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Question: best ways to bring in traffic for $500?

by xaron
28 replies
I want to inject a few bucks into promoting my site and even though $500 is not a lot I don't want to waste it on making the wrong moves. I'm kind of newish to IM and I'm aware mistakes happen but are there some solid methods I could use?

Kudo's and thanks for anyone that wants to give their 2 cents. The more detailed the better if you can as I'm still learning.
#$500 #bring #question #traffic #ways
  • Profile picture of the author John Durham
    Depends on your business model. What do you have going on?
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  • Profile picture of the author Hubb.co
    I would consider media buys if I were you. Find some very targeted sites with high traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author Alexa Smith
    Banned
    Originally Posted by xaron View Post

    best ways to bring in traffic for $500?
    Originally Posted by xaron View Post

    thanks for anyone that wants to give their 2 cents.
    You'll need 25,000 people, at that rate, for $500. I'm just saying.

    John is totally correct, above: it depends entirely on your business model. Really, people will offer you much more helpful and more relevant answers if you can say a little bit more about what you're doing?
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    • Profile picture of the author xaron
      Fair comment. I'd be more than happy to give a summary of what I'm working on. The thing is though how do you explain the workings of your site without someone just running off and stealing your idea? I'm not saying what I'm doing is anything special but it's something I've wondered about in general.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Durham
    In your sharing here...just give examples without saying your brand names or keywords... pretend you are marketing a dog product or something but give the basic strategy/model/Idea. Without that there is no way someone can advise you on how to market it.

    I could say "sure Ill take your 500 bucks"... but in all honesty we are more interested in just giving some solid advice than taking on a new project. Maybe we could save you that five hundred.
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  • Profile picture of the author talfighel
    I would take that $500 and spend it on Pay Per click or even other high traffic sites in your niche that do accept paid advertising.

    Tal
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  • Profile picture of the author cashcow
    I don't think you have to give away your keywords or even your niche but it would be more helpful if you let us know what your goal is.

    For example, are you selling an ebook? going for affilaite sales? adsense? trying to build a list? trying to brand yourself or your product?

    That way people can give you better advise as to how to spend your money to reach your particular goal.

    Lee
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    • Profile picture of the author MagicAce
      If I would have $500 to spend on traffic I would:

      Create a site promoting a clickbank product.

      Pay someone to write 50-100 articles in that niche. ( Depending on how much you are paying him/her per article)

      Transform every article in a video using Windows Movie Maker or PowerPoint and Camtasia.

      Post 2 articles everyday on 20-30 article directories and include a link to your site in the resource box.

      Make 20 Videos from every video you made by adding a single new image to each new video.

      Post 40 videos everyday to a lot of video sites using TubeMogul.com. Don't forget that the link to your site must be the first part of the description. Use different keywords related to your product for every video.

      Receive traffic every day for months.
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      • Profile picture of the author Matthew Shane Roe
        Originally Posted by MagicAce View Post

        If I would have $500 to spend on traffic I would:

        Create a site promoting a clickbank product.

        Pay someone to write 50-100 articles in that niche. ( Depending on how much you are paying him/her per article)

        Transform every article in a video using Windows Movie Maker or PowerPoint and Camtasia.

        Post 2 articles everyday on 20-30 article directories and include a link to your site in the resource box.

        Make 20 Videos from every video you made by adding a single new image to each new video.

        Post 40 videos everyday to a lot of video sites using TubeMogul.com. Don't forget that the link to your site must be the first part of the description. Use different keywords related to your product for every video.

        Receive traffic every day for months.
        Another source of traffic could be through podcasts.

        Read your articles out loud and put it up on the podcast directories. Then you are covering three of the major sources of traffic generation. All from those few articles you had written.
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  • Profile picture of the author Big Al
    You could consider a paid mailing from someone with a big list in your niche (just a thought I'm going to try). But you'll need to test and track it to see how it pans out and if it's worth repeating in the future.
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  • Profile picture of the author MarieReyes
    Hi Xaron, you can try ViralURL, you can send ads to three thousand random members every 3 days and you get other features as well like free list builder, cloaking, and ad exchanges via banners and viralbar ads.
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    • Profile picture of the author xaron
      Wow, thank you so much guys for all your replies. I was about to bump this thread (thinking it had no new replies) and just got back to it now.

      Originally Posted by John Durham View Post

      In your sharing here...just give examples without saying your brand names or keywords... pretend you are marketing a dog product or something but give the basic strategy/model/Idea. Without that there is no way someone can advise you on how to market it.

      I could say "sure Ill take your 500 bucks"... but in all honesty we are more interested in just giving some solid advice than taking on a new project. Maybe we could save you that five hundred.
      Originally Posted by cashcow View Post

      I don't think you have to give away your keywords or even your niche but it would be more helpful if you let us know what your goal is.

      For example, are you selling an ebook? going for affilaite sales? adsense? trying to build a list? trying to brand yourself or your product?

      That way people can give you better advise as to how to spend your money to reach your particular goal.

      Lee
      John and Lee, thank you for your honesty and input. I'll do my best to answer your questions and provide a little more information. It has elements of what Wikipedia and Twitter does with gaming features as well. It has nothing to do with IM, gambling or adult related material. It's a melting pot of idea's, so that's why I can't use one site as an example and say "it's like that".

      Lee, to answer your questions, I'm not offering any ebooks or products, so I would be relying on cpa, cpc or other ways to bring in revenue. No lists, free membership (not information I would sell). It's a brand that I would like to build up (not me).

      As for advertising, I'm not sure which way to go with that. I'm not sure whether I should put all my eggs in one basket and blow it all on a cpc campaign or find other ways to promote the site. It looks like you'd need a few grand just to have any impact using Adwords or Facebook Ads anyway. I'd rather pay people to spread the word than pay for ads because I think people tend to tune out ads (at least I do).

      I hope that helped. Further thoughts and input would be appreciated.
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      • Profile picture of the author xaron
        Originally Posted by talfighel View Post

        I would take that $500 and spend it on Pay Per click or even other high traffic sites in your niche that do accept paid advertising.

        Tal
        My concern there is that from what I've been told $500 wouldn't really have any impact. If you guys think otherwise please let me know your thoughts.

        Originally Posted by Big Al View Post

        You could consider a paid mailing from someone with a big list in your niche (just a thought I'm going to try). But you'll need to test and track it to see how it pans out and if it's worth repeating in the future.
        Big Al, I never thought of that. Thanks for the suggestion! I'm not sure how you would go about finding trustworthy people who in turn trust you and your site / reputation that are willing to do that though. Do you have any pointers you could share?

        Originally Posted by MagicAce View Post

        If I would have $500 to spend on traffic I would:

        Create a site promoting a clickbank product. Snip.
        MagicAce, that was a very detailed breakdown. Thanks for that. I already have a site but the rest of what you suggested definately gave me food for thought.

        Originally Posted by MarieReyes View Post

        Hi Xaron, you can try ViralURL, you can send ads to three thousand random members every 3 days and you get other features as well like free list builder, cloaking, and ad exchanges via banners and viralbar ads.
        MarieReyes, many thanks for the tip there. I'll be sure to check it out. My only concern would be that the ads would be sent out to random members and wouldn't be targetted traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author cashcow
    OK, so it sounds like you want to get the word out about your site and "brand" yourself.

    IMHO the best things to do would be to get a bunch of articles written, get some press releases out, get some videos distributed and make sure you have a facebook fan page and twitter account.

    So, if you don't want to do PPC, then I guess you could just hire people to help with the above tasks.

    Hope that helps!

    Lee
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  • Profile picture of the author anions
    If you don't know what you're doing, definitely don't waste it on paid traffic (esp PPC).

    You'll be out of cash before you know it.

    I'd suggest:

    1. Don't put all your resources into one website/campaign. What if it turns out to be a dud? What was that quote about eggs and baskets again?

    2. Get someone to write unique articles and submit them to ezinearticles.com

    Best source of free traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Durham
    Given your new thoughts, I would take the 500 and use it to pay writers to develop my sites content and make it a more powerful natural SE traffic puller.
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  • Profile picture of the author Scott Voss
    It all depends on what your goals are.

    If you are looking at short term results, you can definitely get them with Adwords. If set up correctly, it can be a perpetual money machine. $1 in equals $1.25 back, etc, etc. Then you can scale up the advertising. However, this is not an easy task to do especially if you are new at advertising there.

    Organic SEO will get you longer term results and the entry point can be relatively cheap, but depending on your tactics and strategies it could take some time to get consistent traffic.

    I am with John Durham on hiring writers to develop site content to make your site more robust and attractive to the search engines. Then I would convert this content to articles and submit to a few directories and convert to PDF and submit to a few sites like docstoc, having all of the content link back to your site.

    There is way more you could do, but those last two steps can be done completely free off of the work you pay the writers to do.

    Or, you can just give me the $500 and I will visit your site lots and lots of times a day. :p

    Good Luck,
    -Scott Voss
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  • Profile picture of the author cbwebtech
    My best bet for you is Adwords cos you need to be involve in what ever you do.
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  • Profile picture of the author mclauchlan
    I recently paid for an add on Facebook to trial it out. It cost me less than $100 and proved to work head & shoulders above anything else, bringing targeted traffic to the site.

    Mat be worth a try.

    John
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    • Profile picture of the author xaron
      I always thought you needed a lot more than $100 to roadtest an ad campaign on Facebook (I compared it to adwords in that sense). Did you have extensive marketing experience before doing this? I always liked the way you can break down your target audience on Facebook although the fact that users and remove the ads puts me off a bit.
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  • Profile picture of the author Coby
    two options I would recommend and would do myself if I was in the same position.

    If you want to build a list (best option b/c this is an ASSET) then I think the quickest way to get the most targeted traffic is by purchasing a solo ad. For $500 you should be able to easily secure 5 to 10 solo ads and these can easily bring in 100 to 200 (or more) subscribers per ad. so, if you got 100 subscribers per ad and were able to do ten, you could essentially have over a 1000 ppl in your list that you can market to over and over again. (also, I've noticed solo ads lead to very responsive subscribers b/c these are ppl that read an email and acted on it to get on your list).

    You can find lots of ppl selling solo ads in the 'joint venture' section. I have personally used solo ads exclusively from WF and have always been satisfied.

    If you are not wanting to build a list then I would go with what someone mentioned above and pay to have someone write and submit articles for you (www.4submission.com will write and submit to over 300 directories for 15 bux an article, if you can write your own they will submit it for only 6 bux). You could also use this same idea for video marketing.

    Hope this helps.
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    • Profile picture of the author xaron
      Originally Posted by Coby View Post

      two options I would recommend and would do myself if I was in the same position.

      If you want to build a list (best option b/c this is an ASSET) then I think the quickest way to get the most targeted traffic is by purchasing a solo ad. For $500 you should be able to easily secure 5 to 10 solo ads and these can easily bring in 100 to 200 (or more) subscribers per ad. so, if you got 100 subscribers per ad and were able to do ten, you could essentially have over a 1000 ppl in your list that you can market to over and over again. (also, I've noticed solo ads lead to very responsive subscribers b/c these are ppl the read an email and acted on it to get on your list).

      You can find lots of ppl selling solo ads in the 'joint venture' section. I have personally used solo ads exclusively from WF and have always been satisfied.
      I'm not familiar with solo ads. Is this something that exists outside WF as well? It sounds quite interesting but I would love a little more information if possible.
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      • Profile picture of the author Coby
        Originally Posted by xaron View Post

        I'm not familiar with solo ads. Is this something that exists outside WF as well? It sounds quite interesting but I would love a little more information if possible.
        A solo ad is similar to an ad swap. The difference is you pay them and you don't send an ad to your list for them.

        For example, a recent solo ad of mine purchased through WF went out to a list of about 5k and I got over a 100 subcribers and 2 sales of my oto. I have a second part to that ad going out again on the 4th to the same list. I expect at least another 100 subscribers this time and a few more sales as well from the OTO.

        I used this squeeze page: Affiliate Marketing Profits 7 Day Crash Course and the ad copy I used was just a short intro and some copy and paste of some of the bulleted items and sent it to the person sending the ad. That person then fine tuned it to sound like them and fit their list and sent it.

        It was very simple and I will do a more detailed thread on this after the results of the next ad. By the way, I purchased these two ads for $100 total (got a discount for buying two). So essentially I have already 'bought' subscribers for less than a dollar a piece (a lot cheaper than PPC).

        As your list grows you can do adswaps with other similar size lists and also start selling your own solo ads.

        I have bought solo ads to be put in newsletters before I found WF and they were not successfull at all. I paid $25 to be '1st sponsor' in a newsletter that went to "25K people" and only got a few subcribers. So, yes they do exist outside of WF, but why go looking anywhere else?

        Hope this helps clarify things and I'll update everyone on my results soon.
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        • Profile picture of the author Mike Murphy
          $500 could be stretched pretty far if you stick with the low hanging fruit.

          PPC can eat $500 up very quickly if your ads aren't targeted enough.

          I would spend mos of it on outsourcing to:
          - get the articles written
          - get article submitted
          - build backlinks
          - re-purpose articles into audios
          - re-purpose articles into videos
          - add content to your own blog (do this one first)

          You could hire two outsourcers for $200/mth each, both working 40 hours per week. Add in your efforts and try it for a month.

          I'd be shocked if you didn't see a nice traffic spike.
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        • Profile picture of the author xaron
          Coby, thanks for the clarification. I do have a couple of questions though. Do the JV's offering this service just cater to IM related niches or do they cover other area's as well?

          I had a quick look at the JV section but they don't seem to specify what they focus on, just the stats (how many on the list, how many clicks etc). How do you filter out the ones that might work for you?

          Mike, thanks as well for your input. I really appreciate any and all advice that comes my way, especially from those with first hand experience. I'll look into this some more when I've slept.

          Thanks again guys!
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          • Profile picture of the author Coby
            Originally Posted by xaron View Post

            Coby, thanks for the clarification. I do have a couple of questions though. Do the JV's offering this service just cater to IM related niches or do they cover other area's as well?

            I had a quick look at the JV section but they don't seem to specify what they focus on, just the stats (how many on the list, how many clicks etc). How do you filter out the ones that might work for you?

            Mike, thanks as well for your input. I really appreciate any and all advice that comes my way, especially from those with first hand experience. I'll look into this some more when I've slept.

            Thanks again guys!
            Most of the ones in the JV section are going to be in the IM niche. Although you will find some in other niches as well. If you cant find the niche you are looking for just post a thread in that section with the niche you are looking to purchase solo ads for and you should get a response.

            I have seen the following niche list in the JV section: weight loss, health food, self-help, rig workers, etc. If there are other good sites for buying solo ads I'm sure someone will post a link. I personally don't travel far from WF, but then again my lists are IM niche.
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  • Profile picture of the author John Romaine
    If its your last $500, put it back in your wallet and stick to making free mistakes.
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