You probably get offers all the time for different forms of traffic. You always hear about the latest and greatest big thing. But of these sources of traffic that you hear, which of the most popular ones don’t really work as well as they’re advertised? You can disagree with me on this, but my three top overhyped sources of traffic are press releases, social marketing, and guaranteed opt-ins.
The idea of a press release is pretty cool. It’s just like submitting an article except for the idea is that it gets picked up and re-circulated by different news agencies and you get your message out more. Did you know that your press release can include pictures, audio, and even video? Most people don’t know that, but the problem is there are so many press releases out there on so many different subjects, it’s really tough to find anyone’s announcements, and there are so many press releases that are written as this guy’s ads even more than regular articles that you really have to submit lots and lots of press release just like how with article marketing, you need to submit lots and lots of articles. So, if anybody tells you that all you have to do is submit one press release, think again. It’s really not as effective even as regular article marketing.
Social networking is really big, especially in the past few years. MySpace, Facebook, Twitter are all giant social sites and some of them get more traffic everyday than Google. So, doesn’t it seem like those are the places you should advertise? You would think, but it’s not that true. I’ve tried over and over again to post Twitter updates from my Twitter following that has a mass of over 12,000 followers and it just doesn’t work. I think the reason might be that a lot of people these days on Twitter are following thousands and thousands of people. So, if you make an update, you are moved to off of the front page on their Twitter feed in a matter of seconds. Will social media and social marketing have a big part to play in the traffic you get in the future? Maybe. But for now, the old school techniques of building a list of email addresses and mailing to that list outpulls any amount of Twitter followers.
And finally, the worst traffic method I could possibly think of is an idea of guaranteed opt-ins. This is a little different than the cost-per-click or cost-per-impression model. This is where you pay somebody a flat fee and they keep on promoting you until you get a certain number of email addresses. The problem with this is that a lot of the times, the person sending you the traffic is not in the same niche as you. And so, they’re just sending you people who are simply trained to sign up for something. No matter if they’re interested in it or not. I’m not necessarily saying that these are fake email addresses. I’m just saying that the people who opt in to this list are not at all interested in buying from you or even reading the things you have to say.
So, instead of something like guaranteed opt-ins, set up a pay-per-click campaign, get backlinks, and send them to a squeeze page with a free bribe and an email course. So, those are the methods of traffic that I don’t think work, at least not in the present day. Press releases, social marketing, and guaranteed opt-ins.
Do you really want to know how to set up a membership site the right way and how to get traffic to it the right way? How to get opt-in and sales the right way? Well, I want to show you.