A study on purchasing traffic
 

So, I'd like to make a mini review of the current situation of purchasing traffic. First off, I'd like to say that it is not my intention to bash my traffic provider. If I had to say anything about them, I could just say that they've been nothing but extremely helpful.

A little on me, so you know where this is coming from. I'm a 23-year-old advertising student. Brand new to the adult industry, but I've been around the Internet for many years now. My business model (for now) is to run clean sites, without links or flashing banners all over the place to see how they convert. I have a brand new network of fake TGP sites and one blog, which includes a lot more text than pictures. The fake TGPs have no traffic from SE since they have practically no text (this is something that may change very soon if this doesn't work out), but the blog does get a little traffic from Google (around 200 a day). Keep in mind they're all new sites.

I spent the entire day yesterday watching closely the traffic results from three 1000-hit traffic purchases.

I'm going to focus specifically on the fake TGPs, as I have more detailed stats for them.

This is my current TGP website layout:

http://pichostwizard.com/imgt/280364.jpg
*The video thumbs should read "3 across, 3 down"

It fills up entirely a 1024x768 screen without any horizontal scroll.

My TGPs are niche-targeted, meaning that I have one specifically for teens, another only for big tits, etc.

I bought USD 50 worth of traffic from Traffic Holder yesterday and bought 1000 hits per order (total money actually spent is around USD 10). Obviously, they were targeted and high quality (US, DE, etc.) Also, I made sure that the TGP page had practically one sponsor working on them, so I could measure effectiveness. This could have been a mistake, but I'm going to test the other way around today or tomorrow.

The Big Tit TGP

The big tit TGP is using Nasty Dollars' Big Naturals in the first block of thumbs. In the video thumb block, it's using three low quality Big Naturals caps and six high quality Perfect Gonzo caps.

For this, I bought 1000 hits from the "big tit" niche at Traffic Holder. They took seven hours to deliver the entire 1000 hits, which is very good because it means that it actually is targeted traffic. Here are the stats I have for that domain:

http://www.aeroforo.com/gfy/bigtittraffic.jpg

The yellow highlight represents the traffic Traffic Holder sent in. As you can see from previous days, the numbers seem to be pretty accurate. [First number column are visits, second is pages, third is hits, fourth is bandwidth]

As you can see, it doesn't add up to 1000 hits, but there might be something that I am unaware of and I will be inquiring with TH as soon as they come online on ICQ.

Now, let's look at the sponsor's stats:

http://www.aeroforo.com/gfy/nastydollarstitstats.jpg

Finally, let's look at TGP Rotator's statistics:

http://www.aeroforo.com/gfy/nastydollarstgprotator.jpg

I need to say at this point that I signed up to their program yesterday, just before purchasing the traffic. So those numbers are entirely thanks to Traffic Holder.

You can see that TGP Rotator's stats indicate that I sent 320 clicks to their FHGs, but I'm only accounted for 8? Sure, people can click two or three galleries at a time, which would probably count as one. But seriously, 8/320?

Perfect Gonzo, which has six thumbs in my current TGP build, reports that I sent 17 people to them, so even with that, the 8/320 puzzles me. Furthermore, my two top-clicked galleries are from Nasty Dollars, as seen below. Both were added yesterday for this test-run build:

http://www.aeroforo.com/gfy/nastydollarsgalls.jpg


The teen TGP

The majority of the build I used for this test-run was XXX Rewards material. There's two Raven Rileys and a couple of Ivana Fukalots too, but it's not significant considering that the vast majority is from Karups.

Here are the visit stats:

http://www.aeroforo.com/gfy/teentraffic.jpg

For this, I used Traffic Holder's low producing-high quality traffic. I was amazed to see that it took 8 minutes (yes, I timed it) to send me 200 hits. I used a 200 hit/hour cap, so I spent the first 8 minutes of the hour watching the numbers fly and then 52 minutes waiting for it to start again. This is obviously bad and I can see now why they call it low-producing.

Let's look at XXX Rewards stats:

http://www.aeroforo.com/gfy/xxxrewardsteenstats.jpg

Again, let's compare with the TGP Rotator generated stats:

http://www.aeroforo.com/gfy/xxxrewardstgprotator.jpg

I need to say that the hits that I sent, according to TGP Rotator, to XXX Rewards resulting from the Traffic Holder purchase were less, since I've been using them for about a week now and had very little traffic sent.


Conclusions?

Well, to begin with, I'm very puzzled regarding the hits that TGP Rotator says I sent and the hits that the sponsors say they're getting. My next sentence has little or no accuracy, but it's a question I must ask myself: is Traffic Holder sending bad traffic or am I not getting accounted for everything from the sponsors?

TGP Rotator shows the clicks, and I have the visitor stats from Awstats. Furthermore, I also have Google Analytics stats for the teen TGP to back Traffic Holder up:

http://pichostwizard.com/imgt/280381.jpg

They delivered just what I asked for: low producing-high quality traffic, but they fall short on the 1000 hits I purchased. Again, there could be something I'm overlooking, so I'm in no position to start pointing fingers with false accusations.

So what's the deal? How come the sponsors are not crediting me for the visits I'm sending them?

I decided to run this test after seeing that Bang Bros did the same thing when I compared the TGP Rotator stats to their visitor stats. I'm not even talking about sales. I'm focusing on the sent-traffic stats.

Also, I am aware that my sample is small (1K per site). However, something is wrong here and I don't know what it is.

What are everyone's thoughts? I'd like to know if I'm fucking up somewhere or if this reasoning is accurate.

lots of reading without a couple naked pictures

=P

Well, to be honest, it never crossed my mind to put up boobie pics in the middle of the stats. :1orglaugh

Dude, this is gfy. Please dont bore me with posts like this.

Sorry you find it boring. I find it intriguing.

Can someone ban this guy?

See, hes even making double post. Forum flooding.

Didn't read it all but ND & Bang Bros only count 2nd page or join page hits I believe, somebody correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm only halfway but i'd like to comment on this: 320 clicks is to the hosted galleries. 8 people clicked through to the tour. Sounds perfectly fine.

OK about the actualy delivery from TH, I've no idea about the discrepances.

But for the actual sponsor bit, the clicks that they are showing are the CTR% of hits from your FHG. Just because 10 people click a FHG, doesn't mean 10 people are going to "click through" to your sponsor.

You also have to factor in if the sponsors are reporting 1st page uniques, 2nd or join page stats.

Imo doing a 1k traffic test, on a tgp loaded with oversaturated FHG will do nothing bar make your stats counter/s spin.

2cents
-N

The sponsors may count hits vs uniques different. Also are the clicks to the galleries uniques or raw? On the other hand the results are probably normal as far as click through to galleries to sponsor. You have to understand you are dealing with freeloader surfers that want for the most part nothing to do with ever paying for anything on the internet :winkwink:

Also let me add to your first post bangbros counts join page hits i think. So there are many clicks you would not see that actually go to the site ...

oops edit guy already said this sorry :(

Ok let me sum it up for you:

1: Like the others said there is first page and 2nd page counting. Obviously 2nd page will be (way) less clicks depending on how well the tour is made.
2: FHG's and actual tour clicks are 2 totally different things. Usually anywhere from 1 to 6% clicks though to the tour.
3: When you buy traffic you use it to feed sites. Not to send to your sponsors. You won't make any sales.

Just buy cheap shitty traffic. Send it to a trades page only, no sponsors. Let your trades send quality traffic back to your mainpage with sponsor ads :)

Ofcourse everybody is doing the same lately so everybody is sending eachother chinese 404 bot traffic.

1000 hits is not enough to truly measure the quality of a traffic purchase... you need to waste more $ to reliably conclude that it's complete shit. :)

Thanks to all for your input on this.

As I thought, there was a huge chunk of information that I was missing. I had no idea that they only counted second page. In fact, I find it quite ilogical not to have a FHG hit counter in there since there's no way to know what the productivity to the second page / join page really is unless you take the time to do this whole ordeal I did.

Franck, I wasn't looking to make any sales at all. In fact, I knew that if I had one sale, I'd be lucky. I purchased the traffic to do this study and figure out where the gap was.

I still have slight traffic discrepancies with the purchased traffic from TH and the recieved traffic, but I haven't talk to the TH people yet.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for the insight

I wasn't looking to measure the quality of traffic, I just wanted traffic to conduct this test.

Yeup, and don't forget about the hitbots that are running through big databases of open proxies making them very hard to spot.

For most programs FHGs still seem to be a bit of an afterthought rather than a properly integrated solution. If you're sending to the same FHGs from multiple sites it's pretty much impossible to figure out which site is generating sales, because the program stats only recognise the surfer once they've clicked past the FHG. I have 30+ TGPs that share a common FHG pool and I have no idea which ones have the best "buyer" traffic.

BTW what's "low producing-high quality traffic" ?

1. 1000 hits is hardly a test.
2. I've been buying traffic from TH for 3 months now... No real discrepancies... (You have to take into account that some surfers will close a window before your site has time to load, so there will always be (very) small differences in numbers...)

low productivity traffic from the US, UK,...

Again, yeup. I allways try to get some good "eye candy" top left of the page loading to try and grab the surfers attention long enough for them to decide to stay a while before they close the window. Also a lot depends on the site where the hit came from - if it's a favourite of the surfer and they have had it bookmarked for a while it can often take somthing pretty special for them to risk trying a unknown site.

With this crowd it would have helped.

Nice work you did there. I will give you a B+.

Now try the same thing is google adwords. Takes a little longer, and will cost a LOT more, but you should see some ROI.

Looks like most of your q's have been a'd

Yup, gallery hits are not the same as tour (page 1, page 2, join) hits.

Were you expecting a sale from 1000 uniques purchased traffic?

No, I wasn't.

Nice read...

Good point,

as a comment the type of traffic counts. I am mainly promoting wildcash these day and I redirected the traffic from a 'fun' site to them. Now I am at like 0/3,000 hits with them - which means that the type of traffic matters a lot too. Before when I was sending TGP traffic to them I was making like 1/600-700 .

Egomancer

someone post one of those nifty "NEWBIE" owned style board pics.


but seriously Gillepie, if you don't know that sponsor only count click throughs from FHG's and most only count 2nd page clicks, so it would click on the their gallery, click on their first page, and then it counts.. if you don't know this basic info you shouldn't be buying traffic yet.

I've just rebuilt my TGPs and I'll be purchasing 1000 more hits to see what happens. The test now will continue to be with the big tit niche, but now I'm adding the lesbian niche too.

For the big tit TGP I'm using Nasty Dollars (Big Naturals) pictures and Perfect Gonzo vid caps. Both of them are high quality.

For the lesbian TGP I'm using only Sapphic's stuff. If that doesn't send traffic, nothing will. Lol. All of the thumbs are highest quality too.

Gleem, thanks for your opinion. See below.

Interesting read. I feel sorry for surfers lol.

It seems somebody like to write a lot of hehe

Yeah, I bought about 100k worth of traffic from TH and it didn't give me anything. But I learned over time, don't send people to your homepage, send them to their niche. Saturated material will break you too.

The only way to properly track FHG loads (including the source site) is to host them yourself, which of course inceases hosting costs...

what couter is that with the geomap overlay?

Its Google Analytics. Used to be invite only, but I think its now open to everyone.

Hmmm it sounds very interesting for me,cosue i am about to shop some traffic,and very usefull to learn!

Get lost Bull boy you:love2suck :action-sm

Firstly if any of the traffic traders had traffic that was going to buy they would be putting up a paysite or sending it to their own sponsors with their own affiliate codes. Not selling it for 1,000 a click. Well there may be one guy, but not many.

IMO bought traffic is not worth it unless you want to boost the BW you burn. Traffic is easy to get, getting traffic that will spend money is the tough part.

Big Tit Update

I purchased 1000 more hits from Traffic Holder yesterday. They delivered 1105 hits in just 6 hours.

Here are the stats:

http://www.aeroforo.com/gfy/trafficbigtits2.jpg

As you can see, now it does add up to 2000 and more, so the discrepacy is now fixed. I have to attribute this to my server's software. I went back to check the times when the last hits were delivered and it seems like they finished at 5am. Giving the server's software 6 hours to update the stats is not enough (I posted this thread a little past 11am).

Nasty Dollars reports just 2 second pages out of these 1000 hits.

However, I was very dissapointed when I started checking the referrers. I landed on http://freetitsvid.com/ and to my surprise, upon clicking one of the thumbs, I got my browser automatically minimized and this showing:

http://pichostwizard.com/imgt/280856.jpg

When I opened the browser again, I saw this:

http://pichostwizard.com/imgt/280857.jpg

I didn't take a screenshot, but when I closed that window, I got the same popup as in the first screen.

I clicked on two or three more thumbs in that site, all with the same results. Furthermore, my keyboard layout was all fucked up after this and I had to close and open the browser to get it fixed.

No wonder why this traffic isn't even reaching the second page; they're being sent all over the place!

My 1000-hit lesbian campaign is still running, but Sapphic reports 9 raw and 7 uniques up to this moment.

Man, seriously, stop buying traffic and put your effort and money in other stuff. Build a few sites, start trading, add links etc. You simply are wasting time and money on shitty scammy traffic that wont do shit anyway.

Franck, I know I should stop buying traffic. I made a mistake though, and I purchased 50 bucks of it upfront. I have to use all that money somehow.

Ah like that. Well send it to me so you can move on to more important stuff :thumbsup

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Fuckin A .... Thanks now I know not to waste my newb money.... Good read!:thumbsup

So what exactly are these "tests" supposed to show? I'm personally happy with a 5% clickthrough ratio, and 2% seems to be the standard... On an FHG it will usually be lower, most sponsors have pretty bad templates IMO.

So... clicks out to galleries (your tgp/trade script should have these stats) * 0.02, and that'd be a good number to show up in your sponsor stats. Do you see now why people are saying that testing 1000 hits at a time is a waste of your time?

I was testing "click accounting", since I felt that there was something in the chain that was not going right. Later in this thread, I learned that they only count second pages, which makes absolutely no sense to me since you can't measure the productivity without going through something like this every single time for every single sponsor.

You can measure second page - sign up productivity, but I think that the traffic you send should be accounted since it helps the webmaster know a lot more about the his traffic and the effectivity of the program.

I have one sponsor in CCBill that only shows me the raw clicks, which is useless information when taken out of context like that. Sure, I get accounted for the sales, but I have no clue about the uniques, second page, etc.

To get the full picture both parties need as many statistics as possible.

I did not mean to imply that traffic selling is not productive in any way. I haven't tested this, but I think that if what you're pushing costs money incoming traffic, it's not going to work out. In fact, I believe that purchased traffic can do great with "enter your email for your free membership" kind of thing. I will also try this out during the week or weekend and see how it goes.

Purchasing traffic to get conversions on a TGP *usually* is a waste of money, considering the traffic is coming from a web of TGPs. If he didn't buy over there, why would he buy yours? Sure, if you play your cards correctly you might get a sale or two, but I don't know exactly how to do this yet. I read another thread where someone was complaining that he purchased 25 dollars worth of traffic and only made one 100 dollar sale. For me, that moneyspent:moneyearned ratio is absolutely amazing. He didn't think so.

i guess it was a good read...
but next time try making a 10k+ test. 1k of bought traffic is worth like 100 or less se traffic, ive had 200k hits(not bought) to one of my galleries of new content and didnt get one sale plenty a times. Your next 50 bucks imo should be going to maybe getting your site on some high pr links, but thats just me.

Im in the same boat as you, im brand new to the adult biz but thankfully i have one friend who helps me out when i need it :winkwink:

Bump because business threads are getting scarce.

First off let me agree w/others in this thread that the numbers you are playing with are too small to draw conclusions.

Second - I think as a newb to the business you are doing something VERY right. You are methodically testing, tweaking and most importantly getting to understand the numbers.

You will soon find that you are swimming upstream sending purchased traffic to sponsors, the reason its so cheap is because - well - quite honestly its not really worth anything execept growing trades.

Might i suggest giving your affinity with testing and tracking that you purchase SE traffic and send those pages to high converting landing pages. do *NOT* send that traffic to tgps or FHG's. Your skill sets bode well to making a killing with targeted traffic. It takes an analyitical approach.

You WILL loose some money in the begining so start small, but as you learn the ropes and develop some intuition you are well positioned to make some serious coin.

Dont even fuck around w/tgps imho. Its a volume game. You arent dealing in volume and the variables with targeted SE traffic are much easier to quantify than your current approach to the industry.

Good luck and welcome to the game. :upsidedow