We all know that no matter what kind of site you have, in the end it’s about traffic. Without it, your site is worthless. We all need those all mighty visitors and the more the merrier.
The question is, how much is your traffic worth?
Well it obviously depends on the type of site you have, but in my case, I have a free site, that generates traffic to sale. So knowing the value of my traffic is really important, so that I know how much to sell it for.
Not too long ago I was in need of so I offered up one of my ad spots for $50 a month ($600 for the year). It was really stupid of me to do that because the value of that traffic is much more, but like I said, that particular day I wanted to make a quick $600 for something I needed right away.
I setup the deal with a new website owner but when it came time to pay me, he flaked. That’s not uncommon in our business. I found over the years there are a lot of people who are all talk and this dumb ass was just like the rest of them.
Annoyed and no longer in “need” of the quick cash, I put up an affiliate banner for one of Vivid’s new porno parody movies. In 3 days that ad spot made me $56.40.
Simple fact is, my traffic on that site was high quality, search engine traffic about porn stars – so I sent it to an affiliate program that I knew converted and was about porn stars. In the end I’ll make far more than $50 a month for that traffic than I would have, if I would have taken the other guys money. So that obviously worked out well for me that the other guy flaked.
But how can others know how much their traffic is worth?
That is what this article is really about. I’ll get more into that later though so you know how to classify and calculate your traffic.
I was talking to someone last night about their desire to buy traffic. He commonly does so and can list no less than ten traffic network sites he buys from. I couldn’t help but choke back a laugh when he told me, not surprisingly, they don’t always really convert that well.
I wanted to say, well duh?
But instead I tried to be nice and approach it from a different angle.
If you had a real store, like a grocery store, and had a choice for me to send you 1,000 people or 5 people, which would you prefer?
Obviously most people would say 1,000 right? But a smart person would want to know what kind of people these are.
The 1,000 people are just random people who typically aren’t into buying groceries in stores. But if you pick the 5, you can all but guarantee at least one of the 5 will buy something. Now which would you prefer?
That’s the thing about those traffic networks. They are full of shit ass traffic from places like tube sites. A traffic network valued my ad spot (the one I talked about earlier which made me $56.40 in 3 days) at a value of $2 per month.
Why? Well because they deal with a different kind of traffic. They deal with volume – tube sites have this volume and value based on the number of clicks, not the actual number of people that clicked and then bought. All they care about is how many people they can send to you site. The more people they can send your site, the more that ad is worth. The problem is, the type of traffic they are sending almost rarely converts. So now you have a bunch of traffic, but what’s the point?
So again I have to ask … would you rather have 1,000 random people who will probably not buy a damn thing from you, or 5 guys who are for sure interested in your type of store (site) and most likely 1 of them will buy from you?
Some tube sites are converting their traffic at 1:4500 some at 1:1600 and others don’t convert at 1:30,000 or even 1:60,000.
But you know what I convert at? Well it depends on the affiliate program, but my numbers are typically around 1:150 right now with Vivid Cash.
That means out of every 150 people that I send to Vivid, 1 person buys. That’s because I don’t have shitty ass tube or TGP traffic. I have quality, search engine traffic.
So since my traffic isn’t the same as tube traffic, how do I know how much to value it at, to sell it outright? That’s a great question and one that isn’t always easy.
First you need to really understand the type of traffic you have, not just where you get it from.
In the case of say my Fame Registry website, I know the majority of my traffic comes from search engines. But what TYPE of traffic is it? Well the theme of the website is porn star’s popularity so that means that people who are into porn stars (or popular porn stars) are my type of traffic.
So now I need to find an affiliate program that isn’t scammy (which isn’t always easy but there are some out there) who really focuses on the same thing my site does.
In the case of my Audrey Hollander website, that’s easy. I need to find a quality affiliate program that offers Audrey Hollander content.
Then I run a test and find out how much money that ad spot makes me. Then that becomes the value of my traffic. If I send all of my Audrey Hollander traffic to (whatever) affiliate program, and it makes me $65 a month, then I can sell that same spot to (whoever) for $65 a month, because that is what that spot would have earned me if I would have sent it to an affiliate program.
The only other thing to note is the length. It takes a lot of work to change up ads every month so I have a rule … depending on the site and type of ad, I require a 3 month, 6 month or 1 year commitment. Meaning they must pay for the entire length up front. That saves me the hassle of having to change up banners all the time. When you run as many sites as I do, you’ll learn that can get tiresome.