SEO Tycoon

**Learning Newbie** · 10-16-2007, 05:35 PM

Some examples of free traffic

50 Craigslist posts a day
Creating or discovering an army of Stumble Friends
Digg and Stumble Exchanges
"Editing" Wikipedia to include your links

Alfred Einstein famously discovered "time = money squared" and the fed confirmed its true. Even if you're unemployed, or don't value your time for some other reason, consider the improvements that could have been made to your site while posting those 50 CL ads or reverting a Wiki article to a version with your URL.

I'm genuinely interested to know how much time needs to be invested to get a decent stream of traffic this way. And for the people who don't get this kind of traffic, this is a harder question, but can you put a ballpark figure on your return (in traffic) on investment when you put your time into appealing to users instead?

**coolkbk585** · 10-16-2007, 07:37 PM

I would say that most of those are a big waste of time. I don't think that the right kind of traffic comes from this kind of thing.

I don't look at Craigslist...
I rarely look at Stumbleupon (unless I'm extremely bored)...
I never click on links that look at all like self-promo links on Wikipedia...

I don't think that many people that are like me would be like that. I guess that in my case that the kind of web sites that use those methods to get traffic are not the sites that I go to.

=/

**vangogh** · 10-16-2007, 09:05 PM

I think they'll all get you traffic. The question is really what is that traffic going to find when it lands on your site and will it return based on your content.

**ForrestCroce** · 10-17-2007, 01:55 AM

I don't get the kinds of traffic you mentioned. Craigslist hasn't been in my referral report for more than a year ... advertising as a portrait photographer there just isn't very effective, even for free. But there's a different type of free traffic you're not talking about: the genuinely organic kind. Instead of making friends with lots of marketers and suggesting each other's stuff for other people with a declared interested in marketing, people will Stumble or Digg or Sphinn or any other service you like your pages if they're unique and captivate people.

For the second part of your question, about taking the content first approach, it's not a five minute job, but it's not like toiling for months in bad conditions, either. Saturday I ducked off into the mountains; a couple hours in the car round trip, a few more hiking, probably two more in Photoshop, and a few more writing the post. I only get about a hundred people a day to my blog on average, but it spikes a bit after a post and then levels off. I can't really say what the payoff from this post has been, but you can't really look at a single post in a blog site in those terms.

My approach has been to shoot photos, describe them, Google Map them, and be involved in photography sites. If anything, there's probably more traffic gain from explaining how optics work in understandable terms on a lens forum, than by writing the post. That's not marketing though, it's connecting with other people who share your interests. It also happens to be how word of mouth works.

**Learning Newbie** · 10-17-2007, 01:43 PM

Well I already know people smart enough to read this forum are smart enough not to depend on spam to get traffic, and smart enough not to spend 8 Days a Week link building on Wikipedia.

But I was hoping folks could help me articulate the better way, like the advantages of building up your site instead of spamming it? I must be reading wrong, 'cause it sounds like Forrest is saying there are none?

**CSS4Life** · 10-17-2007, 01:53 PM

Free traffic costs: time. It depends on how much you charge per hour if you want it in monetary form.

In general, to get traffic, you need good content and that takes time, hence getting so called "free traffic" takes your time.

That's my take on it anyway

**tripy** · 10-17-2007, 01:54 PM

I have to say John, that I don't really understand your question...
Then again, I never much tried to spam anything to promote my work.

But in those days, where many initiatives are made to try to make their roads more difficult, I think that they surely must invest a lot of time int those activities to get not so much back.

I've seen so many post on different forums where peoples complained that their adsense sites bring only 1 or 2 $ a month despite all their work, that I truly hope that many of them simply gave up.

**Learning Newbie** · 10-17-2007, 02:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tripy

I have to say John, that I don't really understand your question...
Then again, I never much tried to spam anything to promote my work.

But in those days, where many initiatives are made to try to make their roads more difficult, I think that they surely must invest a lot of time int those activities to get not so much back.

That's probably it. I joined DP and I've been having fun earning a nasty reputation for telling people the truth, and advocating not to spam. It's half alarming and half funny to watch how people would rather run a mile to spam than walk a meter to do something right. It kind of annoys me.

Whym is right on. Spending all your time promoting your site on Craigslist and MySpace takes loads of time, and always seems to get no results, or not enough, or no good ones. Even if it doesn't cost your ATM card, it wastes too mcuh time.

And then everyone who responded is really bright. Trippy got Adobe to comment on his blog lately! It also takes time to make good content, but I'm hoping somebody can tell us something like "I tried the paths spammers like so much, and they're no good. But since I learned how to do it right, I only spend half as much time at the keyboard." Or at least to get some type of comparison.

How many hours do you think it takes to spam every social bookmark site on earth? Probably a lot - there was a post with someone wanting to spend $400 on a Craigslist auto poster robot. How many hours goes into making good content, the type that spreads itself? I bet its much less but I don't know that or how much.

**vangogh** · 10-17-2007, 04:59 PM

One thing though is that social media marketing is not spam automatically. I think sometimes that point gets missed here. There are actually good ways to use social media to bring traffic and to brand yourself.

Spam happens everywhere. Just because it's popular to spam social media sites now doesn't mean all marketing you do through social media is bad.

The spammers do waste their time if they have nothing useful on their sites. Pretend you engage in all the stumble and digg exchanges and submit your own content and post 1,000,000 craigslist ads all pointing to a blank page.

Obviously that won't do you much good since people see the blank page and leave. Substitute garbage content page for blank page and it's essentially the same result.

On the other hand say you have good content that people find useful, entertaining, etc. Then if you get traffic from Digg ot StumbleUpon that traffic probably goes on to give you a thumbs up and continues to push your content to others who might find it interesting.

If you offer legitimate services there's nothing wrong with placing an ad on CL and pointing it to your services page. If I'm remembering right CL says it's ok to repost once a month. So go ahead and post your ad once a month. But don't post it in every location and don't post different ads every day.

As far as the social media exchanges they don't bother me nearly as much as they seem to bother everyone else. Again if the content is crap then it's going to get buried pretty quick. If the content is good I really don't care all that much who submitted it.

All those friends you'd build on Digg or SU or any of the others is just networking. We do it here too. We get to know each other through honest participation on this forum and make friends and help each other out when we can.

I'll use Forrest as an example. I think Forrest's images are great and I think they should be seen by a lot of people. I also like Forrest and want to see him do well. I've stumbled some of his images and hope that's resulted in some traffic. While I submitted images I liked I probably never would have found them in the first place had I not met Forrest here.

Forrest came here and participated and as a result found some friends who are willing and wanting to help him and his site. That's really how you make social media work.

Build a site people will like
Participate in the community
Let the community sing your praises
If you have to give the community a nudge every so often.

John to answer your last question spam doesn't take much time. That $400 auto poster probably requires about 30 seconds of your time once you set it up. You press a couple of buttons and let the program do all the work in the background. That's why people spam.

Creating good content on the other hand takes a lot of time, especially if you want to create the kind of content that generates its own links and spreads itself.

However the second approach while more time and effort also comes with a far greater and longer lasting return.

**chrishirst** · 10-17-2007, 06:13 PM

Brilliant post Steve.
This

Quote:

Forrest came here and participated and as a result found some friends who are willing and wanting to help him and his site. That's really how you make social media work.

Build a site people will like
Participate in the community
Let the community sing your praises
If you have to give the community a nudge every so often.

certainly bears repeating.

The trouble is with most of the "Stumble/Digg/whatever my site" mentality is these people don't know what "social" really means. In their little world there is only them that count.
Link exchanging is another truly social means of helping each other, and the above is true of the rabid link exchangers. They have no idea of others, only they count, You can tell their whole attitude simply by looking in the RLE forum here.
There are organised groups all from one company, (or the same person) riding roughshod over all the threads and obliterating the few genuine people by posting 20, 30, 40 posts a day, and hijacking other threads with their selfish idea that only they count.

What they fail to understand, is that the very thing they are seeking to manipulate (Google) started life because the founders understood the social patterns of links and the Internet, they even named their idea after it.
After all, you can't give yourself a "BackRub".

**vangogh** · 10-18-2007, 12:35 AM

Thanks Chris and you make some good points yourself. Exchanging a link with someone in and of itself isn't automatically bad. But the way most people make the exchanges it's useless.

It's easy to spot those selfish people and the only people that probably end up linking to them are other selfish people. I can imagine where each one is running tools all the time to make sure the other link is still there so they can decide whether to keep the one on their site.

It's kind of funny when you think about.

I'm happy when someone links to me. I don't exchange links one to one, but I do notice when people link to me and I notice even more if you link to me a few times and send some traffic my way. I always take a look at a site that links to mine and if I find something there I'll eventually link back to it.

Half the blogs on my daily reading list were found because they linked to me and when I visited I found good content. Now I link back.

That's my idea of link exchanges.

Chris the last time I tried to give myself a backrub I ended up with two separated shoulders. No fun at all.

**ForrestCroce** · 10-18-2007, 12:56 AM

Thanks, everyone! I'm not sure I'm the best example, but I'm trying to be.

If you take Steve's example about a blank page with all the diggs in the world, and look at the other angle, the best web page on the net, but never seen ... at least I come to the conclusion that there needs to be some type of balance. Unless you have people-friendly pages to optimize it's a waste of time to scramble for traffic. Once you do that, you do need to let people know it exists.

Now you can go about that in a selfish and pestering manner - spam - or you can understand on the other end of that cable is another person, even a lot of them. Find the things you have in common, be helpful, have more than superficial conversations ... and good things come your way. I found out about Stumble Upon from my server logs.

**vangogh** · 10-18-2007, 01:29 AM

Forrest you were an easy example because I've stumbled a few of your images.

I agree that the best content in the world still needs a push to get it in front of other people. It's possible that someone might discover it one day and start telling everyone. It's also possible that great content never gets discovered.

That's why I don't think marketing is automatically spam and sometimes I think people seem to think it is. To me it's more about whether or not what you're doing is effective. We've seen enough people here asking how to market really bad content and we generally advise making useful content as a first step.

Some people think if you throw enough marketing at crap the crap will turn to gold. Nope. It's still crap, but more people have seen it.

I don't mind if people exchange links or diggs or stumbles or anything else. In the end unless they have something worthwhile back home it won't do them much good. A few will probably figure out how to work the system, but again it doesn't bother me. It really doesn't change what I'm going to do and the way I'm going to go about doing it.

**seolman** · 10-18-2007, 06:34 PM

Marketing Spam? Let's just say some people call spam marketing... that's where the problem lies.

Marketing is the art and skill of bringing qualified leads to your business. Very few actually understand what marketing is. In fact many confuse marketing and sales. Marketing is bringing in the leads - sales is the act of closing.

Example: a TV ad spells out a great sale at the local Toyota dealership. This is marketing. Potential ~~suckers~~ (oops clients) arrive on the day of the sale and the sharks offer them coffee, donuts and a contract with confusing fine print, thus closing the sale.

Quality being in the eye of the beholder, crap gets sold and high quality merchandise gets sold. But let's face it - crap only lasts so long before it is wiped out by a maturing market - flushed away as it were...

Quote:

Originally Posted by vangogh

That's why I don't think marketing is automatically spam and sometimes I think people seem to think it is. To me it's more about whether or not what you're doing is effective. We've seen enough people here asking how to market really bad content and we generally advise making useful content as a first step.

Some people think if you throw enough marketing at crap the crap will turn to gold. Nope. It's still crap, but more people have seen it.

**ForrestCroce** · 10-19-2007, 01:44 AM

The problem with spam is that even if it isn't successful for very long, there's always somebody else to take someone's place. People hate this crap, and it doesn't work except with people who don't have their wits. People with successful businesses do the opposite. I've never heard a sales pitch from Steve, don't even know what his prices are, but if I was going to buy or recommend seo work, he's the first name that would come up.

Thanks for the Stumbles by the way.

I actually don't check which of my pages are listed. I enjoy the visitors, but I'm more concerned with replacing my car and then heading to the Gorge once the snowline moves down a bit. I don't mind being used as an example, I'm just not the 'build it and they will come' smash hit John seems to be looking for. But then patience is a virtue.

**vangogh** · 10-19-2007, 11:45 PM

It sucks, but spam isn't going anywhere, in part because some people do make money by spamming. (John you should use this against me in the capitalist debate in the other thread)

As hard as it may be to believe you get spam in your inbox because a small number of people fall for it.

Social media and particularly StumbleUpon seem to be the current favorite playground and for awhile at least it's just something we'll have to live with.

For most of the spammers it's not going to work. They'll see a traffic spike, but that's it. I think one of the reasons why SU is being spambled is that even with one thumbs up you can get a fair amount of traffic whereas with other social voting sites you need more than a thumb or two before you see any visits.

Forrest every so often I check out images on your site, probably after you've left a comment for me on my blog or maybe when I'm checking out what my friends on StumbleUpon are up to. When I do I usually end up stumbling my favorite image on that visit.

I do think a successful site is more than just build it and they will come, though. Unless you tell people you're there most aren't coming. I think there are legitimate ways to market yourself through social media, though I admit there's a fuzzy line between what's genuine marketing and what's spam sometimes.