Are The Claims Really True? How Is It Possible?

[esr]

I am tired of wondering and being frustrated so I'm askin'.....

When I see a claim of 1000, 2000, or even 10,000 hits a day for a website, I can't EVER imagine that it's true. And if it is true, it frustrates the hell out of me!!

I am a blog flipper and the MAIN reason I started doing it is because it doesn't require me to generate any traffic. Why? Cause I SUCK at it.

At my very best, MAYBE I've gotten 40-50 hits in one day to one of my websites. And I'm talking years of trying with MANY websites. Actually, one time, over a year ago, I got about 800 hits from a blog post that I submitted to Reddit, but that was ONE day and I wasn't even selling anything from that blog. It was just for fun.

I've tried it all, too. Article marketing, Adwords, backlinks, forum posting, etc. etc. NOTHING works!

So, HOW are all these people getting thousands of hits a day to their websites? Or are the grossly exaggerating to get me and others to buy their products?

I build three or four blogs a week and sell them. It kills me to know that if I kept even half of these blogs and was able to drive any normal amount of traffic to them, I could either sell them for A LOT more, or I could keep them and make that passive income myself.

So, is thousands of hits per day possible, and if so, how? Or is it all a crock?

[Maverick_]

They also have HUGE lists right?

Check out Traffic Geyser. It could solve your problem.

Cheers
- Adam

[MJ Sterling]

It's true in some cases.

What they don't tell you is the amount of time and hard work it takes. It's not going to happen overnight, over even after a few months.

One of my niche sites receives around 3 million uniques a month (yeah freaky stuff) and it's taken me about 6 years to get there.

[esr]

One of my sites IS ranked high in Google, number four, which I consider pretty high. Still, I get about ten hits a day from Google!

TEN!!!

[MJ Sterling]

It comes down to keyword research, it's easy to get first page results for a low traffic/low compeition search term.

[Dennis Gaskill]

Before my main site was hacked it was getting around 80,000 to 100,000 unique visitors a month and served up to 750,000 page views each month. The hack job knocked it out of the search engines for a while, but it's back, and it's back up to around 55,000 visitors a month and growing again.

How did I get it there? Mainly by creating quality content that people wanted to link to, through good search engine rankings by using quality SEO techniques, and through list building.

Plus, the site was started in 1997, so it's been around. Sticking with it is a big help. I have other sites as well, but none as successful as my main site, and that's because my main site gets the most attention from me.

I can't speak about the sites you are questioning, but yes, it's very possible to get the kind of traffic you're talking about.

[Sojourn]

ESR - oh, the claims are probably true.

However, don't get distracted by them. Visitors isn't really what you want, is it? You want INCOME. If you have thousands of visitors who are just looky-loos (I never use that phrase - seemed appropriate, though), you'd be frustrated by not making money.

I got started building Squidoo lenses. At first, my lenses drew a handful of visitors a month. I was killing myself to get more traffic. Eventually, I built a couple of lenses that get 2000-4000 visitors a week. You know how? I gave them information for free. They don't spend anything. So, I got the traffic but in exchange for what? A pretty little lens that people enjoy - which is fine with me, too, but wasn't my goal.

Only when I zeroed in on getting traffic to buy did I feel more successful. Now, the lenses that make the most money only get a few hundred visitors a week, if that, but they're buying visitors.

There's a management philosophy that says if you "inspect what you expect", you'll make change. In essence, it means focus on what you really want to have happen, monitor it, measure it, strip the whole down to its parts and hack away at it until it moves the direction you want.

For me, I try to use that to focus on the things that make money when creating a site. First I want traffic, then I want traffic that buys - even if that means my traffic drops - then I want a greater share of the traffic to take action, and then I want them to spend more when they do take action. I'm no expert, I'm learning all the time (WF, WF, WF) but I have learned a lesson in not focusing on the traffic numbers. At the end of the day, I do this for money and that's what I want to monitor.

It would be kind of a neat experiment to take one of your sites and see what you could do with it to generate some passive income. Willing to try again?

[Haddor]

Yes it is possible, but we are talking a true authoritative site, like Wikipedia. When I hear that claim "thousands of hits each day" I always check the website address with Alexia and I use the page rank tool from Firefox. You don't have to have thousands of hits a day to make money. Website.. are the keywords revelent?, How stiff is the competition for Google ranking. This has nothing to do with monetizing it. I can get thousands of hits a day, but did I do it all with PPC?

[cashcow]

You can get that much traffic, but I don't think you're going to do it with these little "long tail keyword" sites that seem to be in vogue nowadays.

I have some sites that get 20,000 a month, but these are in broader markets. Site with hundreds of pages and that I have done lots of promotion for (mostly article marketing).

Believe it or not, my keyword research for these sites was less than stellar.

They didn't start off with that much traffic though and none of them reached that point until they were a year old.

I could probably be getting a lot more traffic to these sites but I am lazy and tend to stop promotion after a couple of months and then only add an article or two every couple of months and maybe write an article to promote once or twice a year.

Then, for some strange reason, I go off and build more sites instead of just focusing on the ones I have that do well. The strange thing is that they continue to plug away with the same traffic day in and day out despite my neglect.

I have a lot of "niche" sites too but those don't get nearly as much traffic. I'd like to say the keyword research is the key, but in my earlier sites I actually didn't really do good keyword research and these are the sites that do well now so go figure. Maybe forgetting about keyword research is the key!

[badboy_Nick]

Yeah, it's mostly true, but you never get the WHOLE story on it. How much money have they invested, how long has it taken them to geth there and how much help did they get.

... and then most people tend to sugercoat things anyway.

[Sean Ski]

It's all about how good your are at marketing and how useful your site is... 10,000?? How many hits per day do you think google gets? They started just like any other website start up... plus a lot of marketing blogs get millions of visitors per month

[Dennis Gaskill]

Originally Posted by Haddor

Yes it is possible, but we are talking a true authoritative site, like Wikipedia. When I hear that claim "thousands of hits each day" I always check the website address with Alexia and I use the page rank tool from Firefox. You don't have to have thousands of hits a day to make money. Website.. are the keywords revelent?, How stiff is the competition for Google ranking. This has nothing to do with monetizing it. I can get thousands of hits a day, but did I do it all with PPC?

Did you mean Alexa? Alexa stats are worthless. Look at your own site's stats on Alexa and compare them to your actual server logs and see for yourself. A lot of people have done their own tests and came to the same conclusion. Here's one write up of many...

mediacollege.com/internet/utilities/alexa/

[Deepak Media]

Originally Posted by esr

I build three or four blogs a week...

There is your problem. I have a blog that is almost 2 yrs old and I have only 3 blogs out of which 1 is successful and other 2 will be closed anytime soon. I recently hit 6k visitors per day but on the avg I get 3-4k visitors per day. It has 400+ published articles and it has crossed 10,000 comments already. And 5000 loyal RSS subscribers too.

I don't mean to brag, but I am being modest... I don't consider this as success. I know people who get 50k visitors per day.

It does not matter to me whether you believe it or not, but its a fact.

[LilBlackDress]

Originally Posted by ccmusicman

Yes, the key is money.

AJ Silvers sold a product that showed you how to build a million a year business on 60 visitors a day.

That is REALLY easy. Really really easy.

For me, that's:

1 article a day at ezinearticles.
1 dollar a day for paid ad campaigns (Stumbleupon, Google Image Ad's)
1 New Joint Venture a month
2 or 3 good rankings for a decent traffic keyword.

Really, what you want is HIGH CONVERSIONS, and then just a trickle of traffic will do exactly what you need.

Rob

Any tips on running these ad campaigns..
"1 dollar a day for paid ad campaigns (Stumbleupon, Google Image Ad's)"

I can tell you it is true as my site does get that kind of traffic ... With that said though traffic does not = sales, so keep that in mind. Also while I do not do any kind of paid traffic or anything, some do and that is where some get those big traffic numbers.

You should concern yourself more with sales than traffic though...

James

[Emily Meeks]

It must be said... those who do manage to get thousands of hits to their sites are human just like you. There's nothing intangible or special about them that's somehow beyond your reach, unless you truly believe it to be.

Self-defeating comments like "I suck" and "nothing works" won't get you very far.

I'm not going to feed you anything like, "Just believe and they will come," but let's face it - everyone who's truly successful has fallen on their face at least a dozen times. It doesn't speak anything badly of them as a person.

Instead of saying nothing works, you should be saying, "I don't know, but let's find out."

You found something that doesn't work. Figure out exactly what it is, and improve on it. Keep tweaking and learning from your mistakes, and you WILL get there.

[esr]

Originally Posted by moneysoapbox

It must be said... those who do manage to get thousands of hits to their sites are human just like you. There's nothing intangible or special about them that's somehow beyond your reach, unless you truly believe it to be.

Self-defeating comments like "I suck" and "nothing works" won't get you very far.

I'm not going to feed you anything like, "Just believe and they will come," but let's face it - everyone who's truly successful has fallen on their face at least a dozen times. It doesn't speak anything badly of them as a person.

Instead of saying nothing works, you should be saying, "I don't know, but let's find out."

You found something that doesn't work. Figure out exactly what it is, and improve on it. Keep tweaking and learning from your mistakes, and you WILL get there.

You're absolutely right. In fact, from all of the replies I realize that I have been focusing on the wrong thing. The numbers don't matter as much as the quality of the traffic, right? If I did get 10,000 visitors a day, if no one buys anything, then who cares?


So, it appears as though I DO need a little more traffic, but mostly I need to figure out what's wrong with my site. Why don't the few that visit optin to my list? Why aren't they buying?


Thank you all VERY much for the re-focusing and especially you, soapbox, for the attitude adjustment! LOL

[JennSpencerIM]

Thousands a day are definitely possible when you build enough backlinks from a variety of good sources; I'm getting it on a number of mini-niche sites. I also can get a few thousand a day with paid advertising too. Then again I only have about 4 main sites and not 4 blogs a week like you do. So I spend a lot of time each week working with one of those 4 sites. I wouldn't say you suck at it but maybe you're just not spending enough time working on traffic to your sites.

[Kezz]

One of my best sites gets 95,000 uniques per month and 130,000 total visits, which equates to around 3100 sets of eyes on the site every day.

This is with no paid promotion whatsoever, just a little tweeting and social bookmarking.

It's completely and totally possible, but I felt the same way as you about traffic potential until I broke the ice and saw real results for myself.

The key to traffic is actually the same as the key to revenue, and it's just to give people something they care about.

All the keyword research in the world is really only to help you understand one thing: what people want.

You can figure this out just as effectively, and usually more effectively, by interacting with and observing the people you are trying to reach.

If you see that there is a piece of information that people really want and aren't getting, you can probably make a total mess of all your SEO and still get tonnes of traffic if you write an article that gives people the info they are looking for.

You should look at all the technical aspects of getting traffic as secondary. The primary consideration should always be the traffic itself, i.e. the people.

Understand what they are thinking, what they are interested in, what they want that they aren't getting and that is your key to traffic.

If you draw people to your site through understanding what they want, then you are perfectly positioned to also generate revenue.

If you get to know a group of people well enough to understand what content they want, there's a very good chance you'll understand what products they want as well.

When you bring them to your site in a mindset of being genuinely interested in your content, they will be much more receptive to to your offers as well.

Bottom line, get to know the people. Hope that helps!

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Haddor

I always check the website address with Alexia and I use the page rank tool from Firefox.

Alexa means next to nothing. I have a sites that get 800-1200 uniques a day but are only in the 600,000 to 800,000 range on Alexa while I have other sites that are in the 100,000-300,000 range that get around 100-300 uniques a day. Why? Because the lower score ones are in niches where people don't install the Alexa toolbar.

Pagerank is also not an indicator of traffic levels but of linking authority. I have a few PR4 sites that don't get even 50 visitors a day and PR1 sites that get that 800-1200 a day. The high PR ones are in highly competitive niches, such as mortgages, while the others are in lower competition niches.

[Jason Fladlien]

Well Alexa can have SOME meaning... it's not perfect but can be a decent representation. I recently helped with a launch where our alexa rating broke the top 2000 for the biggest part of our launch...

And at the time we were getting around 2000+ OPT-INS a day. Some days as much as 4000 optins.

Not sure what the total traffic was (optins matter to me more) but I'm pretty sure we did over 125,000+ UNIQUE visitors in a 7 day time period...

So yep, it's possible to get these numbers.

Now you want to know the "secret"? Well we had over 40 joint venture partners, and most had some decent sized lists... To get those joint venture partners naturally required years plus in most cases of building the relationships first... so there's the "big secret" - dedication, persistence and building up goodwill in advance... and then tying it to a really good offer... at least that's the secret to joint venture traffic...

[W2L]

Not doing KR before building backlinks is like going to war with a banana in your hand.... even if you are able to somehow shoot the banana .. it will do you no good.

Big numbers are definitively possible but you need to do your research before you start, you shouldn't go for keywords such as "credit card" cause I don't think any of us could win a battle against banks/VISA/MC or any of the big financial institutions.....and ranking #1 for "the most amazing superduperkalifrastilisticqueezpy-alidcious credit card" is not good either. Didn't mean that as an offense, just saying it like it is...

[mike116]

I think the more I try and learn about keyword research the more I'm confused. Anyone have a good resource that I can turn to that not only explains keyword research as a whole but helps me understand how to use all of the data I find in Google Adwords Keyword Tool, SERP's, etc., etc.? I see all that stuff and I'm not sure if I clearly understand how to use all that information

[Deepak Media]

Originally Posted by TheRichJerksNet

I can tell you it is true as my site does get that kind of traffic ... With that said though traffic does not = sales, so keep that in mind. Also while I do not do any kind of paid traffic or anything, some do and that is where some get those big traffic numbers.

You should concern yourself more with sales than traffic though...

James

I agree with that. My blog that I mentioned above only makes money via adsense and there is nothing to sell to that market. I cannot create an info product for them and there are no products to promote as an affiliate. So there is nothing to be amazed with the numbers.

You can make $1000+ per month from a single website with 50 visitors per day if that traffic is targeted and the site optimized.

[AndrewCavanagh]

Originally Posted by esr

I am tired of wondering and being frustrated so I'm askin'.....

When I see a claim of 1000, 2000, or even 10,000 hits a day for a website, I can't EVER imagine that it's true. And if it is true, it frustrates the hell out of me!!

Yes I've worked with clients who have traffic like that.

The claims are true.

But you have to understand that:


# Highly targeted traffic is king.

Getting 10 visitors how come in searching for a lucrative long tail keyword phrase can be many times more valuable than getting 100 visitors who haven't defined with their search that they're serious about buying anything.

So sheer volume of traffic is nowhere near as important as the quality of traffic.


# The search engines won't be fooled long term.

If you want high quality traffic in the long term you're going to need high quality, highly targeted content...preferably each page of a site optimized for just one long tail keyword phrase.

And you're going to need quality related sites linking back to those pages.

That is the foundation of good SEO in a nutshell.

The more of that kind of SEO you do the more likely you are to get good search engine rankings that stay high in the long term.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

[Thomas W]

It's all True. Here is one of my better sites


I'm really love Google.

[johnpetrov]

You have to concentrate on making more MONEY and generating more sales, and NOT on the traffic itself. If you change your way of thinking, and you manage to generate more sales, eventually you'll get more traffic. It's simple as that

[ShaneRQR]

As many have stated above, it's absolutely possible, if not particularly easy to accomplish.

What I want to add is that traffic can always be bought. I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but every time I see traffic stats as part of the "proof" in a sales-letter, I'm a bit skeptical.
If you're just looking at the traffic and nothing else, that traffic could have come from anywhere.

If you want some spectacular traffic stats for your new product, just buy some cheap traffic via CPV, for example. The traffic can be completely untargeted and unrelated, but that won't show on the fancy graphs, will it?

And why not spend a few hundred or even a few thousand bucks on getting that traffic when you're about to launch a big product and it could help sales?

In other words, as stated above: Traffic doesn't matter. Opt-ins, conversions, click-throughs and sales do.

[jagsenghera]

Most traffic claims are true but getting 10k and above is a full time job. I believe traffic do matter, you can optimise your salespage/optin page to its highest conversion rate ever but if there is hardly any traffic, you wont be making much aint it?