Apparently, you want TRAFFIC. Am I Nuts?
Wow.
So here’s something interesting.
It seems that almost every time I logged in to see the answers my readers are sending me to the “How can I help you” question…it’s like Déjà vu all over again.
Because almost every time I check, the most recent answer is the same: GET TRAFFIC
It’s not that everyone had the same answer, but it was the NUMBER ONE answer out of the 25 possible answers. Hundreds of people — 20% actually — picked Traffic as their number one concern.
Ken S. I think summarized his feelings well. He said…
“Building a list and generating traffic are the two most difficult tasks in generating an income online income. I need more information on how to best generate traffic in the shortest time possible. I don’t need more success stories from someone who built their business two or three years ago.”
Well said, Ken.
But it gets more interesting than that…There were also choices for SEO, Listbuilding, Adwords, Article Marketing, Affiliate marketing, and Web2.0 strategies — which are all different ways of getting even MORE Traffic.
So if you add up all of those as well, 41% of you and people like you are saying …
“GET ME SOME TRAFFIC!”
But Gene P. said this…
“I’m so mixed up I do not know where to begin.”
And Susan (no last initial) wrote me apparently frustrated and said…
“I have purchased so many schemes and in most of them they leave out the main ingredient that one needs to get started they tell you so much and then want more money for you to proceed. I am now at rock bottom financially, so any snippet’s of info to get me going would help.”
I’ve got hundreds of comments like these — from people like you (and from you!) who just need some help.
And so that got me thinking….
WHAT CAN I DO FOR YOU?
And so I had an idea, and I’d like your opinion on it. I may be opening up a can of worms here…and there’s probably a reason that no other marketing teachers have done this for their readers before — especially for free — (No one that I know, in any case).
I mean I may really be stepping into something here that might mess my shoes, but….
I’ve got a feeling that there are lots of people reading this message — people like you — who are in the same business as other people who are reading this message. And it’d be a VERY GOOD THING to get the two of your together.
But that’s not going to happen any time soon, unless someone does something about it.
So…CAN I HELP YOU get in touch with other people in your market who might want to send you traffic, and who you might also send some traffic to?
Is there some way I can post all your names and websites and email addresses so that you can find each other, get in touch with each other, and get something going?
I’m guessing that somehow there is.
My first idea was to just post all your contact info on my blog, but that might be a big problem. If you run a blog of your own, you probably get tons of blog spam posted to your site. I’ve got filters that automatically delete the spam, and hundreds of people every week trying to post their porn or “health” or scam links on my site.
Yech.
So I have to find a way to help you, while not leaving this open to the whole world.
I really only want to help my own readers.
SO LET’S TALK ABOUT THIS.
First, do you think that this is an idea that could help you? If your website and site description and contact info were posted here or somewhere close, would that help you?
Would you go looking for other marketers serving your same demographic and send THEM traffic? Even a little?
How do we keep out the riff raff?
How do we make matches?
And how can we do it so that it doesn’t take a mountain of energy and a staff of 12 to keep the thing working and helping you?
DO NOT, please, post your site info here and expect links or traffic. For now, I only want to have a discussion, and I hope you’ll participate.
My goal here is to help you get traffic. And I hope your goal is to make that easy — but also to help someone else in your field get traffic, too.
This will only work if we all give more than we receive.
Anyway, Am I nuts? Does this make sense? Would it help you?
Let me know. Please comment here.
I’ll follow up with this in the next day or two.
To Your Success (I mean it!),
–Mark Widawer
P.S. Something that I want you to think about is that traffic is NOT like toys in a playroom, where there is a finite amount of toys that you’ve got to fight some other toddler for.
No, traffic is more like Love. The more you give, the more there is to receive.
By the way, I’m not promising to do this — at least not yet. I’ve got to figure out a way to make it work first.
So give me your comments, and let’s figure out an easy solution to your traffic problem together.
–M
"HI MARK. Thanks for all the HARD WORK you put into help me with my Internet Marketing. I'd like to buy you a cup of Coffee!"
I guess I am stuck on the term Riff Raff. If by that you mean competition or someone not selling what you feel is a viable product it seems it blows away your concept of putting people with people that want what they offer. Isn’t that why you build a list?
Then there is the idea of timing. What you want today you may fulfill today and then you don’t want it. Then tomorrow rolls around and you need something that was riff raff or Spam yesterday. Also what is Spam when it comes to marketing your product? Only sending out unsolicited offers. Opening up a list to any and all takers invites someone not wanting an air conditioner to be contacted by an air conditioner marketer. Products like that are only on your want list every 3 to 15 years depending on the type of air conditioner. Researching your market and targeting those people is mostly done by shot gunning (Spaming) Like ads in the newspaper or flyers in the mail. May be you could send out a questionnaire and ask your list what types of information they would like to be sent. Then today it wouldn’t be Spam but what about tomorrow? Hmmmmm
I get alot emails from individuals and companies on a daily basis on how they can help with generating traffic but, and this a big BUT, they all request for money first. So when i saw your last email to the group it really caught my attention. I have an event search engine company, http://www.tickethab.com, and I am looking for a cost effective way to get relevant traffic to my site as i am currently not getting a good ROI from my paid search engine campaign efforts. The only company that generating revenue from my current efforts is Google not tickethab.com. So Mark if you are willing to teach us on how built some self-reinforcing links, alot of us are willing to listen, learn and put in the work required.
You have my attention now Mark so lets use this opportunity to build a long and sustained relationship.
Greetings Mark and everyone;
I am enjoying the way this “project” is being discussed in the open like this. I appreciate you Mark for trying to give your subscribers better content and solve their problems.
It seems clear to me that one of the best ways to get great traffic is to find someone who already has a list of targeted customers in a nice related to mine and get them to refer them to my site (a glowing endorsement would also help!).
My question is how to find those folks and how to approach them in a way that would interest them in referring that traffic.
IMHO, A huge directory or forum of lots of folks with all different niches and subniches may be useful if a few of them are related to mine. But if none of them has much traffic, that wouldn’t be much help.
I guess it would depend on how much participation you could get and if any of the participants were not totally new and without any of their own traffic.
Regards,
Neil
I’m not very familiar with podpress…but I DO know WordPress and your blog looks a lot like it. Did you know you can have a membership site on a wordpress blog? That way people have to log-in and that’s how you can be sure it’s for YOUR community. You could do a sub-domain called members.trafficandconversion.com and host it there. Could be a great new draw for you Mark since you seem to be the only one willing to step P to it :-)
I think it’s a wonderful idea…and I also believe you can password protect areas on forums so those are 2 ways to consider. You don’t need to link the forum on your frontpage…just have people join a special list so they get that info on where it is located.
Hi Mark,
I’ve been reading the various comments while checking out most of the sites. I feel kind of out of place because it appears that no one comes close to fragrances. If the gentlemen will visit my site and buy a designer cologne and the ladies buy a designer perfume, I would have a fair amount of traffic. -:) Traffic is one thing and a sale is another. I have a copy of your Landing Pages and Perry Marshall’s Adwords Guide. Maybe one day I will (land) in the right place. I use Google Adwords, but not as much as I would like. My advertising cost is more than my profits.
I really don’t like forums.
I am writing this comment because you, Mark, always give me food for thought through your newletters.
I am paying attention and will never give up.
Thanks for help you are not even aware of giving.
Delores Darden
Yes, it seems like a membership site on which people have the opportunity to connect might work.
You’d have to have CATEGORIES. People could sign up and identify their websites under categories.
Health/Fitness
Oh, gosh I’m tired I can’t think besides which you know the categories for niche markets better than I do.
I just know it would drive me crazy to have to try and sort through two hundred different sites to find someone compatible with my niche.
So if I logged on, for instance, I would be looking for people with websites in the niche of spirituality to eventually do a launch for my product. In the meantime, I’d check it out and do a little e-mail to my tiny list on what that site had to offer.
So instead of exchanging links, we’d be exchanging a promise to send the other person’s URL to our list. The same marketing rules apply: the site should have something free or content rich to check out to justify telling people to check it out and/or to get a decent opt-in rate.
It makes me think of Clickbank where people go to pick and choose the ads they want to put on their sites. We’d be picking traffic builder buddies – baby affiliates in a way.
A site owner would have to prepare a brief description and say what the site was, what was offered, if the site is content rich, has a squeeze page, is just a sales page – whatever. A URL that can be clicked upon is a necessity to quickly assess the site.
~~~~~~~
Regarding what Connie wrote about losing excitement and needing people. It would be good to make “friends” on a forum.
But I will tell you, Jeff Walker set us up with a master mind group of 6 people and mine has, basically, dissolved. People are so busy; they don’t even have time to ask questions. A forum is great if you’re up and running and tweaking. But if you don’t have a product for sale yet and the money’s just going out for Aweber, etc. the name of the game is “Frantic”. So I like the idea, but I don’t know how much I’d participate right now.
I don’t know – it could make for incestuous lists. ;)
In the words of the Bard
Traffic’s what I want what I really really want – send me traffic! Thats what I want
I am watching this space Mark
Hi Mark
Your concept is good, however I’m thinking that rather than attempting to just exchange traffic for a particular niche, it might be more useful to create a space where people can share (traffic)ideas that have atually worked for them, and will work for a variety of niche markets. This would be a case of real people sharing what works in the real life of online entrapeneurs, not another guru selling another “shovel to the miners”. This would also open the opportunity for people to connect one-on-one to share ideas, strategies, critiques, etc without the fear of giving away their edge to the competition. I agree with you that the pie is very large, and I have indeed developed one relationship like this with a guy in Arizona (I’m in Florida), and it brings the missing human element back to the impersonal inet world.
I have sorted through alot of bogus info in the last four months to narrow down the actual resourse to run a successful online business, and Mark, you are one of four that I have found to give way more value than could be expected.
Thanks,
John Horner
Mark – I have an idea that I think could help many folks here. I have sent you an email w/ subject line “Getting Traffic”.
Let me know.
Yep. I think it has been said before, above, that a short bio of one’s business and url’s together with list size, preferably segmented into topics, would do the trick.
Mark must know of a simple script that would handle this on auto. A dating site script would be ideal. We should then be able to cruise the bio’s and select our partner or partners. Dating sites automatically protect email addresses and registration would eliminate (Most) spammers.
Since the only people to learn about this service would be on Marks list, the likelihood of abuse is virtually eliminated. To further enhance things, Mark’s JV partners may wish to donate parts of their lists too. The two potential ListMates (There is a suggested title!) would have to agree to list sharing in order to maintain list integrity and the list owner would have to do the broadcast because he or she has probably stated that they will never sell, rent or share their list with anyone else.
Mark’s ListBuildingCooperativeTEAM (Together Everyone Achieves More) could gather pace. It could even get as popular as the Warrior Forum.
Warmly,
Malcolm Patten