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.