Internet Philosophy 101 - Beware, Business thread.
 

I propose this statement

"No one has traffic. Everyone simply has someone else's traffic for a fleeting period of time, until it moves on to the next person"

For the webmasters: How do you look at 'your' traffic? Do you think that every surfer that visits your site is 'your' traffic?

Is there a different classification for different kinds of surfers based on the referrer? eg

- Organic search
- PPC search
- Bookmark
- Bought traffic
- link trades
- type ins

and if each surfer IS different based on the referrer - then why are they all treated equally? IS there a way to treat these surfers differently from eachother? Should they be?

These are questions that I think about alot. I think that sometimes webmasters become too attached to their traffic; that there is an asymmetrical relationship between how the webmaster views their surfer and how the surfers views the website they're visiting (meaning that the surfer doesnt really give a rats ass about the site they're on - it's just one of thousands).

How is organic search traffic really anyone's traffic other than the SE? If a consumer turns on their computer and goes to google/yahoo/msn/netscape/aol/comcast - isnt it "their" traffic? What is the most pure form of traffic?

Discuss.

Hhhmmmm....food for thought.

~off to the throne to relax, drop dinner from last night and think...~

tell more jokes based on degrading woman

you seem best suited for that

And you're best suited to dress up as Captain Kirk at a Star Trek convention, what your point?

Stay on topic or stfu and get out of my thread.

LOL
bump for you

i think that someone saying 'my' traffic. they don't necessarily think its theirs but just something easy to call visitors to their site.

Bump for west coast AM crowd.

You forgot these sources:

- toolbar redirects
- adware popups
- unwanted redirects and URL blocking

LOL! I don't know why I find this funny but I do.

DH

I think there are programs that have these as big sources of traffic - but not your every day webmaster.

Let's say I run a retail store, person X comes into my store, now are they store's customer or brand's customer?

Now, I do sales and advertising for company Y. Company Y's ad brought in person X to the store, now is the customer belong to company Y, the store, or the brand? The answer is they are the same to all ... they have to be treated equally from every point. From the inital point of advertising, to the store finding what they want, to the brand holding up and following through with customer service.

It's everyone's traffic, it's the job of the company to capitalize on the traffic that is out there.

I was trying to think of a retail example as well and that is where the point of contention came in. I agree with the way you see it as well.

Where the contention online comes in is this:

Person goes into store X - motivated by brand Ys advertising and by a sign on the street by the proprietor of store X.

On that day, the person doesn't buy anything, but perhaps they ask some questions and take a look around.

2 days later that same person goes into store Y and makes a purchase based on Brand Y's advertising and the information, etc they got from store X.

Store Y gets 100% of that revenue and store X is none the wiser.

Does store X have any claim in the revenues generated by the person at store Y? The obvious answer is no - but this question is debatable when this scenario is online and the stores are websites...

It's not only the obvious answer, but the correct one. The difference between your offline metaphor and the (common) online reality, exists solely because sponsors chose to sweeten the pot by allowing affiliates to make commission on "delayed" sales.

That was probably the sensible thing to do, because without that perceived safety net, many more affiliates would keep traffic under their own control until an immediate sale were more likely than at present.

As to your general question, a surfer is mine until he leaves my site, BUT... if I persuade him to click through to a destination which only pays me on sales, then he remains "my" surfer unless and until he buys something. Wrong or right, I have to look at him from that perspective, because if my first attempt to monetize him doesn't work, I want to be able to try again with something else.

I would go further. If traffic is indeed as important as most claim, I would be a fool to burn through my visitors after one shot at selling them something, regardless of whether I fail or succeed. Thus it makes no sense to present him with links - whether to free or for-pay destinations - which are going to make him regret having clicked on them.

Which doesn't mean I think of the surfer as "mine" as such, but to return to a bricks-and-mortar metaphor, if a shop-keeper couldn't provide what a customer wanted or sell an alternate, he would far more reasonably recommend a good place to buy, than somewhere the customer would be ripped off or get poor service. The extra business to be had by treating people well may be relatively small, but it has to be more than treating them badly.

Do you think this applies across the board regardless of product?

A site that has a long value sell (like a dating or cam site) is unique from a more impulse buy oriented paysite. Having a cookie on a dating or cam site makes sense, since it probably takes multiple visits to convert the surfer into a paying member. But if the surfer doesn't buy on the impulse for the paysite - how long of a period is valid to have a cookie on that site? Should that cookie be overwritten as soon as a new webmaster (and no Im not talking about aggressive tactics like adware/toolmars, etc) sends what might be that same surfer? or should the 'original' webmaster get credit (I quote original because there is no way to ever verify who send one individual surfer to what site first).

Another analogy that more gfy'ers may understand.

Traffic = whores
Websites = cocks

What causes the whores to go with certain cocks instead of others? If the whore has been with cock A and then goes to jump on cock B, whose whore is it?

If cock A referred the whore to cock B, like jayeff said - the whore would then officially belong to cock B at the point of penetration.

The whore stays on your cock for as long as their interest or incentive to do so remains. The moment the whore becomes bored or lacks incentive to ride your cock, she simply moves on to the next available cock thats got the criterion she's looking for.

As originally posted by the thread starter, I agree that whores belong to the cock thats penetrating them or until they go jump on another cock.

The grey lines get difficult to read once the whore starts alternating between 2 cocks, or god forbid, even takes 2 cocks at the same time. That would be like having an whore, inserting into her front hole and then someone like zango comes along with his cock and inserts it into her asshole without asking you if you like sandwiches. :2 cents:

I think whoever controls the direction/flow of traffic is the one who owns it. Sure, it may come from a banner or an SE, but the point they enter your site until they leave, they're within your control.
WG

scarily accurate.. and..

http://i1.tinypic.com/s3d5y8.jpg

Our mainstream network of sites is 99 % typeins ... that's our traffic.

Most of our members log on our website before msn and hotmail.

They do care the site they are on...

Last week we were in a club, and 5 guys we don't know made t shirt saying "You look better on ourwebsite.com".

I agree that type-in traffic is the holy grail of all traffic sources... and the one with the most ownership

I think your perspective is irrelevant because it is too logical.

A site must have both the reality (to keep existing affiliates) and perception (to attract new ones) of being a money earner. How exactly both those ends are achieved is neither here nor there, and the lifetime of cookies is just one of the options for creating the right mix.

The bottom line is that no individual affiliate knows for sure whether cookies - long or short term - are actually a good thing overall. It seems reasonable that we should pick up sales on a second or third visit to a sponsor's site. But we neither know the precise value of that possibility, nor can we estimate what we lose by handling traffic which is already "cookied up".

That said, enough webmasters are sold on the value of long(ish)-term cookies, that someone who does not offer them had better have something other shiny object to dangle in their place. And I suspect that overall, sponsors do very well from them.

A heck of a lot of webmasters are entirely focused on traffic generation and clicks, paying very little attention to traffic management. Admittedly most are too dumb or lazy to change, but without cookies to provide at least the illusion of income possibilities beyond the immediate, surely more would seek to control their traffic for longer. Because of the income smarter sponsors make from traffic which does not buy from the site to which it was directed, the last thing they want to do, is something which might make affiliates think harder about the point at which they pass traffic along.

The referrer makes a huge difference. Thats why in PPC you bid differently from Google, to Yahoo, to MSN. But unless you have a custom analytics system and large volumes of visitors, it can be hard to make heads or tails of what you can actively do to increase conversions.

This is just a given ... but back to non-type-ins.

It's everyone's customer again ... Company Y did their job, they got the customer INTO the store. (Seven times someone usually has to see something before the brand clicks.)

Now, it's the store's turn...got him in there, now they have to buy.

Now, either get them to buy or return later ...

Break it down into websites:
GTS did their job, they got the paysite's marketing out there. (GTS' traffic)

Now the paysite has to do their job and conver them (GTS's traffic now is the paysites, but still originally GTS, cause if they don't convert them, they will probably go back to a TGP and look again)

They buy? It's GTS' traffic getting the money on it, but it's the paysites traffic to keep them retaining to keep earning them money on GTS' original traffic.

It's everyone's traffic, it's the company's job to capitalize on that traffic. ; )