buying traffic

[Rocket2Uranus]

What is the best way to go about this? In general, is it fair to say it is done ethically? Doesn't the owner of this forum sell traffic?

I am interested in an exposure boost to one of my sites, and would like some more information on this marketing avenue.

[cyphix]

Hey frontrow... would this be for your ratemovies.com site?

[Rocket2Uranus]

as a matter of fact, it would. I have a little tweaking to do to it then I want to relaunch with traffic

[Honan]

Hi Front
Do you need 1000 film reviews by the one aussie author for your ratemovies.com site?
Free

[cyphix]

Well front, I also am developing a forum & recently purchased traffic myself, in the form of 10k full window popunder ads (your site loads in a full page popunder)...

Didn't expect too much since it's hard to get people to post on quiet forums...

All I got out of it was one registered user that didn't post anything & 2 guests posted rude messages. Traffic was targeted too since you could pick your categories.

Not sure that was the best way to get traffic.

Good way I thought to get people to post, was to use a pay per lead program or something where you pay affiliatea a certain amount whenever they can get traffic to either make a post or register or what have you.

I thought I might look into clickxchange.com for this, trying to figure out what the miniumum investment over there is like rocket science... maybe it's $250 ??

[Rocket2Uranus]

hmm... I tried google adwords, and it sent over quite a few leads but very few of them registered and even fewer posted. that is why I have to make the site more appealling before spending any more $$

but when I am ready, I want to be aware of all the options. thanks for your post

[cyphix]

I thought about google adwords but thought it would be rather expensive to pay the minimum .05 cents a click when your not going to make any money off them, most will just leave.

[Rocket2Uranus]

I was very impressed with the traffic they could deliver, and the price I thought was reasonable. the problem was with the site and its inability to keep people once they went there.

of course, I would like to find some cheaper alternatives as well...

[cyphix]

Yes, I don't have a problem with the quantity & quality of googles traffic, but paying on a per click basis for sites not selling anything is a way to go broke.

Let me know if you come up with any traffic ideas as I would be interested too.

[Luc]

FrontRow. I don't want to crap all over what you did for the past
few weeks, and the forum DOES look pretty good, but here are
my suggestions.

If I had a site like that, the main part of it would be a script
based voting/rating system. The main page would have a
new release (in theaters or whatever) and the latest vote
results (bar graphs would look pretty nice) for that particular
movie. Also one or two user reviews on the bottom underneath
the vote results. On the side panel there should be a category
listing (ex: horror, scifi, classic, etc) and users should be able to
navigate using that as well. Another key thing you should put in
the side panel is a search option, some place quickly accessible.

I'd keep a link to the forum somewhere on there, but I wouldn't
make it the backbone of the site.

Here is why:

1. People are generally LAZY. If they have to 1) register, 2)search, 3)post
just to express their 2 word opinion on a movie, most won't
bother. On the other hand, if all this could be accomplished with
a single click (voting/viewing reviews/results), and if the vote
stats were right there in front of them when they visit the site,
then they'd be a lot more likely to participate.

2. There are lots of movie forums out there, but NOT a lot of USER
BASED voting systems.

3. I don't know about you, but when I see a poll on something
I have an opinion on, I always vote, or at least view the poll
results. It's really tempting. I think A LOT of people are like that.

4. A forum isn't the only way to get repeat visitors. If your site
is good, then users will "bookmark it" (and of course you'll
have a "bookmark me" button somewhere on every page). If
someone sees a rating, goes to see a movie, and it turns out
that the movie sucked, they'll come back to the site, post not
only a vote, but also a review. If a movie was good, and they
got excited about it, they probably won't come back to vote
on it, but they'll remember your site and visit it now before they
hit the big screen (or rent). But when they DO come back to
see ratings for other movies, they'll probably vote on the one
that they found on your site last time.

Finally, if I had a site like that I'd make it KNOWN that the
ratings and poll results are 100% user based. This is a biggie,
since most people don't care to see ratings by some 90 year
old "professional movie critic" geezer, but rather by regular
joes just like them.

It's a lot of work, but I think a site like that would be extremely
successful.

I'm not sure if I explained this right, and not sure if you get the
full picture but if you have other questions just shoot me a PM.

Best of luck!
Luc L.

[Rocket2Uranus]

Wow, thanks for your well thought out analysis Luc.

I can't disagree with anything you said here. In fact, I spent a little time looking at "rate me" scripts before settling on the forum. The sad fact is that I don't possess the skills to do all of that stuff.

I would be open to offers from anyone willing to be involved in developing this site. I have the name and a regular stream of content to keep it interesting, but lack the skills to properly design it. I will also have the ability to begin directing very high quality traffic to it (from my current theatre client's sites & e-newsletters) at some point in the future, but I am not willing to do that until it is already vibrant enough to support itself.

If somebody out there can come to the table with the design skills to make it do a lot of the things Luc so correctly brings up, I would be receptive to proposals.

[Luc]

Originally posted by FrontRow
Wow, thanks for your well thought out analysis Luc.

I can't disagree with anything you said here. In fact, I spent a little time looking at "rate me" scripts before settling on the forum. The sad fact is that I don't possess the skills to do all of that stuff.

I would be open to offers from anyone willing to be involved in developing this site. I have the name and a regular stream of content to keep it interesting, but lack the skills to properly design it. I will also have the ability to begin directing very high quality traffic to it (from my current theatre client's sites & e-newsletters) at some point in the future, but I am not willing to do that until it is already vibrant enough to support itself.

If somebody out there can come to the table with the design skills to make it do a lot of the things Luc so correctly brings up, I would be receptive to proposals.

Although I can't really help at this particular moment, I'll be happy
to write the scripts to run such a system in a little while. That's
if no one else does it first.

Something like this would probably require 100% custom scripts
and a pretty good database system, for when the polls and
ratings reach high numbers.

This would be a really fun side project, and I honestly wouldn't
mind doing it when I finish up the stuff I'm working on right now.

I'll shoot you a PM when I'm ready, might be 3-4 weeks.

Good luck!
Luc L.

[Rocket2Uranus]

Thanks Luc, I'll look forward to hearing from you.