Guaranteed Traffic...

[Dale King]

If you've been thinking about purchasing traffic from one of those guaranteed traffic programs, save your money. Why? Because it's nothing more than garbage traffic.

How do I know? Because I've tested these programs - for myself and for my clients. Here are the results of those tests:

On four different ocassions, for four different clients, I purchased 10,000 supposedly targeted pop-under ads for $89 from one of the more popular guaranteed traffic programs. I then sat back and observed.

Approximately thirty days and over 50,000 visitors later, my clients had made zero sales. None! Nada! Zilch! My own personal results were just as dismal. Over 50,000 clicks and no sales.

Why no sales? Because the quality of traffic was absolutely horrendous. Let me explain:

All four of the aforementioned clients gave me full access to their raw data logs. Guess what I discovered. All of the traffic was coming from poor and impoverished third world countries and po*n sites. Even more telling was the fact that the average time each visitor stayed on each site was mere seconds. In other words, they were simply clicking on the URL and then leaving immediately.

Again, if you've been thinking about buying traffic from a guaranteed traffic program, I implore you... DON'T! As the saying goes, "garbage in, garbage out!"

Have any of you ever tried one of those guaranteed traffic programs? What was your experience?

Dale King

[bill benson]

on topic visitors -> optimized selling landing page = sales.

You don't get a lot of people looking for chevy's at a porsche dealership.

[fierceapple]

I haven't tried any of those, but I'm well aware. I still don't understand why people would pay for that kind of stuff.

[Dale King]

Originally Posted by fierceapple

I still don't understand why people would pay for that kind of stuff.

I don't know why people continue to fall for these types of scams either, but that's exactly why I posted this - to warn people. Just using common sense, I had already assumed that the traffic was probably inferior or fake, but I wanted to actually test it for myself, before writing a negative opinion.

Dale King

[fierceapple]

On the same website they cater to those people who view the ads. They state that you get paid for just looking at websites. This should deter anyone from being genuinely interested in getting traffic from them.

I have always wanted to do the same test, but never found the time or real reason.

[bill benson]

Ok, Dale, lets take the opposite approach. You know there is junk traffic out there pretty cheap. How could you write a site that would take advantage of that and make money? You implied in your post that the traffic was primarily in a couple of different areas. You mentioned adult and third word countries.

I'm kind of at a loss of how to make money from clicks from China, but I think you could be cleaver and have some non-adult product that would have a general enough appeal to get orders from pop-unders from adult sites.

You also mentioned those two groups, but I bet the traffic comes from all of the high click areas such as get rich quick sites. Do you have anything quantitative as to the percentage of traffic from particular categories?

So, let me bounce the question back at you. What kind of site could you write that would make money from these clicks? I bet if you made a college project out of it, you could come up with a formula that makes money from these clicks.

[Dale King]

Originally Posted by bill benson

What kind of site could you write that would make money from these clicks? I bet if you made a college project out of it, you could come up with a formula that makes money from these clicks.

Bill, I would much rather spend my time, energy and effort trying to convert real, targeted traffic, as opposed to trying to think up ways to convert garbage traffic. Besides, you'd have better odds of hitting the lottery than you would trying to convert garbage traffic.

Dale King

[Dale King]

Originally Posted by fierceapple

I have always wanted to do the same test, but never found the time or real reason.

Well since I write articles on these types of topics all the time, I ALWAYS take the time to do proper research, as opposed to just writing a positive or negative opinion based on hearsay. To do otherwise would be totally irresponsible.

Dale King

[bill benson]

Actually, Dale, good marketing means being cleaver. A test like this - or actually just ideas posted in a thread, can generate creative marketing ideas.

The worst possible marketing idea I can think of is to assume there is no possible way of using this traffic to your benefit. It may apply well to certain members of this board if used properly.

[fierceapple]

bill, that's a very interesting idea. and it just could work with a creative mind. If you can find a way to convert that "garbage" traffic into something useful, it wouldn't be garbage after all.

I just wonder how someone would go about doing that.