Day 28 - A Complete Traffic Plan

[CCarter]

A Complete Traffic Plan

This day is going to be an interesting one since it's an attempt to round out some of the options that couldn't fit within the other days. Having a website isn't simply about getting SEO traffic, SEO traffic is reactive, and so is PPC. Remember I told you to treat your website as if it's a business, a brand.

So a real brand doesn't wait for customers to figure out if they need a solution to their problem, that's reactive. A brand will get in front of their audience, market to them, and showcasing a potential problem and display a solution. A customer may not even know that there is a better solution to doing something they've always do, proactive marketing helps spread the word of your solution.

Proactive marketing is why there are advertisements on TV, radio, Billboards, and all around you. We live in a constant effort to market to consumers different product and service, yet most online marketers seem to be completely oblivious to the multiple channels available to them to market their product/service/brand.

Alexa, you've heard of them, has a list of the top 1 million websites in order from greatest to lowest in traffic. Concentrating on Google or Facebook and twitter is simply concentrating on 3 of the top websites with the most traffic. Even if you were to narrow down the list to the top 10,000 Alexa sites, you'll now have a list of websites with the most traffic on the internet. Traffic leak them, network with them, outreach to them, and play your part in the marketing funnel.

We've covered offline marketing, social media supremacy, traffic leaking, email marketing, but the following are subjects that go a bit beyond in order to round out and create a complete traffic plan for your brand.

 

[CCarter]

Getting Traffic in Difficult Niches

I saw a thread about someone starting a business in a niche, without doing research, lots of competition, and guess what it's in? Dating. So they launched their website, and realized their first day, they had zero traffic.

This is a situation where a pregame blueprint would've helped them before jumping in. But since I really don't know the guy, and noticed that several of you are in similar fields, I'll just give out what I would do in that scenario. Hopefully it helps! A lot of this stuff can be spun to different difficult niches, and would be alot easier to succeed in, since again, this is for adult/dating sites, which are super saturated!

I wanted to give you an overview of what to do with a dating/adult website in terms of traffic, revenue, and additional potential opportunities:

Traffic
Since Adult and soon Dating traffic has a slight stigma in society, it's difficult to get online traffic opportunities in the traditional routes. The Adult and Dating industry therefore has always been on the cutting edge of techniques in getting visitors and sales online. They were the first to pioneer streaming videos (beat Youtube by 10 years). They created their own search engine for adult, before Google even existed. They pioneered directory listings and conversion optimization. They leaped into mobile and tablet optimization before the major corporations considered it. They had to, since the tradition online traffic venues were blocked. So here is what I would do, If I were "attempting to enter this market".

Traffic Trading Networks
One of the techniques I would utilize is Traffic trading networks. Any quality adult or dating website can join these types of network. Everyone in the network participates in a trading traffic with an increased ratio (usually 2 to 1). There are a handful of great trading networks, which will send you more than 2x the visitors you send them. So it's a big win win for both parties. The networks's advantage is they grow bigger with every new add-on. A dating website's advantage is they will get 2x more traffic then they send out. Most networks allow you to even do pop-unders for the traffic. Usually these type of networks are free to join, but managing all the traffic is going to be one hurdle to overcome. Any traffic coming off of these sites is in your general demo, which means it's targeted traffic!

Affiliate Traffic
Most of you are more than familiar with how affiliate traffic works here. What is rare in the this industry is an affiliate that does not shave stats. If a dating site can put together and run a strong affiliate program, it has the ability to take away 80% of AFF's (Adult Friend Finder) web traffic. AFF is the largest, so they believe they can do whatever they want. Their affiliates are desperate to jump off that shit to a network that will treat them correctly. If setup correctly the potential here is tremendous and explosive. There are places like eHarmoney and now friends of ours PlentyOfFish now on the scene. Possibly partner with them?

SEO
The traditional routes of press releases, video promotions, and viral marketing should definitely be taken into consideration. Making all the SEO promotions PG or PG 13 is the best way to stay in the good eyes of the web portals which will be accepting your content/ads/promotions.

A viral angle of blogging can also be achieved. This is were creativity will have to come into play, but essentially you can have a female blog about their great experience with dating sites, (not mentioning the site), and her encounters. Eventually a dialog in the comments section will ensue, and that's where the female can give a link to the visitors on where she goes to browse for her dates. She can occasionally drop other links to "competitor" websites to keep it realistic. (really the competitors will be part of the Partnership Opportunities I mention later on - Affiliate Marketing).

Another angle is a male version of the blog, where a rich guy goes on about his conquests of sleeping with women, etc, and does essentially the same thing. He mentions every now and then he is a member of some forums and drops the your website in the dialog every now and then.

I can go on, there are several ideas and angles this can take on, but I think you guys get the point.

Adult Digital Advertising
This is by far the best avenue of gaining traffic, and customers. Several networks exist, but there are several great ones, that have CPC and CPA campaigns that put Google's pricing to shame. Adult traffic is one of the cheapest traffic to find, but quality traffic that will convert needs solid networks. Additional an opportunity like using traffic that will not convert, for the trading networks and partnership sites are a possibility. So there is never any truly wasted traffic.

Revenue - Mobile Strategy
Back in 2013, Mobile internet traffic surpassed desktop internet traffic. ALL mobile traffic lies in a demographic that has more disposable income, since they have smartphones. Having a mobile and tablet version of the website is going to be critical to growth, and keeping up with the industry. One of the biggest obstacles will be compatibility, I've got that covered, but I'd rather not give away that technique just willy-nilly.

A nice promotional angle is to have different features on the mobile and tablets, then there are on the desktop. For example, a location services, that shows what gentlemen or ladies are in the area, and the opportunity to chat with them (like skype or any instant messanger service). Mobile and tablets allow you to stay in communication with visitors, users, and members 24/7, versus Desktop users. There is not an Adult or Dating site taking full advantage of this, and it's worth exploring.

Revenue - Potential Opportunities - Partnerships
One option of driving traffic, is to partner up with bigger AND smaller adult and dating companies for cross promotion in the members area, as well as creating a mini Advertising network. Additional revenue can be created by having advertisement slots of "partner" brands, or even directly signing up as an affiliate for payout when sending traffic to a partner.

The key it is to constantly monetize the traffic that is on the website. Adding mobile and tablet capabilities creates an additional opportunities of revenue, and unique targeting opportunities.

There is huge potential still in adult dating websites, and taking advantage of some of the new technologies and techniques will put your site at the top of the pyramid. Simply offering a strong affiliate network in the industry will gain you volumes of affiliate traffic from affiliate looking to defect from AFF, and other non-ethical networks screwing their affiliate.

Conclusion
I hope this helps in giving you an idea of what can still be done within the adult dating scenario. The more creative you can get, with mobile/tablets, or the blogging angles, the easier you're going to hit. Realistically, there is nothing really new under the sun.

Try to exercise your brain by looking at other successful campaigns online and offline, and see how you can create a "dating version" of that. Do that for your niche and you'll realize all marketing campaigns are really re-mixes of past successful marketing campaigns. Imagine, Google did a "New Coke" campaign, where they are pulling their android platform. The amount of backlash, or uproar, may get them to put the "platform back on the market", while creating buzz.

NCMedia, had a scenario where some artist on the Dub Step scene was talking shit about his product, and since the artist had like a million fans, it create a viral campaign which gave NCMedia huge exposure, and made him "a considerable amount of money", all because of one do attempting to talk shit about his product. NCMedia, didn't do anything do provoke the scenario, but let's say you partner up with a semi-famous person on their way up, with a growing following, and get them to promote your product or website, by giving them X percentage (can be as easy as having them sign up to be an affiliate under your product).

Marketing is pretty fucking simple people, it's your own creativity that limits it. Marketing is going where your audience is and getting your product in front of them, Period. The problem is most of you want to get pro-active traffic from people only searching for your product (SEO). How about you also throw in a re-active campaign that takes your ass out of your comfort zone, and gets in front of your audience online and dare I say, offline as well? Marketing is getting in front of your audience, get in front of them with a decent product/services, you're guaranteed sales. (Don't forget to add them to your list!!!) Or you could just what till Matt Cluts's next weather forecast and hope for the best.

Carry on...

 

[CCarter]

Acquiring Other Websites

Alright so another easy way to get traffic is to simply buy it by purchasing websites for sale at places like Flippa or our friends at FE International (Highly recommended, @Thomas Smale is a member of the society). That's the easiest way to expansion - acquisitions. But lets get into a little know trick I utilized...

Dropped Domains With Traffic

I purchase domains that expired but the owners had tremendous amount of traffic going to them. I DO NOT purchase these domains for their SEO value. I only purchase them for their traffic. You see somewhere along the way SEOs minds got warped and forgot the whole purpose of SEO is not to get top rankings, but to drive in traffic from their niche to their websites. Buy monitoring and finding domains that expired but the traffic is still in the 500+ visitors monthly, I'm able to grab niche traffic for extremely cheap rates.

Here is the thing where EVERYONE fucks this up at: they don't select only "EXPIRED AUCTIONS". That's the only option I have enabled - NOT fucking closeout buys, NOT fucking sellers - cause sellers can boost up traffic numbers with bot traffic, but only Expired Auctions since the domains expired on GoDaddy and the owner doesn't even care and therefore has no reason to fake traffic.

Now some idiot is going to still fuck it up, and not listen, so here is me fucking repeating myself. ONLY "EXPIRED Auctions" if you can't get that through your skulls then you deserve all the waste of time and waste of money that you are about to encounter.

The trick is the same as buying dropped domains for SEO, but you simple look at the traffic numbers. Once you see a decent domain name with good traffic numbers, look it up with archive.org and figure out if the site was indeed in your niche. If it was then win the auction.

You then have two options, the first option which i don't like is to simply redirect the whole site and therefore their referring and direct traffic to your main site. It's quick and simple. I should mention that the traffic coming to the site is not through search engines, but it's purely referral and direct traffic since search engines remove expired domains within 3-5 days after it expired, so that's all gooey referring and direct traffic coming in.

The second option is to recreate the website, and place advertisements and banners to your main site on your recreated site. You can try to revive the SEO benefit, yuck - fucking SEO what a waste of time, and you'll probably be able to resurrect the rankings if you work hard. I prefer to just focus on getting that referral and direct traffic, throw up some blog posts on the new site about how great my main site is and call it a day.

I can do this forever, since people for some reason stop caring about websites even if they've got massive traffic and drop them - I once got a website with 100K visitors a month for $700. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. If you put aside $1000+ a month and use those funds to buy website with 500 to 2000 visitors, that's just compounding niched traffic coming to your site. The key is you may sometimes need to go broader with the terms you utilize to do the search. I've got custom filters in my godaddy account, and get DAILY emails of expired domains, so I don't even have to login to godaddy to see domains and traffic numbers. Obviously if the domains are really other people will be bidding for them as well, so you'll need a real budget.

 

[CCarter]

Outreach & Networking

One of the best way to generate traffic is to borrow it from friends or allies. This is where outreaching and networking within your industry and potentially with competitors or brands in sister niches comes into play.

Outreaching and asking for a mention to someone's audience is nice, but remember people are greedy by nature. So unless you have a relationship with them, they aren't likely to help you out. That's where I like employing the reverse guest post outreach technique. It's where you ask folks in your industry which are KNOWN for guestposting to guestpost on your website about a specific topic. If they are receptive they'll love it cause it'll give them a platform to brag to their audience about, exposing your brand to their whole audience, and they'll be looking to get exposure to your audience as their main benefit.

Your audience will love the fact that your blog has experts surrounding it so they'll be more inclined to continue listening, but don't post drivel. If the guestpost you get back is fluff or just an outbound link fest to their stuff I wouldn't waste time posting it, cause it'll make your brand look like it's being taken advantage of.

Networking also helps establish yourself as a player within the industry, and get access to things that you might not realize you can get access to by simply asking. I've gotten free access to platforms, beta tested software, and been given exclusive access to tools that will never see the light of day simply by networking within my industry. Dropping great content and being well known helps, but the only way to do that is to start getting to know the industry movers and shakers.

You can start by reaching out and introducing yourself, then move to eventually commenting on their blog posts and of course posting in the website URL section, your own website . People appreciate comments on their website, especially if it's from a colleague they know, cause it makes them feel like you listen and respect their work. It's all an ego thing, so if you have to stroke, stroke.

With enough back and forth, you'll eventually be presented with opportunities for guestposts, or to be included in something like a Facebook or Linkedin Group that will help you spread the word of your own brand.

The key is not to spam people with your bullshit, and when approaching everyone ask yourself what YOU can do for THEM to further their cause so they feel like they owe you.

 

[CCarter]

Complete Traffic Plan Conclusion

Whatever avenues of generating traffic you go down, make sure you test and continue testing different methods of engagement. The key to sticking with this is creating a 30 day rotation calendar where you sit down and dedicate a certain amount of hours a day to generating traffic. Rotate a group of websites and techniques in everyday, until you find ones which work great for your niche, and then sharpen those skills. IF @built can generate 100K visits in a single day from Reddit, you can definitely do those numbers daily by compounding your efforts from multiple channels, this is the fucking internet for god-sake, Everything is a traffic source.

- CCarter ( @MercenaryCarter)

 

[Tucky]

Ok so I've found a domain in the godaddy auctions which is in my niche, says it has 1500+ monthly visitors, has one bid and yet is only £8. This seems too good to be true! Wayback has plenty of snapshots from 2015 but are there any other tests you can do to ensure it is worth it? OSE says it has 1 backlink yet ahrefs says it has over 130 from 42 referring domains! Is there another site which will guess the traffic?

 

[CCarter]

Ok so I've found a domain in the godaddy auctions which is in my niche, says it has 1500+ monthly visitors, has one bid and yet is only £8. This seems too good to be true!

I pray to the old gods and new gods you used "Expired Auctions" only and not a closeout or some other option. At 1500 visitors I estimate the bid will go for $300 to $500 in the end. GoDaddy is a bit notorious for snipers, hell I'm a manual sniper, but there are automated tools now, and every new bid the last 5 mins extends the bidding for another 5 mins, - or 2 mins, it's one of those two. It's been a while but I have daily reports on all domains with over 1K visitors up for auction, so I've still got my ear to the ground.

There really isn't any other tools to gauge what's going on with the site unfortunately besides those ones. You can do all the due diligence but IF you did the search correctly and only selected "Expired Auctions", then I found that to be the best indicator of referring traffic numbers.

 

[Tucky]

Thanks for the reply. Yes it is expired and in my niche. Guess I will see what it's going for when it's ending later this week. Fingers crossed you don't buy it

 

[built]

@CCarter at what point is buying dropped domains dangerous? Let's say you buy 3-5 domains with traffic and 301 them to your site.

Would that get your site deindexed?

What if you go further and 301 10 domains to your site etc.

 

[CCarter]

You REALLY should understand the metrics of the domains and make sure they are not penalized before you 301 redirect them. You can recreate the domains and let them sit for 1-3 months and see what organic traffic comes back. If ZERO organic traffic comes back DO NOT 301 redirect that domain, something is wrong with it - but again I buy domains for the direct and referring traffic aspect and not for the SEO value. If you want you can do a no-follow redirect on the domains so you don't have to worry about penalties if you do not care about the SEO benefits - which I recommend if you are thinking about stacking domains like that.

 

[coopreme]

Traffic Trading Networks

@CCarter is there a best practice for choosing the type of traffic trading network? I'm assuming you want something that trades in your Niche, preferably 2:1 like you stated. Some of the networks seem sketchy.

 

[CCarter]

@CCarter is there a best practice for choosing the type of traffic trading network? I'm assuming you want something that trades in your Niche, preferably 2:1 like you stated. Some of the networks seem sketchy.

Just test everything. No way of really knowing without testing (and looking at reviews online).

 

[Bazooka]

@CCarter I tried the reverse guest post outreach and managed to get a professional to speak about a certain topic. Not only did they love that. Those who land on my website will see it as an authority. Looking at it from an SEO point of view. SEOs don't want to link out because they fear losing link juice. However, inviting people to speak about topics on your website will make you an authority in your space and also like Carter said these like will link out to you. It's almost like having a podcast where people listen to experts talk for hours. This time it's an article and I'm sure people will devour the info and share.