Traffic Generation Questions

Michael Weir posted in the NetMarketingForum.com forum with this question.

My name is Michael Weir and I'd like to say hello to all the members (since I'm new here). Good to see some recognisable names. I've already found some interesting topics, so I'm getting good value from this Forum.

I set up a squeeze page for my new mailing list 3 weeks ago. This is my current traffic:

Organic Traffic: Listed in all major search engines except Google
Manual Traffic Exchanges: Croc-Ads, Traffic-Splash, Topsurfer, LinkCrews
25 Guaranteed Signups per month: Planet-Traffic (2 so far)
300 Directories Submission: Build-A-Host (hasn't started yet)
Guaranteed Unique Traffic: BlazingTraffic (10,000 delivered slowly over 60 days)
Auto Co-ops: Doctor Traffic, UnExchange, True Co-op - 25,000 hits (hasn't started yet)

My last 3 days I averaged 60-70 unique views, and I just checked Google Analytics and I reach 128 today. I expect it to rise to 200+ next week as a few of the above sources kick into gear. I'm aiming for 300-500 uniques/day in the very near future.

I have 37 subscribers plus 3 who took the free downloads and unsubscribed.

I've been doing my research to try and find services with a good balance between quality and price, and I'm now tending torward Auto Co-Ops. I can afford about US$200-$300 per month for traffic and lead generation, and I would prefer most of it to be automatic.

So, does anyone have any suggestions in case I've missed some good traffic sources?

Hi Michael,
You're doing a great job. Keep it up.

Now write articles in your field of expertise, and distribute them wherever you can.

Publishing articles in online publications, directories and ezines is one of the most effective and least expensive kinds of website promotion. It is a perfect way to generate interest in your site, and create traffic.

Well written articles can be used to highlight various aspects of your products or services. At the same time you will establish yourself as an authority in your field. And the articles you write and publish today will continue to be available on the web for years to come.

Distributing articles is also an important way to create incoming links. Other websites and ezines publish your articles and in the process create links pointing back to your website.

Why?

Because when you write your article you make sure to embed a link or two pointing back to your site. Often this is done in what is called the "Resource Box" -- a short bio of the author that contains a low key pitch for your products or services.

But writing and distributing articles is not for everyone. It is a very time-consuming activity, and if you are not much of a writer it will cost some money to have someone write articles for you. The online sales process starts with traffic — visitors to your site.

But traffic is not enough. You want to turn some of these visitors into leads. A "lead" is a visitor who expresses an interest by contacting you. This puts them in "most-likely-to-buy" category, and gives you a clearly defined group of people you can target with more specific sales messages.

To capture leads you need a carefully planned strategy. You need to get beyond the usual "send us an email for more information" approach. Simple online forms backed up with autoresponders are perfect for this task. Normally this involves offering some tip or free information course, or possibly a free piece of software. In order to receive the free gift the website visitor must fill in a short form giving you their name and email address. Then the autoresponder automatically sends out a message containing or pointing to the free gift, along with a presentation of your product.

You can also program the autoresponder to send out a series of messages so your promotional pitch is placed in front of them a number of times.

The only way to know if the advertising or traffic generating method you’re using is working is to try different things and then track the results. Then keep using the ones that work and quit using the one’s that are wasting your money and time.

It’s important to track everything you can. Think of every ad, post, email, sigfile, ezine ad, traffic exchange and any other place you put a link to your site, as a test. If you don’t know the results of your tests, how can you improve your results?

Tracking click thru rates is not enough. Make sure the system you’re using has the ability to track not only click-thru rates, but sign ups and sales as well. This way you’ll know if the traffic source is truly getting results.

You may have one ad getting 2000 clicks and 1 sale, while a second ad gets 50 clicks and 5 sales. If the first ad costs 10 dollars and the second ad costs 40 dollars, which ad is more profitable?

Let’s assume that the product we’re selling is the same and makes 20 dollars profit.AD 1 $10 cost 1 sale X $20 Profit = $20 - $10 ad cost = $10 ProfitAD 2 $40 cost 5 sales X $20 Profit = $100 - $40 ad cost = $60 profit

As you can see, the number of hits to a site does not always mean that ad is more profitable.The only way to know for sure is to track results. Once you know what works, put more of you advertising budget into the most productive methods. The same $40 spent on ad one that would produce about four sales could be spent on ad two and make about twenty sales.

Twenty sales X $20 profit = $400 - $40 ad cost = $360 profit on the same $40 investment!Can you see why it’s important to track everything? If all you tracked were the total clicks you could never be sure which ad they were coming from or where people were buying from.

It would be easy to mistake the ad with the most hits as being the ad people are buying from and you could be wasting money. Money that could be redirected into more profitable and effective advertising as soon as possible will make you more in the long run.

With that said, you want to be sure that you track your results long enough to be accurate. A hundred times is not enough.

For visitors to your site 3000 to 5000 visitors will give you a pretty good idea if your site is doing what it’s supposed to do. ie; ( get sign ups or make sales). Banner impressions would take around 20,000 to 50,000 impressions to get an idea if it’s working. If it gives you good results keep doing it and if not change or remove it.

Know your return on investment for each traffic source. The best and only tracker to use is one that tracks return on investment for you and will also track total clicks, total sign ups and total sales. If it takes this information and automatically reports the percentages of total clicks to total sign ups and sales and your total return on investment then you have a winner as far as tracking goes.

Once you find some effective traffic sources that give you a good ROI, pump up your budget on these sources by redirecting the money spent on ineffective sources. Then go looking for new sources.

You can find the REAL best Traffic Exchanges on Traffic Hoopla. This site rates the activity of all traffic exchanges so you only join nthe most active traffic exchanges and that means better results for your marketing efforts.

Remember to keep trying different things and after six months or so, you’ll have a collection of really good, profitable website traffic generators that you can rely on for producing predictable results.For more detailed information, see my blog and please leave a comment:

To YOUR Success...
Frank Tocco--MLM Mentor and Business Builder
http://Shop4Dreams.MagneticSponsoringOnline.com
http://Shop4Dreams.ws
http://FrankTocco.blogspot.com