like a violin

#100 (Page 3)

You know I always said the same until recently. We got so many pages we could probably make tons on but which we are not since we don't have the time to monitize it properly.

So what do we do, waste it or sell it? We sell it! Since a week now kind of as a test http://users.ero-advertising.com/buy...d=52633&days=7

So Steve, you know how we used to do with you --> http://users.ero-advertising.com/buy...d=52633&days=7

Its up to you to convert the traffic though :2 cents:

Converting traffic takes time, skills etc. It makes perfect sense for some people (especially those with larger networks) to sell some of their traffic.

Let's say your main interracial sponsor's conversion ratio's dropped below a certain point and you are busy working on a new project and just don't have the time right now to research and evaluate other interracial sponsors. In that case it would make perfect sense to redirect your interracial banner clicks to a traffic broker until you have the time to research other interracial sponsors.

Let's say your main lesbian sponsors converts great on US traffic but doesn't convert German traffic. In that case it makes sense to send your German traffic to another lesbian sponsor, one that is able to convert German traffic. And it might also make sense to send your mobile lesbian traffic to yet another sponsor.... It might even make sense to send your lesbian traffic coming from one traffic source to a revshare link and lesbian traffic coming from another traffic source to a PPS link.

Getting the most of our your traffic takes a lot of time and effort and some times it makes more sense to sell (some of) your traffic for a lower (but guaranteed) price than investing more time and earning more as an affiliate.

If (($income-from-affiliate-programs - $opportunity-cost-of-earning-income-from-affiliate-programs - $income-from-selling-traffic) < $a-certain-level){ print "it makes sense to sell productive traffic"; }

I disagree. How much money people are able to make from their traffic depends on the amount of work (time, effort, employees) they are willing to invest in converting that traffic. Most people who sell traffic, sell it for less than they would be able to make from it if they invested the right amount of work into it, but they accept a lower, but guaranteed, amount in exchange for having to invest less work into it.


Exactly, different people are good at different things. Some people are good at writing descriptions. Some people are good at design work. Some people are good at seeing the bigger picture and analyzing traffic and understanding how niche A traffic might also be interested in niche B but not in niche C. Some people are good at managing other people. Some people are good at creating nice A landing pages but suck at making niche D landing pages. Some people are good at seo. some ....


The main problem here is the fact that a lot of webmasters don't understand what they are doing. The common misconception is that traffic = sales. If the traffic doesn't convert it must be bad traffic and if someone is selling his traffic it must be because his traffic is bad. The reality is that making money requires hard work. Generating traffic requires work. Coming up with new ways to generate traffic requires work. Getting the most money out of your traffic requires more work than getting less money out of your traffic. Increasing your profit margins from 20% to 70% requires a certain amount of work. Increasing your profit margins from 70% to 95% requires even more work. So it might be more interesting to operate a business at a 70% profit margin instead of at a 95% profit margin, if you can invest the amount of work you would other wise invest to increase your profit margin from 70% to 95% in another business.

btw: same thing applies to people buying traffic.

Investing a certain amount of money buying traffic makes perfect sense because the fact that you don't need to invest a certain amount of work generating traffic yourself, means you can invest more work in converting traffic.

It all depends on what your goals and your weak and strong points are.

There's a no quick and easy way to get rich.

I know trafficshnop traffic is good quality traffic!

i would stand behind my traffic to that level if you would stand behind your product to that level

if you changed your affiliate program to guarrentee that pay out as much money as any best converting sponsor for all traffic sources.

in other words if your site converts 1:1000 and some other teen sponsor converts 1:100 for a traffic source, you would add 9 extra signups in fees to the affiliate check and take the lose, becaue your product offering was substandard.

once you got your house in order so that those loses were managable,
once you have proven that your product is not going to negatively undermine the traffic source, i would be willing to stand as a gateway between traffic source.(i will take the loss)

i know who to get lots of traffic from torrents, tubes, etc.
your sites are just not designed to convert well with that traffic.

Stupid thread. Say you want more affiliates and cut the bullshit.

Its called "backlinks" and its related to this thing called SEO, dipshit

I don't think there is such a thing as good or bad traffic, nor good or bad products, it's more about finding a match between a traffic and a product.

Steve you can let affiliates take the risk, let them give a try to your products risking the few days or hours of traffic they send to test. Or you can take the risk on your side, prepaying for traffic to find a few sellers on who you're going to convert more than the average because their traffic likes your products. most long time sellers will do efforts to meet you in the middle if things go bad, but therre is no such thing as a garanty because nobody can guess which traffic is going to work on which product. I had my products do great on one site and poor on the other and I could hardly tell why.

Don't ask for guarrentee but ask to test. Stay away from sellers asking 4 figures to start and refuse to do a few hundreds bucks test. Spend a few hundreds on various sources where you get clear info about where the traffic comes from, select the ones you'd surf as a fan of your products, be ready to not break even 7 times out of ten (think as it's your research budget) and go big with the few ones were you found that good match.

As for the whales, if you feel their traffic really fit, I found that a prepaid five or six figures check on higher percentage revshare makes their heads turn.

Once again, you're either wait hopping they'll take the risk or risk your money to try to make money now. Last but not least, when an affiliate is risking his traffic on your products, he give or take hopes to make his money back with 50-60% of revshare, where on your side you can afford to go up to almost 90% given your productions costs are paid for and your bandwidth is not killing you.

my 2cc, good luck with your new girl :)

obviously you missed the whole point.

you actually proved my point, to my comment " people sell traffic because they can typically sell it for more than *THEY* can make from it. "

sure "if" they had the time, "if" they had the skill, "if" they had the employees... lots of "if"s. Time is also money, so if they spend a lot of time to make a little more with their traffic they still NET less. And some of them don't have the time, staff, skill etc. therefore they can sell it for more money then they could make from using it themselves. Whether it was by their choice because they chose to spend the time buying/generating/selling traffic because they were better at that or because they didn't have the skill to convert it. It does take skill to convert traffic. What ever the reason is it doesn't matter, especially as an AFFILIATE, they can usually sell it for more then they can make from it. If for nothing else, a program OWNER has much better profit margins then an AFFILIATE. Can't expect traffic brokers to go start their own sites so they can have the same profit margins as owners so they can make more from their traffic. Everyone can't do everything and be good at everything.

well, id like my consultants to be successful above all (im not implying you are not)

when i started on gfy you were running teamclickcash and i guess making 1mil./yr, which was very impressive and i was like, how can i do that?

but now that sales are down throughout the industry, with nearly every business taking steps to stop it, change, adapt, etc, with typically fruitless results

what on your recent resume can show us that you can do any better than business owners like steve have been trying, other than you think you know how to, that l hear in all the threads you post in, what have you done lately?

a picture of something that shows you are successful would suffice, i figure if you can figure out how to live good on your own, you have figured out how to monetize websites

car, house, something that would show your advice should stand out above the average gfy yapper, would shut me up right away

Good analogy :thumbsup

Although you forgot to say that there had previously been articles in the same paper saying how everything in the appliance store was available for free from another source.

show "us"? who are you? are you looking for consulting services?

Sorry I am not jumping through your hoops just to please you for shit and giggles. If someone serious has questions they can contact me directly.

I've offered to provide consulting for serious people here with a money back guarantee. That's all you need to know. If you don't like what I provide you don't pay for it. No one is going to find a better deal than that.

I stand behind my optimization and targetting quality of my traffic that I've only sent traffic on an affiliate basis because I'm willing to take the risk of unprofitable campaigns. I know most traffic sellers don't operate this way, but with great risk comes great reward and I do spend an enormous amount of time/resources to optimize my traffic to death. Good luck finding sellers though that feel the same way though :)
WG

What point? People buy traffic either for feeder traffic, or to make sales with it. People that sell traffic are most often selling it for far more than its worth. It has zero to do with seo. Not sure why you think buying/renewing 100s of domains, setting them up on multiple servers, their own class c's, setting up sites on each of them, building backlinks to all of them daily and then offering backlinks to others when they can just "do it themselves" is somehow an analogy that makes sense. It's a very expensive and time intensive endeavor. A person could use your moronic reasoning and ask why anyone pays for anything at all.

Read all my posts in this thread. In my reply to your post, I used sarcasm to point out the fact that if your logic (being that people sell traffic because it is worth less than what they are asking for it or that they can't convert it) is applied to other products (like hardlinks), it would make those products appear worthless or overpriced as well.

"People buy traffic either for feeder traffic, or to make sales with it." This is incorrect. There are a lot more ways to USE bought traffic. Personally, I've been buying traffic every month for almost 5 years now and all I can say is: I'm not in the business of throwing away money.

"Those who cannot attack the thought, instead attack the thinker." -- Paul Valery

That being said, if you carefully reread my other posts in this thread, you'll see that I tried to explain one of the basic principles of economics: devision of labour. Once you understand that, you'll understand why some people sell designs, why some people run paysites, why some people sell content, why some people sell hosting, why some people sell traffic,...

Let's rephrase things: Given the amount of work (time/effort/money/skill) the traffic seller is able (or willing) to invest to turn the traffic in to money, selling his traffic might be the most profitable option for him. This however tells us nothing about the (potential) value of the traffic to the buyer. It tells us nothing about whether or not it's possible to convert the traffic.

So I'd say we agree for the most part.

I would buy $10,000 worth of traffic TODAY, right NOW, if someone - ANYone - could show me how I could turn that ten grand into a reasonable profit (say, 10-15%) in a reasonable time frame (say, 1 - 2 weeks). Because anything else is wasting my time, literally, with bullshit sales-talk.

I run a network of 20+ paysites. You can see them all in my links in my sig. So traffic sellers/those defending buying traffic and how much they make from it:

Show me how YOU would turn ten grand into $11,500 in 2 weeks. Go ahead. Show me WHAT kind of traffic I should buy to send to my paysites. Go ahead! My best-converting sites convert at 1:250, the worst maybe 1:3000. There, go ahead.

Your response will be this, I gaurantee it: Well-l-l-l-l-l....

So throw your bullshit around to the poor, dumb "little" affiliate here on GFY. The ONLY reason to buy traffic is to feed your tube site, get some back-links going on for SEO purposes, or to "make sales". Now maybe you can make these mythic "sales" from cams, dating or chat, or some combo of the three, I dunno. That's not my game. My game is XXX paysites, and there's a fuckload lot of us around. So if we can't make $ selling memberships with our traffic then selling it may be a good idea but BUYING said traffic? Ha-fucking-ha.

Carry on with this nonsensical ridiculousness.

I think i understood what you were saying, post was a little confusing, maybe it's me and I am not reading it right.

I think anyone who has a picture and video only membership site would be hard pressed to buy traffic and turn a profit. A traffic broker isn't going to reduce the price of his traffic because pic and vid site owners profit and convert less than say cams and dating. The traffic is going to be priced on what people are willing to pay and come back and keep paying. Just like adwords or anything else, the market will decide the prices. If the traffic broker is asking too much and no one makes money from it he will be stuck with it. I am sure traffic brokers would rather have customers that renew every month, not have hit and miss customers.

I am sure in some cases that there are pic and video sites that buy traffic and make money. I think it would be a little easier for micro niches or if you happen to find someone selling traffic that doesn't know how good of quality they have (get it at a real good price). I can't imagine any cookie cuter, general porn pic and vid sites making money off of buying traffic.

Like you said though, you have other ways you can use it. Buy cheap feeder traffic for your trades, or to build up a tube site, etc... then try to filter the traffic and convert it into sales.

I offered someone a break even guarantee of sorts once. Ended up costing me about $800. I wouldn't do it again heh.

Heh - it's either me or the Blue Dream, or a combo, that's confusing. LOL

I was just saying that, IMHO, the only way to profit from buying traffic is in cams, dating or chat, I would think. Because I've never heard or met or talked to a paysite owner who said "Oh yeah, I spent $xxx on traffic, sent it to my paysite andf voila! I made 5 sales."

I'm just saying that, if it were that easy - something most everyone thinks at first - to just throw money at traffic, like it's a mathematical formula, then any and everyone would be doing that. It ain't and they don't. So i defy a traffic broker to show me, online or offline, HOW, exactly, I'm going to do the above. Cause I could be wrong, I certainly don't know everything, or much maybe. Just based on my own experience and that of others I've talked to who have similar businesses as mine, buying traffic and sending it directly to a paysite is worthless.

God I hope that was clear. The Blue Dream is kickin' in....

<//////////////>~~~

(Listening to Halloween With The Bee Gees, so that should tell you sumthin' sumthin'. Awesome....Diana Ross with Michael Jackson make an appearance....heh)

Not necessarily. With cross sales and recurring memberships a program owner can make $75-150+ per sale. Not that far of a stretch.

I don't want to speak for him, but talk to Ravo. He's legit.

http://www.buyfpctraffic.com/

Not everyone can convert traffic. Even good traffic. Actually making the sale is probably the most refined skill of all in this business. If you can convert your own traffic, it makes sense that you would retain it for yourself, but many can't. Getting the traffic is much less of a skill than actually selling to the traffic, which I think of as much more of a talent. Thus you have a large market of webmasters willing to take the guaranteed buck and just sell.

Blaming the traffic broker is the easy route out, when much of the time it is either the product that doesn't interest buyers, or the the sales pitch sucks. In porn's case it is the product. Free porn has devalued everybody's product. Why do you think porn clicks are worthless in comparison to mainstream clicks? Because nobody wants to buy your porn. Why in the fuck would a traffic broker guarantee ROI on a product that we all know is basically worth dirt to the consumer?

I was partnered on what for me was a pretty large media buy around $5000 last winter with a sponsor here on GFY. This is the offer I was extended. Two months running. The first month it was promised would come through next month, when it didn't the month after that they promised things would carry over the next month. Fuck off. Their members area traffic was way overvalued, and they never carried through anywhere near the level of traffic the promised would be delivered. I was a bit of a rookie when it came to buys and got screwed with some trickery outlined in the I/O slip. Turned into a giant fucking joke. If they had delivered the traffic promised, and lived up to their "guarantee" my partner and I would have done very well on the campaign and continued dealing with them. Instead the "guarantee" turned out to be a fat crock of shit intended to get us to sign the orders. We basically got fucked, and luckily squeaked out at a minimal loss. Take note, if you're doing a buy, make sure absolutely everything discussed is plotted out on the I/O papers and signed. Either way, that's about all the guarantee you're going to get around here... :1orglaugh

We're running a campaign with trafficshop right now, directly to our site.
So far $1835 spent over 3 days so there are more joins to come due to our style of site, these are the stats.....

Raw: 743,830
Unique: 626,927
Free Joins: 4516
Join Hits: 277
Submits: 345
Joins: 60
Earned: $2,275.10
Ratio: 1:10448

This is without cross sale revenue, rebills to come and with 20% ccbill fees already deducted.

Quality traffic is as good as it's ever been, more surfers have cards than ever....just the products need to be current.

Do you guys do a whitelabel at Rudester? Mobile whitelabel would be spectacular.

Sorry not currently.
We have good things coming tho, a new version of the site, a fully mobile version and eventually paysites as apps within the site.
We're also doing our first pps next month too :)

Put mobile whitelabel on the to do list. I need a mobile dating whitelabel right now. NEEEEEEEED ONE.

Note taken! ...
DatingGold are the people to see about whitelabels :thumbsup

Pretty sure they don't do a mobile dating whitelabel yet, they got the mobile down, no whitelabel though. If I have to settle for a regular old mobile dating sponsor soon, I will probably promote DG, but as soon as someone has a decent whitelabel up for offers they get my mobile traffic.

Thanks NetHorse. I've been monitoring this thread, but have been reluctant to comment as there is so much misinformation, bad assumptions and outright ignorance of the traffic market here.

I have been buying, NOT brokering (there's a huge difference) traffic for the past 14 years, and I'm guessing that I'm one of the bigger buyers of traffic out there; I usually buy over $5000 per day. Yes, some I resell to those that know how to make a profit off the traffic, and some I keep for my own sites and for affiliate sales. I've got a pretty good idea of what works.

I welcome any traffic or media buyer to get a hold of me, and discuss how we can help each other out. Because that's really the ultimate goal isn't it?; finding a traffic solution that works for both of us long-term.

Steve,

When talking about advertising services, the answer is that the buyer assumes the risk for 'quality'. The seller's job is to sell their inventory to the highest bidder. The market is competitive and that means your competitors are willing to assume risk. What the ROI turns out to be is not of huge import to the seller if there is another buyer waiting right behind the last one. Howard makes a good point in that it is still not in the seller's interest to screw anyone and brokers can help soften those situations, and they do happen.

You may be well suited in working with an out-of-house media buyer for a couple of reasons. First, in-house media buyers do not work unless you're a market leader. They leave as soon as they find enough profitable buys and they take their relationships with them. Second, it allows you to split some risk. Your media buyer should be responsible for laying out the cash on the spots, creative optimization and landing page optimization. You should provide the payment pages and assume the risk on the CPA terms.

A good buyer should want to work with you. They shouldn't be too uncomfortable telling you some of the bigger, obvious sources. Good buyers also have good relationships with their sellers so any circumvention usually gets laughed at. Rather than looking for sellers with the terms you outlined in this thread, lay out some terms for buyers. Cut their risk by offering high intro CPA's, guarantee them up to a certain amount, take them out, show them that you have their back. There will always be guys out there making money.

Best of luck :thumbsup

If you promote our sites, I will do the same and we can both do well.

If you're pushing mainstream traffic let me know I might be able to help you there...

What a great surprise to see you posted these stats Andrew, I hadn't even seen them yet. I expect we'll be doing some long term business. :thumbsup

We do everything in our power to make our clients $$ on our traffic, but success isnt only dependant on the traffic source, you have to take into consideration creatives, offers and many different variables.

Anyone in need of traffic hit me up and I'll work a great deal.

Yes Chris you looked after us well, we'll do lots of biz together! :thumbsup

In this example Charles buys the media on a CPC/CPM basis and sells the customers to Steve on a CPA basis. Steve pays a cost for the customers Charles acquires for him.

Charles, as part of the deal terms, would you allow Steve to write in something that stated: If these customers do not retain for X amount of months, you must send me Y more customers so that I can have a return on my acquisition costs? :error

I imagine that you would argue that you already assume risk in the deal when you bought your media on the CPC/CPM terms from your seller. To add value to the deal, you targeted placement, optimized creatives, keywords and landers. As a seller, your goal is to minimize the outstanding risk by selling customers at the highest price so you negotiate the highest CPA with your buyer.

There are still plenty of buyers taking on risk in adult and making money from it. I would say almost all of them still read GFY.

:thumbsup:thumbsup

im buying Japanese traffic. (Sorry no brokers please).

Thank you for the test Roald. Very much appriciated.

Unfortunately many go through brokers now who just play a middle man.

I buy a lot of traffic, a lot. Last month *I* (me, myself, alone) spent over a half a million on mobile prepays and sure, I've been fucked on a few in the past. First I can tell you that you won't get people to agree to a certain volume. I have one client that does that now and they aren't coming close to the agreement and I'm interested to see what happens and how they make good on it.

Secondly, whatever the price the person tells you - it's inflated, by a lot.

Third, request Google Analytics to verify traffic sources, volumes, etc. Most give this up without any issues.

Sorry Steve, you won't find anyone to make this deal unfortunately.

However, when you do take the gamble it can really work out to your favor sometimes. We aim for a $40 CPA (mobile) before xsales and I have some prepays that are doing it at $12-17. Then others who have cost me $200 CPA.

Me too, let me know who you go with. =)

not mainstream traffic. all my mobile traffic is adult.

Hell no, but then again that's why I only do this on a PPS basis. Revshare might make more in the long term but I want to mitagate my risks a little, I can't assume it will be retained for X months and keep buying traffic on a CPC basis for months before breaking even ;)

+1 ................:thumbsup

best of luck :)

Exactly, telling Google that you will only buy their CPC traffic IF they guarantee the customers will break even after 3 months doesn't exactly fly. They sold it out the door.

Better yet, try calling your rep at Google to let him know that if the customers do not retain for your buyer, you'll be expecting more customers so that your CPCs even out and everyone can get paid :action-sm