Is buying traffic worth it? Part II

Is buying traffic worth it?

Currently my wife and I are getting ready to leave for vacation. We are going to my parents home in the mountains for some rest and relaxation. With that said I am busy writing posts to put up while I am gone so I haven’t had time to make some tweaks to the landing page I am driving traffic to but wanted to provide a follow-up to my post; Is buying traffic worth it?

Everywhere I go on the web I read that video is the way to go. They say it helps conversions because visitors can put a face to the website and it makes them trust it more. The only thing my face could make someone trust to painless death but I am going to give it a shot any way.

It just so happens I bought a nice video camera a while back that I can use to record these videos. The only thing really holding me back is the fact that I have no idea what I am doing in the video editing department. ‘Learn as I go’ is going to be the motto for this little venture. Then again that is the motto for a lot of things I have been doing lately.

Any way, to answer the question; is buying traffic worth it? So far that is a resounding NO! Most of the traffic I am getting from these traffic brokers is garbage. Luckily for me it is cheap enough I don’t really care. The only thing it seems good for right now is boosting my Alexa ranking.

Well, back to writing posts for next week. I wish I was established enough to get some guest bloggers. Maybe next vacation…

UPDATE: This is completely unrelated but check out my review of Market Leverage at Mixed Market Arts.  Thanks Collin!

Is buying traffic worth it?

Is buying targeted traffic worth it?

A week ago yesterday I decided to try out a service that pushes traffic to your website. They had a trial, for $1.95 you could get 1000 un-targeted visitors over a seven day period. Here are my reviews of the two different services. Keep in mind I have only been using the second one for a couple of days so I will be back with updates.

Targeted Visitors [https://www.targetedvisitors.info]

This is the service that offered the trial that I mentioned above. They approved my campaign very quickly but say it can take 1 - 2 days. Since it seemed to be going so well I decided to purchase 5000 targeted visitors a couple of days ago for another site I have been working on.

They took right at 24 hours to approve the campaign. The 5000 visitors would be directed over the course of a 30 day period. The first day I got right at 28 visitors. Now I suck at math but at that rate I wouldn’t even get 1000 visitors let alone 5000. This is important because as I learned with the trial your campaign isn’t based on the traffic being delivered but the number of days. So I received 500 visitors in a week on the trial and it expired. Hopefully my visitors pick up on the targeted campaign.

The Verdict: I would not recommend purchasing traffic from this service.

Revisitors [http://www.revisitors.com]

I really don’t have much bad to say about them…yet. I ordered 5000 targeted visitors. They are delivering 166 a day which is more like it. The other thing I really liked was the fact that they had my campaign up and running within hours of ordering. Their customer service also seems to be a lot better then Targeted Visitors as well. If you want to order hang out on their website a bit and you should get a squeeze offer to order in the next three minutes and you will get 20% off.

There were two things I didn’t like about this service. First, get rid of the frickin’ advertisements! I am a paying customer. I should not have to be annoyed by a pop-up trying to sell me something when I log into the control panel. The ads on this site are simply out-of-control. The second is the fact that when I paid by PayPal it set it up as a monthly subscription. Now, for $23 I would consider keeping it for a few months since it is so easy to change the target category and website you are sending the traffic. With that said I would prefer to have the choice to set it up as a subscription.

The Verdict: If you are looking to experiment with buying traffic I recommend them.

So far the only value I have found in these services is the fact that it will boost my Alexa ranking. Other than that I have not had a single conversion. Hopefully this changes soon.

If you have any recommendations for buying targeted traffic I would love to hear from you. Please either leave a comment or use the contact form.

TrafficSwarm

In my quest to find inexpensive targeted traffic for a few of the sites I am working on I came across TrafficSwarm.

The premise behind TrafficSwarm is quite simple. You can sign up for free and earn credits just for loading the start page and visiting other TrafficSwarm promoted sites featured on this page.  For each credit that you earn your site will be displayed in the TrafficSwarm network.  To promote your site all you have to do is enter some basic information about the site(s) that you want to promote (e.g. Category, URL, Title, Description). This information is used to generate targeted links, which in turn should bring targeted visitors, to your site.

It comes as not surprise that there is also the optio to upgrade to a Pro account.  Doing this will get you a lot more credits which in turn will promoted your site that much more.  The cost for the pro upgrade is $30 a month.

Honestly, if it wasn’t free I probably would not have signed up.  Sure, it can generate traffic to your site but if the people do like I did the traffic will do you no good.  What happens when you click on a featured site on your start page it loads that page in a frame.  It actually has a countdown in the top part of the page and you have to stay on that site for 20 seconds before you can click next to go back to the TrafficSwarm start page to click on another site.

All the sites that I visited were the classic sales page that most affiliate/internet marketers are so fond of.  I can honestly say that I have never paid much attention to these types of sides.  Typically I scroll down to the bottom to check the price and then navigate away from the page.  So if most of the traffic swarm users do what I do the traffic you get is going to be of little value.  The FAQ on the site says your link will be displayed in the TrafficSwarm network.  I am not really sure what constitutes this network but I don’t expect much traffic from it.

With that said the service is free so you won’t be out anything to try it. Setting up an account is very easy and so is accumulating credits.  If you are looking for new ways to generate traffic to your site I recommend  you sign up and try it.