Buying traffic, is it worth it?

by 65 replies
77
Hey guys

i am looking to buy some traffic which can help me increase alexa rank. I am not particularly interested in high quality traffic which turns into sales.

Anybody tried- Buy website traffic ?

looking for a best traffic source to improve my alexa.
#main internet marketing discussion forum #buying #traffic #worth
  • Mmm I don't think you're alexa ranking will improve just because you have a sudden increase in traffic. It has to be consistent no?
  • Why would you want to chuck your money in the fire, your alexa rank means absolutely nothing, unless of course you're trying to artificially inflate it to impress potential buyer's on flippa who are interested in that data, which would be totally dishonest by the way (not suggesting you are, just trying to understand where you're coming from). Why not try and use PPC effectively by using it to drive traffic to a site/squeeze page with an opt in box, whatever, and trying to build a business from there instead of wasting your time and money on things that definitely won't help you in the long run.
    Joel
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    • Agree with you! You have to be consistent in promoting your website. Try article submission. It will bring more targeted traffic to your website.
  • No. Don't do that. If your traffic couldn't care less about your site, it'd be better for them simply to not know your site exists. Especially if they're "bots". They will NEVER help you in the slightest. Untargetted traffic on the other hand COULD convert if your offer or site is noteworthy.
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    • Haha i'm amazed how many people persist in buying bot laden traffic - if you can get bot traffic to convert you're a far better IMer than myself!

      Is it that people simply don't know any better or don't know what to look out for?
  • I'd say no. Invest in SEO or some other form of targeted traffic. I doubt buying a bunch of hits once will affect your Alexa.
  • Screw the Alexa rating, it's overrated. The single most important thing to focus on is net profit. And Alexa ratings don't necessarily lead to that (at least not without an effective marketing funnel).

    If you're going to buy traffic, do it for the right reasons (making money). I wouldn't focus on increasing Alexa ratings at this point. And the website you just shared.....I wouldn't touch that site with a 100 foot pole or my neighbor's pole.

    RoD
    • [ 6 ] Thanks
  • Banned
    Why?

    The only sort of traffic that can increase your Alexa rank is traffic from visitors with the Alexa toolbar installed on their computers, otherwise they can't be measured by those rankings.
  • I'd say buying traffic is only worth it when it's highly targeted...like PPC/PPV or solo ads. Then when you build a list so you can continue to have people revisit, then your investment is worth while. Like someone already mentioned, sudden spikes don't look good and if you're selling something the last thing you want to do is mess up your conversion rates due to 'junk traffic.'
  • You can find cheap traffic that has good amount of people with the Alexa toolbar but a lot is just bots, it should be advertised as being able to increase your alexa rank.

    Really, your Alexa rank doesn't mean anything but I do know a few companies out there that require you have a certain rank or higher or they will not deal with you. Most of you would probably not be aware of this but anyone with a very high rankings on these types of sites may have come into contact where you fill out an application for working with another company and they ask for Alexa rank.
  • Traffic that converts at a healthy ROI is always worth it. With that said, it is very hard to find good traffic right off the bat. You have to run small tests and filter your traffic sources. Also, sometimes the problem with low conversions is not the traffic source but the creatives you use in your ads or your landing page. The key is to keep tweaking each element to see which combination or configuration will convert that traffic.
  • Why would you NOT be interested in getting high quality traffic to your site that could potentially make you money?
  • It's only worth it if the offer you are sending them to will convert such that it can recoup your cost of investment in buying the traffic.
  • Banned
    if you are going to buy traffic, buy from a trusted source i.e solo ads and trusted ppc networks not rubbish 1000000 visitors for $1 type traffic
  • You don't need to buy traffic if you know that your work is perfect. You just need to advertise your website to attract more customers and the like. If your website is well advertise people or prospect readers/clients can easily find you.
  • Paid traffic is not worth it! I would recommend that you invest your money toward SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to get more targeted traffic that will continue to come rather than a one time hit with paid traffic.
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  • Buying traffic is to build your list, not for ranking. You have to be sure what is the purpose of you buying traffic for? Does high ranking in alexa = income?
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
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    • Buying traffic just to increase Alexa rank?

      No.

      That is not an end goal worth spending money on. It means nothing to someone searching for a solution to their problem.

      As for buying traffic for sales? I know you said that wasn't your intention, but don't do that either! Unless....unless you know how much each visitor is earning you, then you can start to test traffic sources, but not before otherwise you could be saying goodbye to a lot of money very quickly.

      Just as you will if buying traffic for alexa rank!
      Cheers,
      Gordon
  • hi friends

    i also want the back link for my site
    Funtours
    can it is good to buy backlinks or use of
    any seo software for backlinking
    becase after the panda and pinguin updates it is very diffecult
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
  • My hunch is you are going to go ahead and try this traffic resource. Let's say the traffic consists of people interested in your offer, but they don't have the money right then. Do you have some way of capturing their email address so you can stay in touch with them? After all, you are paying for the traffic, you might as well get something for it.
  • Better don't . Why i said so is because traffic might improve your alexa ranking but might affect opposite toward your PR. If you get those traffic which is no quality and high bounce rate . Google might think your site is not quality and build unquality backlink to bring those traffic . It hurt your PR .
    Better keep away from that.
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
    • [1] reply
    • Buying traffic means you are forcing visitors to see your website. do you think this way does help your business to increase? Absolutely no, only genuine visitors would be your buyer for your product or service(whatever it is).
  • Definitively a waste of time and money! The purpose of most sites is to create a conversion, targeted traffic is the best way to do that. If you have useful information and you put it in the right places, traffic will be a side effect. I suggest you spend that money on anything but fake traffic.
  • You did not explain why do you want to increase your alexa rank...very cheap traffic usually has very poor results...
    If it is to spend your time and energy into something , why not do it right and get some money out of it, I mean have visitors that turn to buyers? that ofcourse means a quality page and quality traffic.....
  • Well..why would you want random traffic to your site? Unless it is targeted, you're not going to get any clicks or sales right? Then, in my opinion, you're spending your money for nothing. Try getting targeted traffic.
  • I don't think its worth it. Large amount of irrelevant visitors will increase the bounce rate, that may even hurt your rankings.

    Google feels that a website that provides value has visitor interaction and low bounce rates.

    Just my 2 cents
    • [1] reply
    • Everyone is assuming you are worried about SEO. To be honest I don't believe in or like SEO. Paid traffic is better to make large amounts of money because it scales, SEO does not scale.

      I make a ton of money off of cheap, $1 per 10,000 hit junk traffic like that where I am buying it and directing it at my site. I buy thousands of dollars worth of it and get back on average 1000% ROI so don't listen to people who say you are wrong, we don't know your situation or what you are doing. That said, I would suggest you tell us
  • I personally dislike paid traffic as most of the time it gave me very less conversion rate. But, I heard a lot that it works and what my thinking is depending on your niche it works. My suggestion is very simple. Spend few amount for paid traffic and check whether that is worthy enough to spend for more.
  • Actually i purchased traffic from that site and got pretty good results. Out of 10,000 visitors i got over 25 sign ups on a free offer which is not bad for untargeted traffic.
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  • Bad idea. If you want to improve your website I suggest you to do backlinking and ask high pr blogs and sites to add your website link
  • Don't do it my dude. Nobody cares about Alexa ranking. You shouldn't care either. The only thing you should care about is sales.
  • I've tried buying traffic a lot of times and it is totally useless. The only time when it brought some results was when I had a squeeze page with a free product offer and people subscribed. If you have a squeeze page and a free offer it might help a bit.
  • Sites like that offer BS bot traffic. It's a waste of money unless you're trying to dilute your conversion ratio, in which case you're doing something blackhat...
  • Personally, I would not lose my money on this. What is best and always be, is to create natural organic traffic flow to your website by using seo, article marketing, video marketing, social media marketing, etc. This way you will build steady stream of traffic, rather than one time traffic boost. Doing so will definitely increase your alexa rank.
  • Wow. I mean, wow. There's a TON of mis-information in this thread. Buying paid traffic is like any other investment you put into your business, you have to know what you're doing before you invest your hard-earned money. I see a ton of newbies (even a few veterans) go out and buy some ads on Adwords or Plenty Of Fish or MSN Adscenter or Advertising.com or etc......and they either lose money, break even, or make a few bucks.

    And based on one or a handful of tests, they assume that paid advertising isn't worth it. Aside from coming on a nationally televised TV program or getting massive amounts of other free publicity, one of the fastest ways to grow a business is by buying and testing traffic. I've been buying traffic for a long time now and there's so much inventory out there it's mind-boggling.

    One of my most profitable websites didn't start that way back in 2003. I ran over a dozen ad campaigns and lost quite a bit of money. And once I started making sales I began testing:

    * Different price points (I tested $17.95, $19.95, $19.97, $27, $37, $47, $57, and $67).

    * Different head lines

    * Different sales copy on the squeeze page

    * Different offers

    * Different autoresponder sequences!

    * Offered different freebies (in this particular case offering a free e-zine, a free report, and a free 2 hour long podcast on the topic beat out offering 10 freebies! I would have NEVER known this if I didn't test it).

    The reason why most people eat their shirts is that they go into buying traffic but they have a weak product mix or their sales funnel sucks my left ear lobe or they don't have even half-way decent copy writing skills. For those of you that don't think the skill set of copy writing isn't worth it, imagine investing $1,000 in advertising and you're able to get a decent return by selling 1/2 of 1% of your visitors to a website and you make a net of $250. By tweaking the sales copy you now get 2 sales for every 100 visitors or a 2% conversion. You can literally double, triple, etc. your money my tweaking your:

    * Sales copy

    * Your marketing / sales funnel

    * Your product mix

    * Your autoresponder messages

    If you want to get your feet wet and learn the basics of paid advertising Google Jonathan Mizel. He's an OG marketer who knows a lot about this topic.

    Don't focus on Alexa ratings at this point in your IM endeavors, focus on providing value, testing your conversions, and growing your business at a rate that you can control.

    Here is an excellent post by David Mcalorum on some paid advertising sources, by no means is this an exhaustive list, but it should give you an idea on what's out there:

    http://www.warriorforum.com/main-int...uces-ever.html

    Good luck!

    RoD
  • ^ I think you missed the entire point of why he was buying traffic. He wasn't doing it to make money. It was to inflate his alexa rating.
    • [1] reply
    • Nope, I didn't miss it at all, clearly you missed the points of my posts. I realize that he was trying to boost his Alexa rating and I advised him that at this point it was irrelevant.

      RoD
      • [1] reply
  • And yaa, There are several companies that provide specialized traffic, real visitors with the Alexa toolbar installed to improve your Alexa rank.
    Just Google and found my article posted in other blog about this topic -http://allbloggingtips.com/2012/07/3...-for-websites/
  • harro1,

    Just Google traffic whole-sellers and you will get what you need, cheap.

    There are 1000s of reasons why someone may need that alexa rank... don't get too excited folks
  • With more than 8 years of experience doing IM, until now I see no solid proof that buying traffic is really effective. Especially if you are looking for "high quality traffic"
    • [2] replies
    • Now this guy could benefit from reading your post, rod.
      • [ 1 ] Thanks
    • Well, you've probably gone about it wrong and assumed you could make a good ROI with small tests, and just by chucking some advertising at a site and wishing the best, without split testing multiple factors, that can make or break a campaign.

      That's kind of ridiculous that you would say that if you've been in IM for 8 years. How long did you test specific quality ad networks for and with how much of a budget for that 8 years? A day or two? Do you think some advertisers, even younger affiliates that spend 4-6 figures a week, or even in day are doing it for fun?

      Achieving a positive ROI with Adverstising can be tough, even with good quality traffic sources, but it's matter of testing and tracking until you find a winner.

      Many people try a little bit of advertising here and there without sticking to their guns untill they've got enough data, done enough split testing, and optimized a campaign properly.

      I've made money with different with different ad platforms, and have lost some too. The problem sometimes was crappy traffic sources, but sometimes it was I went about it the wrong way. People have to take responsibility with their own campaigns and not blame it on the ad source itself. You cannot be timid when advertising, and you need to stick to one form of traffic and market until you master it.

      I know of people making 6-7 figures with single platforms of PPC and CPV alone and Media Buys. One thing I noticed about them is that they don't bounce around. They are focused and test many things many people that complain about adverstising don't do or are way to lazy to do. It can sometimes take them awhile to make a campaign work, and sometime they have to ditch some.
  • Your question is too vague. Is buying traffic worth it? Absolutely - paid traffic can bring in a lot of sales.

    However you are asking about Alexa.com and increasing your rank, Are you planning on selling your site? Do you have SEO clients? Alexa ranking is mostly ignored unless your buying a website and curious
  • its different,try it by your self...
    dont listen to others,
    choose website traffic that have BTG certificate,DONE !

    if you try and fail,then increase your conversion,use something like more powerful word to capture reader attention....

    mike geary,ryan lee,anik singal,those IM milliornaire,they also purchasing huge amount of traffic...

    sorry for my bad english.just wanna help
  • Hi
    I would like to suggest you something. Alexa rank improves when
    1. You place quality informative and useful content on your blog/website.
    2. Place fresh and unique content on daily bases on your blog/website.
    3. Submit you business in quality directories with good Alexa ranking.
    4. Ad posting can really help. There are paid ads and you can get maximum traffic via ad posting.
    5.Social media marking can really drive enough traffic to one's website/blog.

    I hope it helps
  • Rather than buying traffic, I suggest buying advertising space is better and PPC is so far the best among the choices.
  • If your just trying to generate lots of traffic to your site just to increase your alexa then you are completely wasting your time and money

    stop paying attention to things like alexa and start working on real business building tasks

    paul
  • Do it for genuine reason for making money. buying traffic is not really effective, try to generate traffic from sources those run long.
  • i don't think worth it dude, buy traffic to increase sell and conversion .not alexer rank
  • I always use AdWord and Facebook it the best for me when using paid traffic.
  • Hello,


    Are you going to sell your site in the comming future. What the alexa rank will bring to your site.

    I mean if you are not selling, unless you want to trow your money away.
  • Not really. If you do make sure you have a profitable sales funnel in place and BE CAREFUL. Some of the paid traffic is useless.
  • I suggest you go check out IM Report Card...there you will see a lot of different paid and free advertising sites. You can sort by reviewer rank as well as check the ad sites own alexa ranking, which will tell you if real people are visiting and utilizing that particular ad site (which can reveal its potential effectiveness)...or if its dead.

    Hope that helps...
  • LOL @ all the replies to this thread. I think the original post was just a ploy to get people to check out his site and for SEO purposes using his keyword.

    Anyway, I disagree with most of what you guys said. THere are a number of reasons people would buy bulk traffic for their sites. Exposure is one reason; to inflate your traffic numbers (if you sell ads on your site) is another.
  • Your alexa ranking means nothing. Its just an informational tool. You should concentrate on page rank. Alexa does nothing for you.
  • Banned
    Try to buy traffic from related blogs and forums, but the blogs and forums should look professional, they are providing quality information and they have huge traffic, always go for cheap prices as you are not sure they would convert or not, if you get positive result then invest more.
  • Not worth it, build quality traffic yourself.
  • Buying traffic is only worthwhile when it's highly targeted to build a list Sudden increase in traffic do not reflect well especially if you are selling something, the last thing you want to do is mess up your conversion rates due to bad traffic
  • Banned
    Buying actual traffic like that is 100% worthless. If you buy relevant PPC, banner ads, facebook ads, etc. That is not.
  • Buying traffic for increasing Alexa rank leads to nowhere...
    It's like spending money on rich girl - non-defined outcome after much investments.
    It's better to use professinal SEO service or try offline marketing strategies.

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