, but what do you get in exchange. You give them your content, images, videos, data, than they took away your keyword researching tools. Then they gave you a hummmingbird. Afterwards they took away your organic keywords in your Analytics software - While you still allow them to use YOUR data to improve their bottom-line!

They gave you Gmail to control your communication - but tricked you with Ads and scanned your emails directly into the NSA's database for any future crimes of yours. Then they created those promotional tabs, and now this tracking pixel nonsense...

We told our family and friends to use this new search engine, it was more accurate and better... What do they do in turn? Turn their backs on us, the webmasters of the world. We gave them everything, and they've thrown us to the side of the road like we're nothing. It's our data in their database. They are scraping our websites to populate and give info to "their" customers.

Now, they spit on us webmasters, web developers, and internet marketers - as if the internet could even function without us... They used the classic divide and conquer, giving us weapons like disavow, and "reconsideration"... So they've got us pointing guns at each other, waiting for the first shots in the negative SEO wars to be heard around the net.

Everywhere you turn, we the men of ability, the webmasters of the world are looked down upon - us who control the internet, your websites, and your ability to even navigate these great waters, being treated like janitors at a gentleman's club. How about we take back the internet, using traffic leak exploits as the first rung in the ladder to take back control of what is rightfully ours?

- Final Boss ( @MercenaryCarter)

 

[mmm91492]

So I started a little project at the start of the year and made my first attempt at leaking traffic from a 30K FB Group I joined a week or so ago. I wrote a ~1K word article on a controversial niche-specific topic, took a polarized stance (pro-moral high ground), and included a strong CTA at the end to "sign up and learn what you can do to combat this issue". Spent most of the night writing it and leaked it in the early morning hours, when many group members tend to be active.

I was disappointed as it didn't take seem to take off, and after about an hour and a half I decided to get some sleep. I woke up to a little bit of engagement and some traffic, but no sign ups. However, I just got back from the grocery store and my article seems to be having a moment:

So I just thought I'd say thanks, I've been reading this stuff for years and applying it to client work when possible, but this has been my first solo endeavor. Very happy with the results! 30+ signups so far. I think it's safe to say I'll be pursuing this project further, so look for my journal in the days to come.

 

[built]

@CCarter in regards to the "Automation Wins wars." Would blackhatworld etc be a good place to start learning about automation? My BS detector has yet to fully develop

 

[Klayne]

@CCarter in regards to the "Automation Wins wars." Would blackhatworld etc be a good place to start learning about automation? My BS detector has yet to fully develop

There are a lot of guides on bots, and a lot of people use them. The thing to keep an eye on would be on the monetization part, as they think very short term. Mostly using PPD and PPI, which can make a quick buck, but is kinda unethical, and very short term. Otherwise there is good info on how to automate, spam etc.

Sometimes I wonder, if the people there would start to generate traffic to quality website, they would be making a lot of money in the long term, but seems like they prefer instant revenue, instead of total revenue.

 

[lion1978]

@built now I aint ccarter but I figured I'd give my 3cent on the subject.
And imho blackhatworld wouldn't be a good place to start blackhatworld and bestblackhatforum and the likes of them is mainly focused on seo and 98% of the people there has never done any seo, the few that has most them has only fired up gsa ser with publicly available "verified lists" and then they wonder why their 1 page affiliate site isn't ranking #1 in google after a week.

You might be able to pick up some usefull knowledge at places like hackforums and the likes of it which names I can't remember at the present time, now ofcourse this requires some coding skills, but at least on hackerforums they even have good tutorials for a number of the more popular programming languages, hell you might even find a script there that does exactly what you want but it is advisable from my perspective that is to only use a script if you truely understand it and the platform on which it will be used as ccarter also mentioned.

 

[CCarter]

@CCarter in regards to the "Automation Wins wars." Would blackhatworld etc be a good place to start learning about automation? My BS detector has yet to fully develop

Automation is about programming not necessarily blackhat. For example if you create a script that automatically logs all twitter accounts that use a certain hash tag in the last 24 hours so you can contact them later on for guestposting you saved valuable time.

You can also create a script the monitors several sub-reddits for you for posts with specific keywords or phrases, when one of those keywords or phrases shows up you can have the bot email you the link to the subreddit so you can potentially traffic leak the post.

You can do this for facebook groups too. Have a bot login to FB groups (or even linkedin) and monitor for certain phrases and report back to help you see what's a hot subject, then it emails you and you can create a piece of content around it and then go and traffic leak the group by stating "Hey i just happened to write about this very subject, let me know your thoughts". (Or ask the loudest persons in the polarizing discussion for quotes and let them traffic leak your blogpost for you).

Automation is about thinking outside the box and removing the manual work in whatever process you use to take over the internet.

Learning a programming language is key for it all - not necessarily using Blackhat tools.

 

[built]

There are a lot of guides on bots, and a lot of people use them. The thing to keep an eye on would be on the monetization part, as they think very short term. Mostly using PPD and PPI, which can make a quick buck, but is kinda unethical, and very short term. Otherwise there is good info on how to automate, spam etc.

Sometimes I wonder, if the people there would start to generate traffic to quality website, they would be making a lot of money in the long term, but seems like they prefer instant revenue, instead of total revenue.

That's what I was thinking as well, because some of the stuff I've seen in terms of bots etc has really given me loads of ideas for traffic leaking.

@built
You might be able to pick up some usefull knowledge at places like hackforums and the likes of it which names I can't remember at the present time, now ofcourse this requires some coding skills, but at least on hackerforums they even have good tutorials for a number of the more popular programming languages, hell you might even find a script there that does exactly what you want but it is advisable from my perspective that is to only use a script if you truely understand it and the platform on which it will be used as ccarter also mentioned.

Yeah I tend to avoid any of the make xxx in one week type of shit. Thanks for your input dude, I'll check out hackforums

Automation is about programming not necessarily blackhat. For example if you create a script that automatically logs all twitter accounts that use a certain hash tag in the last 24 hours so you can contact them later on for guestposting you saved valuable time.

You can also create a script the monitors several sub-reddits for you for posts with specific keywords or phrases, when one of those keywords or phrases shows up you can have the bot email you the link to the subreddit so you can potentially traffic leak the post.

You can do this for facebook groups too. Have a bot login to FB groups (or even linkedin) and monitor for certain phrases and report back to help you see what's a hot subject, then it emails you and you can create a piece of content around it and then go and traffic leak the group by stating "Hey i just happened to write about this very subject, let me know your thoughts". (Or ask the loudest persons in the polarizing discussion for quotes and let them traffic leak your blogpost for you).

Automation is about thinking outside the box and removing the manual work in whatever process you use to take over the internet.

Learning a programming language is key for it all - not necessarily using Blackhat tools.

I understand, thanks for the advice. I have something similar I'm trying out, basically in the groups I've joined if a post with the keyword I've set comes up it will like and add a comment. But that's as far as I've figured out right now.

Going to see if I can take some of your ideas from this thread and create a little army of Facebook leakers.

 

[turbin3]

In my opinion, a good place to start would be to first learn a little bit, maybe at a surface level, about a few different programming languages. I'm talking purely at an overview level, just to get the lay of the land. I'd browse around on YouTube, StackOverflow, Reddit, or whatever medium you prefer to get info. Look at a few things like Python, some of the newer JS stuff, Perl, or any number of other languages, and just start to get a feel for who does what with what.

From there, I would try to think of specific things you want to accomplish. For example, take a goal and break it down to individual items necessary to complete that goal. Now try searching a few different ways for that one specific thing. You'll probably have good success and achieve good progress by getting used to browsing StackOverflow threads. Most common things you could want to do will likely already have a thread there with answers. From there, just start copy/pasting code, tweaking, testing, diagnosing failures, and you will start making progress.

Word of advice: there is no perfect programming language. I know it can be hard for a lot of people, but try not to get caught up in learning too many languages and trying to do "all the things". Most languages you'll be looking at will likely have plenty of methods to achieve the things you want, so just pick one and stick with it, at least until you find a fairly good reason to justify picking up another language. For a lot of people, Python is probably a good place to start for scraping purposes, due to the legible and readable nature of the code, as well as the significant number of existing libraries that can give you relatively plug and play solutions.

In short, I would summarize all of that by saying, the best place to start, and the skills you want to hone are:

• Learning how to ask the right questions
  • If you're not finding the right answers, you might not be asking the right questions. Try to approach problems from multiple angles. Sometimes you need to think peripherally.
  • If you can't think of the question, just start thinking of words to describe the problem or the desired end goal/process, and start searching for it with multiple ways, until you find things that sound like they describe what you're thinking/experiencing.
• Learning how to self-diagnose problems
  • Programming is ultimately trial and error. It failed? Why? If I tweak it like this, what happens? etc.
  • Get used to failure and learn to love it.
• Learning how to find your own answers
  • This can literally be as simple as the above, developing your own method for "asking questions", finding answers, and testing them until you find the one that works.
  • Example: When Python fails, it usually tells you why it fails, even though it is sometimes cryptic. Google the failure message, and a few different ways if necessary (exact match, site search on stackoverflow.com, etc.). Try a code tweak someone recommends. Did it fail again? Did it fail differently? Do the same for that failure. Eventually it will work, and you will have learned a LOT along the way.

 

[animalstyle]

@built @turbin3 That is an amazing writeup that you put together - thank you so much for sharing. The below TED talk was one I watched 6 or so months ago. There is a part in the middle which your information reinforced so much and helped me gain some clarity. Thanks for sharing

 

[finnegan]

They have a simple regular Facebook account, you probably don't want to use your own, so get hundreds of them if possible - bulk resellers. And visit fan pages in your niche. Subscribe to all of them and drop your link in the comments. Photos work great, links are okay, videos are better, but the most subtle shit is the best.

There's no mention here of using VPNs or whatnot with these other FB accounts. When FB Admins see you spamming and ban one of the bulk accounts, doesn't the fact that there's footprints to your main account cause them to shut that down too?

Should we be covering our tracks when using these other accounts or is the accused account the only one in jeopardy?

 

[CCarter]

When FB Admins see you spamming

Why are you spamming or commenting to the point people think you are spamming and report you? If you aren't subtle with your traffic leaks then you'll lose no matter what.

doesn't the fact that there's footprints to your main account cause them to shut that down too?

Honestly at a certain point I sort of have to assume people know things like not using the same IP address, browser session when logging in and doing massive traffic leak tasks.

Facebook has gotten a lot better in the years of detecting VPNs and bad sessions ahead of time. You can't even login to Twitter with certain IP ranges so Facebook definitely has that ability and more.

Should we be covering our tracks when using these other accounts or is the accused account the only one in jeopardy?

You should always be subtle and covert when needing to be covert, and when not needing to be covert don't be. What do I mean - If I come in as a representative of "XYZ Company" in the comments and people on the group know I am, and I provide a great comment or response, like I hopefully do here, people will DM me for more on the topic, ask directly about my product/service, or engage at some level I can "drop my brand" without dropping my brand. I LITERALLY do it at Builder Society all day - do you see the SERPWoo brand as spamming BuSo? Is what I say spammy at any level? Yet I drop SERPWoo links, links to content that helps users, and links to further research all day and every day.

Use me as an example - Am I spamming? Or am I adding value enough that the brand also gets exposure?

Now think about the guy that does an intro and does some nonsense like this:

"Hi Im new here, looking forward to the discussions. I work at XYZAll.com, if you need discount XYZ don't hesitate to contact me. We've got the best XYZ. Thanks and looking forward to contributing"

^^ First of all that intro thread here would get deleted within 24 hours. But at other places you may never hear from that person again after that spammy intro OR worse yet, everything they say is about XYZ and it's overtly spammy - that's a straight spammer.

How you interact with the community needs to be with in the rules and also the social rules of interacting. But I can guarantee you that if you are seeing as giving benefits OVER and OVER and OVER to a community you can bend rules a bit more than others.

Now if I want to be covert about it, I can get shill accounts to keep asking questions about SEO at BuSo and then come in and answer the questions and mention how SERPWoo is a great product to solve XYZ. If you can do something like that subtle great - 99.99% of people cannot pull this off - I can't, and plus at a certain point it'll be way too obvious.

It's easier to be upfront and provide content that informs, entertains, or both to a community and grow within that community.

So before you make that traffic leak post - make sure you got a plan on your approach but ask yourself this:

"If I replace my brand with my competitor's brand, and re-read it, would I consider this spam?"

If the answer is yes - DO NOT POST IT.

 

[secretagentdad]

Google appears to have decided that auto complete, suggested keywords and other google inserts are great for their kpis and massively expanded what’s eligible to get into them.

It’s now the top traffic leaking channel by a country mile for most verticals. You can effectively hook an iv up to your competitors and start siphoning their brand equity. This is nuts. Traffic leaking is defacto force multiplied.
The tax men are coming for your network effects.