This is a reblog of the AdCardz.com blog which on this date appears to be offline.
I had a couple of frustrated people write back the other day that the ‘50 proven traffic strategies‘ were nothing new and they’d seen them all before.
And that’s probably true…
Those people might have seen these strategies before but I’d be willing to bet they haven’t mastered them yet!
The proof being that they read my ‘traffic‘ email and clicked my ‘traffic‘ links…
That tells me these people obviously aren’t getting the traffic they want, so maybe the best thing they could do right now is to get back to basics and work on the fundamentals?
The thing is, generating traffic isn’t hard… if you’re prepared to do some work.
But too many people are looking for quick and easy results… which leaves them wide open to scammers and rip-off merchants.
So today I’d like to tell you about 3 types of Traffic Offers to watch out for…
I won’t go all out and label these as scams because there could be some honest operators offering something ‘similar’ that’s totally legit… but you’ll soon see, my experience tells me most of these offers are misleading at best, and a major waste of money across the board.
You see, we run a few websites where our Members need to generate some traffic to get things moving, so we’ve actually tested a heap of these over the last couple of years and the results were consistently disappointing…to say the least.
1. Pre-Tested, Proven, Double Opt-in Leads
There are a few of these services who’ll assure you that their leads have been qualified in various ways and actually WANT to hear from YOU. They all have a long list of generic testimonials from people saying they’re selling their stuff hand-over-fist to these exact same leads…
You pay a reasonable price for a set number of these leads… usually delivered to you on a daily basis… and it would be a total no-brainer if the leads were genuine and converted as promised.
Unfortunately, my experience has been that these hot business-opportunity leads have no idea that they’ve been added to this kind of list. Near as I could tell the qualification questions might have been posed as squeeze page headlines…so technically, by opt-in in the ‘lead’ was saying ‘yes’ to those.
I tried a few of these and the only real constant was with each mailing I got more spam complaints than clicks to my offers. Just before one of my subscriptions renewed I went so far as to email the list and ask them about how they got on it and whether these ‘opportunity seekers’ actually wanted to hear from me?
From nearly 3000 people I got just three responses… none of them had any idea they were on this kind of list, and none of them were interested in anything I might send.
Plus I got another dozen spam complaints…
2. Send Millions of Emails Every Day!
Again there are a few operators who trade on this promise… some super cheap, some free … and while it clearly sounds too good to be true, most people will be a little bit tempted when you do the math…
Even if it is a trash list, surely ‘some’ are going to read your emails and with those sorts of numbers, surely a few people will have to bite on your offer…
So even the smallest of conversion percentages will add up to a lot of clicks and maybe even a few signups or sales…
Well, I can tell you it doesn’t happen!
I tested a couple of these, free and paid, and the results were simply non-existent. With one I sent over 21 million emails… three batches of 7 million each over a few weeks… and not a single click!
And that was the paid one!
I tried a free offer as well… it was a bonus that came with something else so I figured I had nothing to lose…
Except for my time… 30 minutes and 50 popups later I’d supposedly sent over 15 million emails.
This time my tracking links got a handful of clicks, but most if not all of those were probably me trying to navigate the endless pop-ups and multiple confirmation screens… so again it was a total wash.
I repeated that one three times just to be sure, and the same result each time… which shouldn’t be any surprise, after all, we all know: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is!
3. Guaranteed Signups, Guaranteed Sales, Guaranteed Results.
The ones to watch here are solo emails. (There are other services that will deliver guaranteed website visitors and I used SOME of those a lot!)
The Solo senders who make this sort of claim, however, all fall seriously short. The offer will usually look good on the sales page… but when you read the fine print, not so much.
The sleight of hand is in the guarantee… which will promise to send your message out again for free if you don’t get a certain number of clicks, opt-ins, or even sales.
The thing is if one solo is worthless, can you really expect a second one to do any better?
Most will eventually deliver the promised clicks… but NO ONE can guarantee what those people will do once they get there.
But that’s not the point…
The operators really don’t care.
Basically, they have already priced the cost of the re-send into their product.
Though most people probably don’t even bother to ask for it… it’s a wash so they just walk away… so the operator is covered either way.
If you do ask for the re-send as per the ‘guarantee’, it’s easy enough to click a button and queue your Solo Ad to go out again…
The guarantee is honored, but there’s still no real benefit for you…
If you don’t ask, even better… the operator makes the same profit with half the work.
Again the sales pages are covered with screenshots of stats as ‘proof’ and countless testimonials… but after trying 4-5 different services… all paid… I have NEVER achieved results anything like the proof graphics or testimonials.
And the second mailings… as per the guarantee… was usually worse, because anyone who might have been interested had already seen it and clicked the first time!
In one case, I didn’t even get the second email…
The 10-pack of solos was an OTO for another safelist mailer website. Each one was guaranteed to deliver 4000 clicks… but they barely delivered 10% of that.
When I asked for the promised re-send the guy simply ignored my emails until I went away!
I noticed he’s recently relaunched the site and now only promises 1000 clicks per solo, so at least he’s being a little more realistic on what he can actually deliver…
Though I still doubt he goes anywhere near that number!
Bottom line, be suspicious of ANY guaranteed results…
When the remedy is simply to resend an email, the guarantee is worthless.
So are there any good fast traffic options?
You bet… though generally, it’s a matter of getting what you pay for.
If you go cheap, expect that some operators will probably try to rip you off…
If you look for ridiculously high returns, expect that most won’t deliver…
No matter how much you pay for the service!
So what do you do if you need quality traffic and don’t want to get ripped off?
Short answer… you need to do the work.
You need to do some work and set up YOUR OWN traffic systems…
To build YOUR OWN list of quality leads…
So you have access to people who are interested in what you have to offer.
The good news is, it doesn’t have to be hard or complicated or expensive…
IF you follow a simple proven system…
I’m not talking about the standard approach of building a massive list of random people and flogging their stuff until they unsubscribe either.
But this has turned into a long one, so I’ll share a few ideas on the right/easy way to do it next time!
Regards
Brad