Thanks for the excellent contribution. Though I am not sure I have all the pieces to put it into action. I have set up an account on myspace and added a couple of blog entries. Feel free to visit my blog link and add me as your friend... . Unselfish posts that help the community should be encouraged! Let's green him up a bit!
Sure you do You've already taken the first step by starting a MySpace profile. Now start adding friends, and make your profile do two things: 1. Make it funny, controversial or otherwise VERY different somehow. This doesn't mean that you need a fancy design or a template that takes 34 minutes to load. 2. Link directly to your site, forum or opt-in offer from your profile. Treat it as a gateway for traffic, leads, and if you're selling something, sales. Then start adding friends, posting in forums, and building up a reputation online. You can even outsource that work for quite cheap, and there are software programs available that will help you add friends, post comments and send out group invites automatically... ...although I have to warn you that though this may be a "shortcut", if you violate MySpace's TOS by spamming or blatantly adding people that have no relation to your interests, you're likely going to get banned. Use caution if you're going to use software, and most of all, be ethical in the way you communicate with others. Remember that MySpace is a GATEWAY - not the place to "close" sales. And don't stop at MySpace. There's tons of other networks out there - including YouTube.com - and others that are literally waiting on you to send your site traffic. If anything else, I can guarantee you that you WILL have all the pieces once you start moving forward with this. You'll find out very quickly that your traffic will be best generated if it's targeted, and if you're directing it to an opt-in offer of some kind. This way you are COLLECTING and RETAINING "traffic" for future (and ethical) use. And it will make you a fortune if you use this to build a solid relationship with your visitors, prospects and subscribers. Sincerely, -Chris Rempel
They could also be contest copromotions or content for contest premium or content for traffic joint ventures
It seems you know how to get traffic! With my website - http://www.ringercentral.com I'm looking to get a bunch of traffic mainly to profit in Adsense. While I provide a valuable service, I don't know if I'm getting across to enough people. Can you please tell me how I should build an Opt-in list? My site really isn't selling anything, I just want people to use it. And why shouldn't they? 90% of those ringtones were clipped down to 30 seconds by me. They are unique to my site, unless people start copying them for theirs....which would mean I'm getting big.
This is where creativity comes into play. Ringtones are a HUGELY competitive market, and to stand out you'll either need some very deep pockets... ...or a VERY unique twist on the whole thing. For example, you could create some sort of viral video (funny, outrageous, controversial, related to ringtones) and blast it out on Google Video and YouTube.com (and others). The entire video will be branded with yourdomain.com After it was on YouTube or whatever, you would then go to some of the MAJOR traffic portals that fit your market, like: Fark.com I-AM-Bored.com Ebaumsworld.com AllDumb.com And so on, and submit that link (to the video) to them. If your video's funny enough, people will pass it around like crazy, and your traffic levels will fly off the charts. Then you could build off that - building a list (with a tool like Aweber.com), promoting a MySpace profile, etc. In fact, you could even have a movie that builds up to some incredible ending and then cuts out JUST before it gets to the "good part", saying: "See the rest at whatever.com" When they arrived, they'd have to opt-in to your newsletter to see the funny ending or whatever. It takes THIS kind of thinking to stand out in a crowded market. Be creative. -Chris
Great thread Chris. My site is a hockey forum (qnhl_com), it's growing slowly, but I haven't found the way to generate money yet...I am trying to give free t-shirts and stuff, which is helping, but traffic is growing slowly. I think I should try the myspace advice...do you think it will work for a forum? Also can you tell me how to outsource the myspace creation and submission? Anyone here can do it for cheap? Thanks, qnhl_com
Yes, for sure, MySpace has tons of hockey fans. But, before you do anything else, get your profit strategy in place FIRST. Find out how the top sites in your niche are making money - and how much - and then do something similar. Don't make the MISTAKE of marketing your site heavily without having any clear plan in regards to monetization... Something you could do is to perform an "ask" campaign. As in, post some threads (or announcements to an opt-in list) asking your users what they would buy if you offered it, and get their input. You'll be surprised how open people will be with you if you're up-front like that... Once you have their wants, then find someone that can fulfill them - or find a relevant affiliate program, and partner up. Adsense may work, although in my experience, it doesn't perform too well on forums. But then again, some forums do very well with Adsense alone. So it all depends. (Test it out and see for yourself...) Now, once you've got a solid, lucrative profit-strategy in place, it's time to start pumping up the traffic... And MySpace is one of the ways to do that. I use a program called "Adder Robot" to replace tasks that I'd have to do manually. Since it's sort of a robot that takes the place of you in your browser, as long as you're not spamming people or being stupid - and if you stay within your maximum daily adding/posting quotas - then you'll be just fine. Adder Robot is the best program out there, and it's the cheapest. Almost every other program is a heaping pile of crap produced by marketers who realized that they can make a quick buck riding the "myspace wave" in the internet marketing industry. So get AR. Cheers -Chris
I would love to try this out. Can Adder robot just work with any browser? So far the feedback is good. Any cons?
Adder uses IE I believe. The only "cons" are to use with caution. MySpace is continually tightening its rules due to idiots that ruthlessly spam their network. AR can be very powerful if you're using it to automate tasks that you would naturally be doing anyway. Used in that context, it's "perfect". -Chris P.S. Here's a hint - because thousands of Myspace profiles have more than 2,700 pictures and youtube videos loading simultaneously (along with some god-awful background), AR can often freeze while it's doing stuff automatically. So what you might want to do is go into the settings of Internet Explorer and turn off all the images and media (and warnings), so the script can run without interruption or freezes. You would then have to use another browser like Firefox or whatever for regular internet usage. That's what I had to do out of sheer frustration and anxst.
Wow, this is a very good list. I had few points in mind, great job on summarizing them, is this by you?
Sure is It's sort of a list I've had going for awhile. I might expand it into a mini infoproduct. When I have time... -Chris