Category Archives: Website Traffic

Some handy tips, tricks and methods of getting more website traffic for greater online visibility.

Traffic Secrets Ain’t So Secret

Traffic Secrets Ain’t So Secret (An Honest
Assessment of John Reese’s Traffic Secrets 2.0)

Just slogged my way thru John Reese’s Traffic Secrets 2.0
– I had to read the badly transcribed Training Manual
because the slickly produced State-of-the-Art CD-Roms
wouldn’t work properly on my trusty Toshiba laptop. The
videos kept crashing – I finally read the minimum requirements
and you need Windows XP or greater, Pentium 4
2.4Ghz Processor with 512 DDR RAM… just to run
these CD-Roms. Geez Louise!

I did manage to watch a few of the opening videos – this
is the way this comprehensive training course on increasing
your website traffic should be viewed. Direct and immediate
instructions, as if you have the perfect view, looking over
John Reese’s shoulder as he goes about explaining all the
major techniques and factors for getting traffic
on the web.

Unfortunately, I had to slowly work my way thru a horribly
transcribed text made from the videos. Given all the
advice Reese gives about outsourcing and creating quality
content – a thorough proof-read and edit would have made
this $400 product more enjoyable if like me you couldn’t
get the videos to work. Reese must have used some kind of
voice to text software – for example, you get different
versions for Adwords such as “add words”, “ad words” and
so on.

Of course, this doesn’t subtract from the solid marketing
information being offered here – just makes it annoying to
absorb. But then again to be fair, this is a VIDEO course
and that’s the best way to absorb this information. Which
I quickly discovered after I upgraded to a new HP Elite Pavilion
PC with Quad Processors and 6 Gigs of RAM – I threw in a 24″
HDMI monitor just to be on the safe side. The CD-Roms worked
spectacularly on my new system.

In any case, no one should dismiss Traffic Secrets because
of a few jumbled words or dangling participles. John Reese
knows his stuff and in the end that’s all that matters.
You’re paying for the information and advice – not your
English teacher’s good graces.

If you’re new to web marketing, you may be wondering who
the heck is John Reese and why should I listen to him or
take his advice?

From running two web sites on Internet Marketing – I follow
most of the major names in online marketing. I first came
across John Reese when he was running a free advertising
site/program called Opportunity.com – which is now closed.
Lately, he has developed a similar type of program for blogs
called BlogRush – which is a free way to promote your blog
posts on other people’s blogs.

Most people know John Reese from when he made Internet
Marketing history by selling over one million dollars worth
of product in a day – that was way back in 2004 and that
product was Traffic Secrets.

Well, it’s four years later and this is Traffic Secrets 2.0 –
it’s a major update on the first TS product. (You get
access to this earlier product when you purchase his latest
offering.) The new traffic course concentrates more on the
new web media sites, social bookmark sites, video marketing…
where online marketing is heading in the immediate future.

I really like the way Reese explains these new ways of
marketing and how you must embrace them in order to fully
succeed on this new web. Reese gives concrete examples,
concrete ways to improve your traffic: go to this site,
check these stats, perfect this method, put this on your sites…
direct practical advice and directions that will help you
build your traffic.

Reese gives you a solid usable “Master Plan” which is composed
of 7 or 8 major areas or Blueprints you have to follow to improve
your traffic. These major areas are further divided into 10-15
steps you have to take to benefit fully from your online
traffic.

Reese describes all these steps in a very detailed fashion
in this traffic course, but don’t expect just one magic
bullet that will bring on the flood of traffic. Rather you get
a whole orchestrated array of tactics you should do to increase
your traffic, a very controlled approach that will get your
traffic numbers snowballing. You also get an online component
and forum to help you out with your traffic building tasks.

To be quite honest, I didn’t find Traffic Secrets 2.0 as
helpful as I expected, mainly because I already knew most
of the material from my own marketing. If you’re already a
full-time affiliate marketer using Commission Junction,
ClickBank, Adwords… with many SEO optimized niche sites
holding many top lucrative keyword listings in Google, much
of what Reese explains will not be new to you.

If you’re already have had a front-page listing on Digg and
know the SEO significance of WordPress blogs and the benefits
of using social bookmarking sites, you will be familiar with
many of the techniques and resources covered in Reese’s traffic
course.

However, even judging it from this perspective, I did gain a
lot of valuable knowledge about setting up and running your
own affiliate system, about creating your own video content and
your own software/widgets/programs – all areas that are relatively
new to me. This is where I gained the most knowledge from having
this course.

Guess, what I am saying, like any info product – Traffic Secrets
will only be as beneficial as your level of marketing. If you’re
a complete novice this is an excellent product on increasing your
traffic. If you’re a very experienced marketer, you will gain from
having this product but less so – in my opinion. Mainly, because you
will already be doing most of the things Reese advises you to do.

For me, there were two things that are worth the price of this
product alone – if you didn’t even bother with all the training
videos and manuals!

First, there are the 7 Master Blueprints listing all the steps
you have to take to master/conquer a particular area of Internet
Marketing, for example, “Adwords Attack Blueprint”. Each Blueprint
has around 10 to 15 practical steps you have to take to master
this area of your online marketing, which Reese fleshes out in
the videos.

These Blueprints are some of the best online marketing advice I
have ever seen – putting them all together in this Traffic Secrets
course was a masterstroke and well worth the price alone. Simply
brilliant.

However, even given how good this information is, the best part
of the Traffic Secrets for me had nothing to do with John Reese.
There were two bonus videos of Frank Kern that were simply
spectacular. He presents some ingenious marketing strategies
that any marketer can use… these videos, in my opinion, are
also worth the price of the product alone.

Now, Reese’s product did tell me countless ways to increase
my traffic over the long haul. However, my main beef is not
with Reese but with the whole concept of Web 2.0 traffic –
I really wonder or rather question the real benefits of this
traffic? Most of it is not targeted traffic; most of it is
just plain useless.

With one major important exception – the SEO benefits of
Web 2.0 traffic or listings. Web 2.0 is one way to quickly
get your content to the top of the search engines and you have
probably already noticed how many product videos, social bookmark
listings have jumped to the top of Google. Social media sites
in regards to SEO have become extremely important to anyone
doing business on the web.

I also know the importance of something like the very SEO
friendly WordPress blog software and I use it every chance
I get. I also know the simple power of just adding a simple
social bookmark button like the one from Addthis.com to all
your online content.

But how good is Web Traffic 2.0 in the first place?

I have been on the front page of Digg and gotten 70,000 useless
visitors to my site in one day. I have spent days analyzing
this traffic in Google Analytics. Most of it is very fleeting
and temporary.

This doesn’t mean getting all those social bookmark listings
are useless, just the opposite, for SEO reasons and especially
in Google, you will need those listings in order to rank high
for your keywords. Mainly because quite frankly, what is more
democratic than a link/vote from actual users of these social
bookmark/media sites?

But most of this media traffic is not targeted. It’s no way
near as good in quality as organic SERPs for your targeted
keywords. It doesn’t even come close to PPC from Adwords or
Yahoo! Marketing. If you’re marketing on the web, you want
quality traffic that will convert into a sale or a prospect.

Web 2.0 traffic can be useful but it usually takes a few more
steps to turn it into quality traffic, either thru SEO, or getting
subscribers onto your lists. It’s an indirect way of doing things
but this traffic is still important because anyone marketing online
today has to realize the whole web is changing with video marketing,
social bookmarking, blogging… the growing importance of sites
like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter… the ever-increasing SEO influence
of social media sites like Digg, Slashdot, Technorati… your web
marketing MUST change with the times or simply be left behind.
You must adapt to the new web or go the way of the DoDo bird.

John Reese’s Traffic Secrets 2.0, while not perfect, will still
firmly place you in the “Know” and give you your own “Master Plan”
to acquiring web traffic as we move forward.

How To Create Your Own Perpetual Traffic Machine

The Internet is such an unknown commodity anything
is possible. One of the most intriguing questions
concerns the idea of a perpetual traffic machine.
Create a website and design a system of automatic
programs (both interior and exterior) that delivers
content and backlinks to a site that updates itself
automatically and keeps growing without any help
from the creator. In the process you build a flow
of traffic that never stops, even if the site is
abandoned or not touched for a couple of years or
never again.

Is such a perpetual traffic system really possible?

Before you conjure up pictures of HAL and creepy
talking computers in distant space… realize that
question may carry more weight than it would seem
at first glance. But is it like its predecessor,
the perpetual motion machine – just more an illusion
than actual fact?

For curiosity’s sake if for nothing else, the idea
of a perpetual traffic machine does require further
investigation. Such a system would have special
interest for millions of webmasters whose main task
is acquiring traffic for their sites, not to mention
the potential for monetary gain a PTM (rhymes with ATM)
would produce.

Some credence was given to the idea recently when
Tinu Abayomi-Paul, a well-known online free traffic
expert, produced with the help of Marlon Sanders an
info-product entitled “The Evergreen Traffic Machine.”

Tinu’s story is very interesting. Tinu had built up
a whole array of sites and optimized them successfully
for countless keywords in all the major search engines.
She had built up a steady flow of traffic, resulting
in thousands of visitors “a day” to her sites. This in
itself is not that extraordinary, but that’s not the
full story.

Because of a personal illness she abandoned or left
alone most of her sites for over a year or more – only
to discover the traffic systems she had put into place
didn’t just dry up, they still kept producing tons of
traffic even though the sites weren’t being updated.

The traffic was still coming. The traffic was still fresh.

Tinu basically built her perpetual traffic system
around three major areas: High Profile Article
Marketing, Exact Keyword Focus and Blogging/RSS
Feeds. Tinu’s system proves you can create a traffic
system for a year or two, but the real question is
will it still produce traffic five years from now?
Fifty years from now? How about a hundred years?

The real question: how long will such a system work
without fresh input of unique content like the viral
articles and blog posts now feeding it? This question
is even more tantalizing when you consider it is now
possible to create fresh content on your sites with
RSS feeds, blog comments and user contributed content.

What’s more intriguing is the fact that all aspects
of a website can be automated, including payment for
all renewals: domain, hosting, autoresponders… as
well as the collection of revenues such as affiliate
commissions and advertising fees.

Are we at the stage where the Internet will be filled
with these automated human-less web sites drawing
traffic/visitors and slowly building and expanding
on their own for eternity? Many cynics would argue
this is already the case with the majority of sites
on the web.

In case you like that idea and want to fully embrace
this brave new automated perpetual Internet, here are
a few tips to create your own eternal traffic machine:

1. Build lists and pre-load your AR system with follow-up
messages to keep visitors coming back to your site. You
can rotate these messages and ask your subscribers to
opt-in to different lists on related subject areas.
Always ask your readers to recommend your content to
others.

2. Use social bookmark software or links so that your
visitors can easily bookmark your content which brings
in both new links and new traffic. Simple programs like
the one offered by Addthis.com will get your visitors
building your backlinks for you, bringing in fresh
visitors who in turn will also bookmark your content.

3. Write viral articles, reports and ebooks that have
your backlinks in the resource boxes. Likewise, viral
software programs can help bring a constant flow of
traffic to your site. If your content is of a high
quality and your themes universal… new sites will
pick up your content and build your backlinks, creating
fresh traffic. The search engines will also index these
new links and your rankings will increase, bringing in
more traffic.

4. Use blogging and RSS feeds to get your content out
there. You can also use these RSS feeds to bring in
new fresh content to your site. Creating new content
will be your main obstacle to creating perpetual traffic…
you can get new content from feeds but will it be unique?
Comments in your blogs could bring in unique content but
if you’re not monitoring them, you must have solid
software in place to fight against spam.

5. Have “Tell a Friend” forms on all your content.
This will bring new traffic to your site, which can
be self-refreshing as new people discover your content.

6. Encourage user generated content such as articles,
comments, posts… you can even have a community
monitoring system where your site’s members monitor
this new content.

7. Form JV alliances with webmasters in your related
field. Do co-registration so that you help build each
other’s lists and traffic.

8. Likewise, if you have products to sell, create an
affiliate program to get your affiliates to build your
traffic for you. Affiliates are an excellent source of
permanent traffic.

9. Automate all aspects of the running and managing
of your website. Set up automatic payments for your
AR system, hosting, domain renewal, PPC payments…
thru PayPal or credit card. Likewise, receive affiliate
commissions thru PayPal or direct deposit. Many
advertising programs like Google Adsense offer
direct deposit.

10. PPC Traffic – While we have mainly looked at free
traffic systems, don’t forget creating a PTM is relatively
easy with Pay Per Click advertising if you know what you’re
doing. Target less competitive keywords to keep your costs
down, tie this traffic into a good squeeze page for feeding
your AR system with leads and have a good landing page that
converts. You can create a system that delivers perpetual
traffic and pays for itself from your affiliate commissions
and advertising fees.

In summary, the argument for the existence of the PTM
mainly relies upon the quality of your content or site.
Is it unique enough to draw in new visitors? Does your
topic have universal appeal that people never tire of?
Does it solve or offer advice on a common human problem?
Will or does it have a viral “word of mouth” element to it?

As we move to a more and more automated world, all the
automated programs and hardware are in place for the
creation of such perpetual machines.

Computers, autoresponders, content management software,
RSS feeds, viral marketing, direct deposit, automatic
payments… and the list goes on. If we haven’t already
created the perpetual traffic machine – we are getting
tangibly close to doing just that.

…
The author is a full-time online marketer who practices
what he preaches. While not exactly pretty, one of the
most popular downloads on his sites has been a Free Perpetual
Desktop Calendar which of course has links back to his site.
Free Desktop Calendar
You can find a review of Tinu’s Traffic Machine here:
Evergreen Traffic Review
Copyright 2008 Titus Hoskins.