Seeing as how you mentioned you've designed this blog at least partly by following James Brausch's model, I'll ask a question related to his stuff.

Which of the Brausch traffic generation methods that you're using would you say is the most effective for you, and in what way (long term growth, short term spikes, search engine rankings, etc.)?

I've seen your blog on some of the same blog carnivals as mine so I know you're at least using that one from JB. I suspect you're using more, hence the question.

Thanks,
John

Hi John,

Blog carnivals. I am constantly running traffic tests and at one time had an outsourcer submit my sites to carnivals. Now, I just pay James for the service. It's effective for bringing in visitors.

Are there any tricks to using Promosoft? It's been a while since I tried to use it but I had trouble getting my ebook accepted.

Yes, there is…

1. Make sure Promosoft is updated.
2. Encode just 1 html page into an exe file.
3. Once you submit through Promosoft, create a 302 redirect to redirect traffic from your .exe file to your sales page.

Just remember, this isn't a long term traffic strategy and within 6 months, most shareware sites will remove your listing… so make sure you submit once per month for maximum effectiveness.

when starting out what traffic generation would you recommend?

thanks

johannes

1. PPC with Adwords
2. Article submissions to EzineArticles.com.
3. Video submission to YouTube.com
4. Web 2.0 submission (follow the guide from socialmediadaily.com)

That's for the very low budget. If you have money to spend, then the ball game changes considerably.

thanks for the opportunity you are giving to ask a question.

I have a static page (the index.html) where I basically just promote one product (a book).
How would you tackle bringing extra traffic to such a site?

Raymond Le Blanc

Since we tackled the low cost way in the last answer, here's how I would personally attack this…

1. PPC (Adwords, Yahoo, and MSN).
2. Followed by secondary engines.
3. Followed by daily article submissions through Unique Article Wizard.
4. Followed by daily video submissions with Traffic Geyser.
5. Followed by a weekly press release.
6. Followed by paid email drops.
7. Followed by banner ads.
8. Followed by coreg buys.
9. Followed by CPA buys.

And sprinkle some web 2.0 viral promotion on top and you have a very tasty cake.

Hi Woody,

I would be interested in ways that you got traffic from stuff like free downloads such as web templates or reports that link back to your websites.

Maybe these were not good sources of traffic or whatever, but it should be an interesting topic to cover I think.

p.s. your form does not seem to work in the FireFox browser (the URL field is obscured by the Email field), at least in my case.

Look at the post previously regarding Promosoft. It's a very effective short term traffic that you can teach someone to do for you in 5 min.

I will look into the form issue.

What are your Top 10 traffic generators (in terms of tools, methods, and/or approaches)?

Thanks!

~Marcus

Hey, wud doo ya know… I have 10 listed just 2 questions up.

Hi Woody,

What tools/software do you use to generate traffic?

I know you use James D. Brausch's Blog Carnival Submission Service as I was an intern that did it for you.
I think I submitted one of your blogs to 60+ blogs.

Thanks!

-Mike

The tools I use…

1. People
2. Promosoft
3. Traffic Geyser
4. Trackback Spider
5. Blog Farm Generator
6. Cloaking Master

These are the ones I see bookmarked or on my desktop (or on my virtual server's desktop).

Do you recommend submitting to blog directories, RSS directories, etc. or is it a waste of time?

And/or do you still recommend banner advertising with a place like Tribal Fusion? Tips for a first timer using something like that?

Opps, I forgot to add RSS Submit to the list above. Yes, I still submit to them as it takes me 10 sec to do it. Personally, I haven't seen this action being particularly effective for the past year.

Yes, Tribal Fusion and Advertising.com are top dogs for banner ads.

Tips for first time… Know your conversions by doing a LOT of PPC testing and test your banner creative extensively with an ad server.

Do you think traffic generation method that work for internet marketing (i.e., article marketing) can work to promote technology startups? This is a big field in need for promotion, but I'm not so sure that i.e. writing articles and submiting them to directories would help to promote a new web 2.0 property that does something innovative. It's just not the right kind of people. Early adopters do not read the mass-produced blogs/sites that reuse content from article directories.

What do you think?

Thanks!

I'm sure some people will tell you yes, standard 'internet marketing' will work for that. I've never seen that type of marketing work for many big companies. If you look at how they ALL started and got off the ground, you will see that they were engaged in a huge viral promotion coupled with media exposure.

1. Have something unique or a twist on something unique that people will use.
2. Have a system in place that allows for people to easily pass along your site URL to others.
3. Hammer press releases daily (and not just with PR Web, but fax the damn things to local media outlets).
4. GET on the radio… there's a new technology show popping up every day.
5. Hound the dudes from Techcrunch.com to write a review.
6. Focus on the blogosphere… these blogs (like this one) will make or break you.

Hope you enjoyed this Q&A!

Woody