Is Tumblr Still Worth It?
 

While I know there's still money to be made there, it used to be one of the best uses of my time, however now things have changed and I'm finding other techniques more rewarding. :2 cents:

What about you?

I agree.

I used to get much more out of them than I currently do so the efforts are proving less and less worth my time.

It's definitely going down. Still worth it, don't know for how long it will be tho.

Do you think it's because there are more webmasters competing or is it now that they don't rank so well in Google, or something else/combination?

I was down to less than 5 minutes per day with them, but I'll switch to something else now :2 cents:

Another social media platform?

If you want to make money monetizing directly through Tumblr no it's not worth it. You'll get banned before you can earn anything worth the time.

The traffic isn't there anymore either, I barely get traffic from tags anymore and the blogs don't seem to rank as high as they used to in Google

I'm using it less now than I did. I still post but with barely any effort.

I'll need to think do a bit of research on that :2 cents:

I just checked recent traffic from there, was even lower than I ever imagined :2 cents:

That was what I was down to, then they banned me today, figured it's not worth starting up again :2 cents:

Why? I mean, why they banned you.

I didn't check, but I assume for linking to sites which make money from affiliate marketing :2 cents:

Traffic from Tumblr has declined a bit, but I use it more as a branding tool for my paysite than a traffic source. My main Tumblr has 2300+ mostly non-spam followers and customers regularly sign up saying they found my stuff there.

It would be nice if adult Tumblrs still got some Google love, but those times are over.

How do you brand your main site with it?

I have had blogs deleted simply because I had the name of my site in the sidebar and no other link whatsoever (at least I think that's why).

Yahoo owns it, now, don't they??

And everything Yahoo touches, seems to turn to SUCK.

No I meant is one of the other techniques you found rewarding, a different social media site?

Actually I don't seem to make many of my sales from social media these days, seems to be more on odd techniques which will probably stop working at some point just like Tumblr did :2 cents:

Yep ... it's like squeezing water from a rock these days. Meaning getting new traffic generating ideas.

Yeah it would be easy to go out of business if one didn't keep quickly evolving :2 cents:

I guess that daily/ hourly updade becomes hard to do because its mannualy. I dont have my thousands visitors anymore.
I thought that was just me, but they dont like to make easy for us to earn some money.
Still have tumblr sites and they generate few cents with popups and about 90 visitors to my sites.

Yes they can detect bots (I sometimes lurk in blackhat forums) and so you must do it manually but can only do 250 posts per day.

I was doing 1 manual per day, so probably just the affiliate marketing in my case :2 cents:

Yeah likely ... everyone hates an affiliate ...

Some traffic sources I rocks with

http://i61.tinypic.com/142vm7k.png

How do you get traffic from FB, Pinterest and Google plus. None of them allow adult content?

***And why no Tumblr there?

The distribution in your bar graph looks like my own, except for youtube, instagram and digg (haven't put time into these). Facebook traffic has gone down lately due to facebook burying Pages which don't buy advertising.

Porn sites can get social traffic through creativity and discrete rule-breaking. For instance, specify a non-nude thumbnail in the og:image meta tag of your video pages for sharing to google+ and facebook. Likewise, share non-nude photos on pinterest. Write accurate but non-vulgar titles and descriptions.

Still, these sites will eventually erase one or all of your accounts. Even if you don't share explicit content, they don't like linking to hardcore porn sites. Their policy can be very inconsistent, and accounts with 1000s of friends/followers may disappear suddenly after existing without problems for years (in my experience).

Wish I was more successful in the SERPs and didn't have to fuck around with this stuff. But for now, social is an important traffic source.

Always interested to hear others' thoughts on this topic.

I'm buying posts on tumblr blogs if any of you want to make some easy cash :) send me an email with your tumblr sites : http://tny.im/JU

I use Tumblr in different ways.

I send Tumblr traffic to blogs. The blogs are set up for affiliate sales. I haven't had any Tumblrs get banned yet, but I did have to make them conform to the new rules after the Yahoo takeover.

I use them as backlink sources to my blogs. Google's every changing algo likes social media backlinks, even tho the Tumblrs themselves no longer get mucho love from Google.

Is ANYTHING still worth it?

Like bothering to take that first breath when you awake in the morning to another shitty day of abject nothingness?

Or bothering to write a note, to tape to the door, that reads - 'Please dont come in - I'm sorry, but just call the police. They can cut me down - I really DONT want you to see me like this'....

Like I say. Nothings worth ANYTHING anymore :(

Hope is a what gets out of bed in the morning
When it's the day of prom and u haven’t been asked.

Hope pushed the caterpillar through the Cocoon
and what drives the salmon up stream
Your breasts maybe small and ur glasses maybe thick
But hope doesn’t hold up a mirror

Hope is a Horizon we head for leaving nothing behind us but fear,
And though we may never reach our goals
its hope that is going to save us from who we once were

I still get a lot of traffic from Tumblr, but that doesn't really bring any sales.

it seems that's all Tumblr is good for nowadays. It's growing fast, it allows porn, but it does not allow for affiliate networking or ads to porn. Yahoo only allows porn if it's a free site, and no monetization. Oh well, at least it's still good for the backlinks.

That's what I was afraid of hearing.

Even if you use non-nude pics and non vulgar descriptions some employee on a power trip or who's a teacher's pet may just hit the delete button because your blog/presence is ASSOCIATED with porn somehow, and all your hours of work are gone.

How long have you been using Tumblr? - To not have had anything banned yet is pretty good.

Also, what were the new rules you are referring to?

When Yahoo took over, you had to delete any direct affiliate links or links to "porn" sites from Tumblrs.

it's worth it for the back links, but you won't see much traffic out of it

i did good money with this, but now i just forgot that i have a blog there.

What's the scale on that graph?.. :upsidedow

So essentially, you can't link out to your own sites, even if they're *free* sites?

exactly like blogger, i mean who the fuck is crazy to make a blog about porn, to put all his material, his fucking hard work, write unique content and so on just to be asked at the end - don t monetize it - just work for us for free, otherwise we will fuck you, what crazy shit is that? those fucking idiots

There are ways to monetize even without outbound links but the whole uncertainty thing is the killer for doing anything other than mass blackhat type stuff. Who wants to spend hours, days or months on a project only to have it all deleted at the whim of the Yahoo staff?

They just don't want us, we are wasting their bandwidth. Make free blogs with stolen content without any kind of monetization or be banned...

Agreed. I would be happy if they laid out some hard ground rules for affiliates. Tell us not to have any outbound links (meaning branding only) etc... but like you said one's work could disappear with a trigger happy employee.

Pretty much. Their motto is, "We encourage our users to make blogs by stealing content to our benefit. If anyone else posts their own (not stolen) content for our benefit but they ALSO benefit then they will be banned."

hmm, am I the only one to think that they really slacked off with the banning thing after yahoo took over?
The only one of mine to be banned since then was, bizarrely enough, the only one updated by hand!

Do you use a bot to update the others?

a couple of different bots, yeah.

I just have one lovingly curated blog updated by hand and approaching 3k followers, it's been active for over a year with no issues (knock on wood). Once the staff did write to tell me not to upload porn to their own video hosting - they deleted the vid and just said to embed it elsewhere, but no other action.

I've got links in most of the posts too, but try to make the entries actually vaguely interesting - it's a vintage porn blog so I sometimes give a little context and historical info about the piece. Makes me think they're more worried about how blatantly spammy it is rather than just the links themselves. Or maybe I've just dodged the banhammer somehow. I'd be bummed if they axed it at this point.