My opinion on traffic broker threads.
 

If a service, website or individual sold traffic that was an automatic profit for the buyer, what would that tell you about this business? Furthermore, what dynamically would be different about this business?

This business is a competitive business based around one concept: Traffic. The reason that it is based around ?traffic? is because that is the central, most complex facet that fuels profit. If converting traffic into profits were easy, the central issue would fall on the shoulders of other facets of the business, such as hosting. Remember when Hosting was expensive? Traffic was an easy conversion at that time.

All to often, I see people posting as to whether major traffic brokers are ?worthy? to sell traffic. Subsequent to that is a parade of replies ?tipping their hats to? or ?condemning ? the broker. These replies exist without hardly any pertinent information such as: Sponsor used, gallery purchased, price point, consumer price point. Followed shortly thereafter with people taking those replies as the gospel. Are people choosing where to buy traffic from by way of this information?

The ability to convert traffic into profits is the business. It is not easy. Rather than examining traffic brokers whom provide the essentials, why not look into ?how? to optimize the traffic into something financially satisfying.

?I want to build a bar on this street.?

?Ok, I will build a college campus right across the street.?

?Will I make money??

The factors in the above scenario are endless. Would you ?not? open a bar across the street from a college campus if someone simply said, ?I had a bar there, but people didn?t buy drinks, they are cheap.? Think about it. The campus supplies you with exactly what you need, nothing more.

Excluding useless traffic portals, such as those that pop you with Chinese traffic, traffic is yours to make money from. Rather than judging those that supply, it might be more beneficial to judge your methods (more experiments, etc.).

This was of course, just my 2 cents.

I hope you all have a Great Weekend,

Cory.

Very good points Cory and speaking as a media buyer, if it were so simple to buy traffic with a guarantee'd return, those outlets that offered such a guarantee would be sold out of all their inventory. I wish it were so simple but it still remains true to this day that its all about experimentation and trying different strategies to see what works and what doesn't.

WG

thank you. this directly ties to what i am always crying about with conversion ratios and the traffic attributed to those ratios.

Would you be doing better if it were easier?

I seem to think not. The tougher it is, the more successful "you" will be. :thumbsup

Affiliate program "overall" conversions should mean very little to affiliates. Especially with larger, broader-niche programs.

Too many traffic portals.

Affiliates should worry about what "they" can do.

very well said corey

very well said cory

Aeon was right Cory - you've got way too many brains to waste on this business.

Thanks for the compliment. I am currently looking to write articles for one of the media sites in the industry. Hopefully soon.

Have a Nice Weekend,

Cory.

I've always said, if you have perfectly decent traffic -- there is no need to sell it.

In theory...yes, but in reality there's too many variables involved in the last sentence for it to be generally true. Good post reagardless. It applies more to program owners than affiliates I'd think.
Need isn't a factor. It's different business models. People choose to sell traffic/ad space over, or in conjunction with affiliate marketing for many reasons.

Great start to a full article Cory!

I sure hope that you start to write regularly. Based on your post, I know that I'd be a loyal reader.

i'm not that bright so i keep things simple.

if you come looking for me i'm usually not interested in buying from you.
I want to come looking for you to buy traffic and such.

that's it - seems to work for me................

YARGH! Cory, great post.

Bump...I am going to jump back in this one tomorrow night or Monday morning. Seeing if anyone else wanted to throw in...

Or... they could be selling traffic to subsidize the expansion of their network.

Thanks Rob.

This isn`t strictly true.

Personally speaking I use some of the traffic from my networks for several of my own projects however the role of a traffic broker or provider (the source) is really that of a service provider.

For me to use my volumes of traffic effectively would take me considerable time because when you are dealing in excess of 100,000 visitors every day (as I do) of different types of traffic (TGP feeder, clicked, spots etc.) then it is literally impossible to manage all of it on your own projects hence why it is offered for sale to clients.

This is absolutely true in my case.

Another very simple way of looking at this is the likes of a giant like Google (not that I would even begin to make comparisons with Google and myself...lol) but they of course offer PPC traffic for pretty much every service / product.

It is absolutely not realistic for them to manage their huge traffic audience.

Just my :2 cents:
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