To CJ or Not to CJ
Circle jerk sites are the orphans no one wants to own up to: Most of us trade traffic, and we don’t always send surfers where they want to go. But you can't deny the fact that 100,000 TGP surfers will give you more sales than a few thousand SE surfers will.
If you decide not to take the CJ route, you can very quickly find yourself at a dead end, with no way to increase your traffic. I decided not to CJ and broke my head on the search engines for a few months before I decided that I had to do something else.
After a few false starts, I hit upon a plausible solution — top-list traffic, which again is easier said than done. Top lists send you a lot of clicked traffic, but the question is how do you send them enough traffic to get listed high enough on a top list so that it can send you a sizeable amount of clicked traffic? I tried putting hard links on everyone of my pages directing surfers to the top lists I signed up with on every one of my pages, but it just wasn't enough.
CJ Out — Top List In
Here's a step-by-step look at what I found works well for me:
1. Install a CJ script and see that it's working properly (you can find CJ scripts in the XBiz Business Directory).
2. Sign up with two or three of the best top lists that you can find, preferably in your niche. It's important that these top lists have a lot of traffic to send to you, or else you could end up sending them hundreds of visitors and getting squat in return. It's also important that you verify the top list doesn't do any automatic installs on your surfers' PC (which is often the case with top lists) or opens up chained pop-ups. Also, read the rules of each top list you sign up with. If it says no traffic from scripts, don't sign up.
3. Put in hard links using the URLs top lists give you on a lot of your pages. Make sure the links are highly visible on your site, in case the top list owner(s) visit your site before approving your account.
4. Use these URLs to add new trades in your CJ script and set the script so that traffic is forced to the top lists.
You may be wondering if you don't do any trading in the first place, where you will find traffic to feed the top lists. Send your 404 traffic to the trade script and that should be enough, for an average SE traffic site, to force feed two to three top lists hundreds of visitors. Since the traffic is from the SEs, it's better than what TGPs are sending to the top lists, and they won't complain that you're sending them script traffic.
What happens now is that you end up in the top ten listings of a couple of big top lists. They will send you back a few hundred visitors, all of which is clicked traffic. This is just enough so that you can sign up with a couple more top lists. In a few days, you will be in the top 10 ranks of four to five top lists. Let it run like this for a week. What you'll see at the end of the week is that the traffic you're pumping to all the top lists is increasing, along with the traffic you're being sent back. Also, the search engines will pick up your links on those four to five high PR top list index pages.
I'm sure you get the picture by now: Keep signing up with top lists. Keep pumping them traffic. Put hard links for all the top lists on as many of your own pages as you can.
A few points to be noted: Do not abuse the top lists by sending them low-quality traffic (I'm talking about hitbots and geo-redirected traffic). Monitor your script and your stats to verify that the top lists are not cheating you by sending you shitty traffic. This deal works only if both parties are happy. Give each top list a couple of days after you start sending it traffic. If after that the top list still doesn't list you or is showing only a few hits scrap it and find a new one.
As you can see, it's possible to work with the search engines, do no traffic trading and get a lot of clicked traffic from the top lists, increasing your traffic exponentially while maintaining the quality and rate of conversions. This is an ideal situation that has me now thinking about starting my own top list.
