Traffic Leaking Execution

[ordobey]

So I'm diving into traffic leaking head on. I wanted a bit of advice as to whether my approach makes sense or needs any tweaking.

What I'm focusing on currently is niche forums. This is the outline of my plan:

1. Collect a number of forums related to my niche or where my potential customers hang out.
2. Create accounts, start posting intelligently, add value to discussions.
3. Once I hit 5+ posts write some kind of "I want to give back to the community" thread where I talk about the best tips for something or a guide etc while naturally linking out to my site (alternatively if links in signatures are allowed the need to link in the post itself is lessened).
4. Answer any followup questions people have with the goal of having it be a popular resource and even better to have it stickied.
5. Move on to the next one or stop by every now and again to answer questions.

If I do this on a massive scale I am hoping to see some really good results. Some of the forums I've found have 1k+ online viewers most times I visit the site so traffic is solid.

Thoughts? Anything different/extra I should be doing?

 

[Michael]

Not going to lie, I'm copy + pasting your post into my personal notes, thanks. Your plan sounds solid however.

Maybe you should try other platforms too though? Reddit, q&a sites, video/image sites etc

 

[Nat]

If you're a new account with 5 posts that has been intelligently helping others, I wouldn't make a "I want to give back to the community." That looks weird to me, plus it makes it look like the forum has been giving you lots of info when I'd rather be the one giving the forum info. If you show up and notice a trend of questions that are being asked or alluded to, you can create a "XYZ/Subniche 101" thread. Say something like, "There have been a ton of questions on here recently about {fixing/improving/how to} XYZ. Understandably, people get frustrated since _____________________. "

 

[ordobey]

If you're a new account with 5 posts that has been intelligently helping others, I wouldn't make a "I want to give back to the community." That looks weird to me, plus it makes it look like the forum has been giving you lots of info when I'd rather be the one giving the forum info. If you show up and notice a trend of questions that are being asked or alluded to, you can create a "XYZ/Subniche 101" thread. Say something like, "There have been a ton of questions on here recently about {fixing/improving/how to} XYZ. Understandably, people get frustrated since _____________________. "

Hmm yeah its a good point. I think the idea is to make it as natural as possible.

I guess I wouldn't preface with "I want to give back to the community" but rather something similar to what you're saying.

Will keep you updated on how it goes!

 

[ordobey]

Not going to lie, I'm copy + pasting your post into my personal notes, thanks. Your plan sounds solid however.

Maybe you should try other platforms too though? Reddit, q&a sites, video/image sites etc

Haha you're very welcome! Its mostly my super-simplified takeaways from CCarter's ideas though so thank him

Yeah I've been working on some subreddits with a similar concept but its a little more difficult. Especially if the idea is to infiltrate the community, become one of them, write a super post and then profit from it. Its some long-con black ops shit.

 

[Ryuzaki]

I think "I want to give back to the community" is a bad idea. It's the least transparent thing you could do. At 5 posts you won't nearly have the sway to pull that off without being moderated in some sense on any respectable forum. It's a killer approach when you are at your 300th or 2000th post though.

Your goal is to get traffic. Most forums are going to be against self-advertising. You'll want to fly under the radar while getting your thread as much attention as possible.

To me, the best way to pull this off isn't to draw attention to the opening post as a valuable resource, but to create an open ended conversation that other people want to reply to that shows how much THEY know. But to answer the question (or read the thread), they have to know the context of what you're talking about and thus click your link. Then they post and re-bump the thread and on it goes.

It's all about curiosity and giving other people the chance to show off and argue. If you come in with all the answers, it's a dead end street. If you come in with all the questions, on the other hand...

I'm semi new to being a pet owner, and my dog is doing some weird stuff I didn't anticipate. Is it normal? I've tried to Google it but there's not really much out there. This site <--- (some non-competitor) said that the behavior is fine and would cease on it's own within a couple months but this site <------ (yours) said something completely different that has me worried. (what is it that they said? you have to click to find out, and know-it-alls have to click to refute it and be a know-it-all). Should my dog literally be doing backflips with no training?
​

Done. Casual, curiosity piqued, experts respond, thread being bumped, link gets juicier, you get traffic, and it didn't take you but 3 minutes versus writing a novel that has a high chance of being deleted. Nobody's alarms are set off, no defenses are risen, etc.

 

[ordobey]

I think "I want to give back to the community" is a bad idea. It's the least transparent thing you could do. At 5 posts you won't nearly have the sway to pull that off without being moderated in some sense on any respectable forum. It's a killer approach when you are at your 300th or 2000th post though.

Your goal is to get traffic. Most forums are going to be against self-advertising. You'll want to fly under the radar while getting your thread as much attention as possible.

To me, the best way to pull this off isn't to draw attention to the opening post as a valuable resource, but to create an open ended conversation that other people want to reply to that shows how much THEY know. But to answer the question (or read the thread), they have to know the context of what you're talking about and thus click your link. Then they post and re-bump the thread and on it goes.

It's all about curiosity and giving other people the chance to show off and argue. If you come in with all the answers, it's a dead end street. If you come in with all the questions, on the other hand...

I'm semi new to being a pet owner, and my dog is doing some weird stuff I didn't anticipate. Is it normal? I've tried to Google it but there's not really much out there. This site <--- (some non-competitor) said that the behavior is fine and would cease on it's own within a couple months but this site <------ (yours) said something completely different that has me worried. (what is it that they said? you have to click to find out, and know-it-alls have to click to refute it and be a know-it-all). Should my dog literally be doing backflips with no training?
​

Done. Casual, curiosity piqued, experts respond, thread being bumped, link gets juicier, you get traffic, and it didn't take you but 3 minutes versus writing a novel that has a high chance of being deleted. Nobody's alarms are set off, no defenses are risen, etc.

Love this. I think the reasoning behind doing some kind of authority post was that it would maybe get stickied or would be at the top of the boards for a while, but maybe thats too ambitious and not so scalable. Plus I think as long as the content is controversial enough it'll garner enough responses to stay relevant for a while.

I'm going to test a few approaches and will report back if I get any interesting results.

Thanks for the input!

 

[ordobey]

Small update: I've posted 'the end-game post' on about 15 different forums now (still building up some post history on my other accounts) and have only really had much success with 1 of them.

I think the tactic definitely works but the main issue I have run into is that a lot of these niche forums just don't have enough traffic. The one it worked on had lots of traffic and was a huge success (was fairly controversial and incited some heated debates), but the rest are sitting at the top of their respective post pages with measly views and measly replies.

Time to try some more verticals where there's more traffic to leak.

Anybody come across any good resources/techniques for finding populous forums to post on?

Currently working with google searches for:
- my niche + forums
- "powered by vbulletin" + my niche
(Including similar or broader terms that relate to my target customer)

 

[Michael]

I think "I want to give back to the community" is a bad idea. It's the least transparent thing you could do. At 5 posts you won't nearly have the sway to pull that off without being moderated in some sense on any respectable forum. It's a killer approach when you are at your 300th or 2000th post though.

Your goal is to get traffic. Most forums are going to be against self-advertising. You'll want to fly under the radar while getting your thread as much attention as possible.

To me, the best way to pull this off isn't to draw attention to the opening post as a valuable resource, but to create an open ended conversation that other people want to reply to that shows how much THEY know. But to answer the question (or read the thread), they have to know the context of what you're talking about and thus click your link. Then they post and re-bump the thread and on it goes.

It's all about curiosity and giving other people the chance to show off and argue. If you come in with all the answers, it's a dead end street. If you come in with all the questions, on the other hand...

I'm semi new to being a pet owner, and my dog is doing some weird stuff I didn't anticipate. Is it normal? I've tried to Google it but there's not really much out there. This site <--- (some non-competitor) said that the behavior is fine and would cease on it's own within a couple months but this site <------ (yours) said something completely different that has me worried. (what is it that they said? you have to click to find out, and know-it-alls have to click to refute it and be a know-it-all). Should my dog literally be doing backflips with no training?
​

Done. Casual, curiosity piqued, experts respond, thread being bumped, link gets juicier, you get traffic, and it didn't take you but 3 minutes versus writing a novel that has a high chance of being deleted. Nobody's alarms are set off, no defenses are risen, etc.

So I have been studying this post for a few days now, planning a leak based around this.

My question - You scenario seems like you'd be sending the visitor to an informational page. Do you normally do this, then funnel them down to your money pages?

Or a mix of the two (sending to money pages / info pages)?

Finding it hard to come up with great discussions based around my money page if you know what I mean. It just seems very phony creating a discussion around a "best productx" type of money page.