“This is an unusual panel because we’re not trying to plug anything,” Shalton said. “We have a range of experts here to talk about the various sources of the traffic and how to get returns from those methods. The main point of this panel is to try different types of traffic and collect data to see what works for you.”
Treasure Haines of Homegrown Video stressed finding the meaning behind the numbers, telling the crowd that high traffic volume doesn’t always equal profit.
“Do your research on what people are buying,” Haines said. “When you nail that down, you’re in the customer’s head, and that’s where you need to be.
Scott Rabinowitz of Traffic Dude touted the value of buying traffic, explaining that even so-called free traffic options have costs in terms of legal fees and labor. But he said the numbers behind your traffic matter as much as the method you use to drive traffic.
“You need to be able to quantify the success of each advertising campaign,” Rabinowitz said. “Otherwise, you’re shooting in the dark.”
Mark Stein told the crowd about using peer-to-peer (P2P) networks to drive traffic.
“Typically, a video can be downloaded in excess of 100,000 times per day,” Stein said. “From that number, you get about 60 percent of the viewers going to your site. You’ll get between 1,000 and 2,000 conversion. But you need to use DRM to track where your content is going.”
SmashBucks co-founder Mike Hawk touted the value of P2P, but stressed that storytelling is what makes traffic work.
“P2P is amazing, but you’ve got to have a clever trailer, just like a mainstream movie,” Hawk said. “I’m not going to give away the money shot, I want something that’s exciting because the users are spreading it, and they want something that’s worth trading. I think that softcore is the better selling point, the lead-in is the foreplay; that’s what works for us.”
Kroy Aziani of Aziani.com spoke about using search engine optimization (SEO) to bring in traffic.
“Keep your pages simple, build your linking relationships and make sure those links make sense,” he said. “But keep in mind that with SEO, what holds true today may not be true tomorrow.”
