CC9 - T Swift

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drsmiley

Boot Camp
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Hello Builders, I was fortunate enough to get my hands on the Becky / Taylor Swift ticket to be a part of the CC9. I would tell everyone that I will do my best to prove I am worthy to be a CC9, BUT....
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I WILL SUCCEED!
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A bit about me:
I have been rolling in the digital mines for just over two years now. I was drawn to internet marketing because I hate the idea of having a "real" job. Love the fact that I get out what I put in, and the only person I can blame for my successes or failures is myself. After starting from absolute zero a couple of years ago, I have learned a lot! I'l be the first to admit that I still don't know much though, there is always more to learn and I feel like I have only scratched the surface.

My niche:
After dabbling with a few random sites, I found my home in the health / information niche.

Goals:
To no longer rely on the almighty Goog's for my traffic. I have tried a few traffic leaking techniques in the past, with little success.
In the past I have generated my revenue via affiliate offers, I am now trying my hand at being the man with the product. I have quite a bit of money invested and I wan't to move my first batch of product within the year. Building up a good amount of traffic is paramount to this succeeding.

What I get out of it:
First and foremost I get to rub shoulders with like-minded individuals and those on BuSo who have already "made it". This will not only keep me motivated to learn more and work harder, it will give me a much clearer path to follow.
I will get to shift focus from catering to google's every whim, instead building traffic through different, and previously un-tapped channels. This will help me with my current projects and new ones down the road. I will no longer be prisoner to the SERPs!

Time allotted per week:
Well, as I mentioned, I have quite a bit of cash tied up in this project and this is my day job. Therefore I expect to spend no less than 20 hours per week on this project specifically. I do run an information based site that will be feeding into this money site, so I will be keeping up with it as well. Seeing as this is a remarkable opportunity that I will not squander, 40+ hours per week is what I will be aiming for.

Traffic:
Right now I am pulling in about 10 visitors per day. This is because I am waiting on the product itself (which is arriving sometime next week) before I point my information site to my money site.
Currently traffic is coming from my social media efforts, trying to establish my brand to hit the ground running on launch day.
I am hoping to get a few hundred visitors per day by the end of this boot-camp. I have never had a site that generated a HUGE amount of traffic, my most successful endeavors still only bring in 300-500 per day. After learning the ropes of traffic leaking I am going to implement them on these other sites and hopefully raise that number 2 fold.

Personal goals:
To reach the next level. Over the past couple of months I feel I have just been coasting along, keeping up with my projects, but never taking them to the next level. This is in part due to dealing with all the logistics of starting a business, but also becoming too complacent with my current revenue. I wan't to get back into the 10+ hour days of work that brought me to where I am today.
Getting better at sales copy and building landing pages is also high on my list. I don't feel like I am totally inept, but I realize I could really up my game in this department. I feel there is a gap between what I know and what I actually end up doing, which is a problem that I will address.

Where the project is at:
My project is up, and for the most part I would consider it "passable". I have spent quite a bit of time and effort on making my site look legit, giving it that clean, functional presence that people will trust immediately.
The site itself has been up and running for a couple of months, but I have not done anything to generate traffic aside from building a social presence. I have a couple of in depth information based pages, but this is not an article heavy project (currently).
This CC9 will be going from zero to hero.

So this gives you a bit of info to bring you up to speed with my project. If you have questions or wan't me to clarify any points made, please let me know and I will do my best to give you all a clearer picture.
Stoked to be a part of the team and to learn along with the rest of BuSo!
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Thanks @vinnypolston, really looking forward to reaching that next level with you all.
Also, for anyone wondering, this is the same site I was wanting to run the giveaway promo through in an earlier thread asking for advice. That got put on the backburner for now, but I do intend on running a giveaway at some point. Thinking of trying out gleam thanks to @lyannastark 's recommendation.
 
I am now trying my hand at being the man with the product.

This is my goal too. This is a BUSINESS and not just running traffic to someone else's business. One day I'll get there. I can't wait to see how it unfolds for you.

I will no longer be prisoner to the SERPs!

I'm willing to bet that the traffic leaking activities will lead to better rankings for each person in the cc9. Cuz it'll be real and valuable link gaining and marketing, versus crappy seo. it'll be good seo.

I do run an information based site that will be feeding into this money site, so I will be keeping up with it as well.

Nice! Part of the funnel is already built then. This is exciting!

Good luck. The Doctor Is In!

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My Official Take:

This project has a lot of volume and people actively searching for this. There are lots of "What is XYZ" searches as well and searches surrounding this health product. Right now I don't foresee this being a brand oriented traffic leak, more so knowledge oriented for people looking for this type product. What do I mean, traffic leaks will be more geared towards answering questions, and asking questions with other accounts to get conversations going. There is already a lot of people talking about this, and if I may, I would like to show the potential with one of the "What is XYZ" chart:

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^^ that's a perfect increasing rate, which I like seeing in any niche, especially if you now are a product owner within said niche. December 2014 is the highest it's ever been in terms of organic traffic for inquiries, this site has to become the answer to those questions.

There are several suggestions for on-site that should be addressed asap, mostly dealing with adding images and photos of individuals, cause - there are no images! :wink:

Depending on the target audience, which I'm still fuzzy on, there are some places I would avoid off the bat, but there are other places which might be a home-run.

Curious, have you consider an affiliate program for this? This is screaming affiliate traffic for sales as another potential traffic source.
 
An affiliate program is certainly on my radar. I wanted to move my first batch of product before I introduced a program though. This would give me a chance to work out the kinks in terms of optimizing my sales funnel, and also give me the opportunity to learn about running an affiliate program.

Images are definitely a problem. I will be addressing that issue right away.
Also, as a small update. I should have some modeling submissions coming in over the next week or two. Giving me the opportunity to create a "team" page, as well as photo's to share via social media.
 
Update:
Got the images rolling in on my key pages. Still working out what I should do on the front page.

I have some forum profiles made with a few posts on each trying to prove I'm a real, normal person. Gives me a foundation to throw down some carefully placed comments / links.

Need to work on making more accounts on fitness-ee forums, as most of my current ones are more directed towards health.

Page speed is decent, not focusing much attention on it anymore.
Requests: 45 Load time: 1.24 sec Page size: 731.7 kb

Continuing to grow my social audience both organically and with paid likes (facebook only). Got my cost per like down significantly over the past few days, targeting the United States and Australia, as I believe this is where my biggest markets are.

To Do:
  • MOAR content is on the to-do, along with more images. Content is what will be consuming the vast majority of my time over the next couple of weeks.
  • Finalizing the cart this week as well. Should be up and selling product by the beginning of next week if all goes well.
  • Still waiting on the images from my fitness models, hopefully I will have them sometime this week so I can put together a proper "team" page.
  • Going to keep up with my forum accounts and try to post at minimum once per day.
  • Once the cart is set up and I have the product in-hand, I will go through my information-blog and change out the affiliate links / ads to my product. This should give a decent bump in traffic immediately.
  • Need to put up some authority logo's, payment processors etc to add trust.
That will all keep me busy for a while, but as I mentioned, the vast majority is content creation.

Also, purchased the CSS Gallery submission that @vinnypolston alerted me to. It was half price so I couldn't hold back. Got the confirmation that the submission have been sent, just waiting to see how many are accepted etc... I'l keep you posted on that.

Side note:
Hearing a lot of guff about G analytics... Does any of it hold water? Because I use it exclusively and I'm getting nervous now...

That is all for now folks! As always, if you have any questions I would love to hear em; might even attempt an answer or two!
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I put on my tin foil hat and dumped G analytics a long time ago. I have no idea if they use that data or not. But the only way that they could have that data is by giving it to them through analytics.

Long story short. Because they don't know everyone's bounce rate, time on page, etc it can't be a ranking signal.

They can only process data that they own. They only own the data that happens on their sites. What happens on your site is your data. Not theirs. Unless you give it to them.
 
They can only process data that they own. They only own the data that happens on their sites. What happens on your site is your data. Not theirs. Unless you give it to them.

Or the visitor is using Chrome, or the visitor is using Google's 8.8.8.8 DNS to locate websites, or is on a ChromeBook, or the visitor is using Google for it's Internet, or using an Android device, or you are using Google Adsense on your site or they are tracking user's time on site by their activity through the Google search, if they immediately comeback and go to another page, or do an more in-depth search, could indicate they did not find what they were looking for. I'm just going to leave this here: http://www.reddit.com/r/bigseo/comments/2owj4q/linkless_negative_seo_the_case_study/, you may recognize one of the commentators.
 
I forget about chrome and the rest because I shun it whenever I do any work online. But yeah dem bastards are entrenched and get my data by other means.

Dammit not my adsense. I didn't even think of that. So yeah, they have some of me too and I have nobody to blame but me.

I purposefully didn't mention the back button for return to search. But there's no doubt in my mind that that is one of their biggest weapons.
 
Looks like a lot of new updates, but most important page - home page is still meh - Needs humans.

Speed wise, everything is good.

I feel like the site is "almost" there, for the initial presentation at least.

Okay WTF, the FB and twitter look better then the site...? What's going on here? Need more humans - put in stock if necessary.

Google Analytics is fine - we aren't doing SEO here anyways.
 
Quick Update:
Nothing too major to report back with. I revamped my homepage but I am still not thrilled with it. It is better than before, but still needs work.

Added that paypal logo to the footer for that authority.

Got another piece of my "foundation" content published.

I have been keeping up with the forum accounts, got a guest blogger gig with a major health website as well. Should be pretty valuable for the traffic leaks assuming I can generate some share-able content.

Got a sample batch of the product heading to my doorstep as we speak, once I am sure everything is up to snuff I will open up the cart and start selling.
Will also be re-doing some product shots to get that real minty look.

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Update:
Product arrived, so I am equipped to sell. Just need... uh... you know, customers!
Have not gotten a ton done on the site over the past couple of days. Got a couple of guest blog posts up and converted my information site over to my product (mostly).
Tweaked a few small things on the homepage to help aesthetically.
Made a couple of graphics to help with the promotion side of things.
Continuing to interact on the forum accounts, slowly dropping comments that relate closer and closer to my product.

The To-Do:
Adding more content to my site. + continue to produce the main pillar content.
Sign up with stripe just in case paypal decides to explode on me.
Continue to do guest posts.
Continue to interact on forums. Put together a couple of valuable threads that will solidify my reputation.
Looking into running some paid traffic campaigns to start to determine what will work and what will not.

Once again, sorry for the late update. Next one will be more robust.
 
Sign up with stripe just in case paypal decides to explode on me.

Paypal...

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Sorry, I find some of the greatest Taylor gifs which I can only use here... lol
 
Update:
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Christmas craziness is over, time to get back at'r!

Since launch I have gotten a few sales, nothing to write home about, but I will write to BuSo about it.
Also got a steady bump in my traffic, sitting between 30-50 visitors per day. Which isn't much, but it is about double what I was getting before my traffic leaking efforts began, so things are moving in the right direction and holding steady.

The majority of my traffic is coming from my information site as well as from my guest blogging efforts.

Still need to find a way to track which links are performing the best. Something along the lines of PrettyLink, not sure if this is the best option though. Any suggestions would be awesome :wink:

Building up my forum accounts is always on the to-do, however the majority of my efforts have been focused on one forum in particular. Slowing getting my name out there, need to build a couple of really well-done posts that will get some serious traction.

Latest to-do consists of:
MOAR content
Breaking down some landing page options and getting those up and running. I have very little experience on this front, so I will be looking to BuSo for inspiration / tips.
Continuing my guest blogging efforts to piggy-back on a much larger audience, plus it generates a bit of adsense revenue.
Still not thrilled with my homepage design, I don't have "the eye" for it, so I will be looking at getting a couple of designers to take a look. Still lacking that "big brand" look imo.
Keeping up with the CC9 homework assignments. Most recently finished up the post title dump, really got the gears turning for potential content idea's.

Things are heating up!
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The traffic sounds low at first glance it's actually incredible since those are mostly people that have made it past the first stage of your funnel, and pulling sales with under 50 hits a day, for a product that costs more than $50... now that's some laser-targeted traffic. Nice job!
 
Quickie Update:

First off, RIP @vinnypolston

Got a forum post that gathered a few thousand views over a few days, also got some decent interaction from the community. Name dropped where I could, but doing this very conservatively.
I don't expect this to bring in any major traffic, any would be a bonus in my mind. It does go a long way to solidify my name on the forum and get people acquainted with my brand.

Spent some time trying to spruce up my info site funnel, still needs more work though.

Still looking around for the best option to track which links are performing best (again, any suggestions on this front would be greatly appreciated).

Also want to find someone who does good quality review-type youtube vid's for free product. Wan't to avoid the fiverr route, even though I have had great results with fiverr in the past, I am looking for something a bit higher quality.

Here is to great success to the CC9 and all those following along in 2015!
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Thanks for the suggestion @Kimoto I made an account, haven't placed an order yet though. I will update if / when I do.
What's New???
Tried out my first Reddit traffic leak. Ended up on top of a very relevant subreddit for a bit. Got a few comments, but yielded zero traffic. This was a bit disappointing, but I will be trying again on a different account in a different subreddit that has more active users.
Recently put up a comparison post on my info site, comparing an industry leader to my product. Hopefully this puts my product in the same breath as them, as I believe it is far superior :wink:
So far my sales are primarily coming from my info site, however I have had a few who landed on my homepage via organic search. So this leads me to believe that my efforts are turning into sales, just getting the name out there seems to help, and it's only the beginning.
I have been working on gathering info over the past little bit, checking out sites that would be worth submitting high quality guest posts to etc... Getting these created and sent in is my next step.

Question: Has anyone tried out famebit before? If so, how was your experience?
 
Ccarter's latest post helped me realize I haven't been updating this thread as often as I should be. I am not ignoring you guys I swear!
Still pulling in moderate traffic, more than when I started, but less than I had hoped to achieve by now. No one to blame but myself for that, just haven't gotten the hang of this traffic leaking thing yet. My latest Reddit attempt (have done 2 total on reddit) only generated about 20 visitors total (pointed towards my info site).
Managed to generate one customer via a forum thread where I answered a question pertaining to my niche. No links were dropped, but the name was, and through e-mail I managed to hammer down the sale.
On a positive note, I had my first $500+ day a few days ago. Shocking considering I had some pretty glaring problems in my cart / checkout area (working on fixing these issues now). Really left some money on the table by leaving these issues unnoticed.
Hovering around 50 (+/- 20) visits a day to my money site. Had a couple 100+ days this month, so it is going in the right direction at least.
I have also been implementing traffic leak techniques on my info site, as it has a lot more material to work with. I have seen my traffic rise about 15% since. I am yet to hit a home-run 1000k + leak attempt though. Will be building out a few more accounts to try to reach this on my next attempt.
Hope to be looking something like this after my next leak.
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Still trying to get my cart / checkout problems fixed. Waiting on a reply from someone who should be able to help out. Woocommerce just decided to slap me in the face, my billing information form doesn't auto-refresh when countries other than the US are selected, and payment options don't show up at all. Both problems seem to remedy themselves once you try to complete the form and get an error message. No doubt turning away the vast majority of potential customers.
Because of this rather severe check-out issue I have decided to delay any significant traffic leak attempts. Instead I have shifted towards continuing to build up my forum accounts, added a couple of new ones today so I can have a dialog between me, myself and I. Looking forward to seeing how this can work.
My focus on more share-friendly content has proven successful, I have seen more social interaction and overall traffic to my info-site.
Lately I have been reaching out to local groups to offer sponsorship's. Sticking to groups somewhat related to my niche, hoping this brings some sales as well as some attention to my brand.
 
Got the cart fixed!!!
Ended up hiring a gentleman via Reddit. The most success I have gotten out of Reddit since the traffic leaking experiment began haha.
Also, off the topic of leaking, had yet another gentle human help optimize my page speed. It wasn't really a problem before, but it is a good deal faster now and this can only help future efforts. Got it to under 1 sec load time which is A'OK in my books.

As for the leaks. I attempted Reddit once again, to no avail. Put up a self.post, got a couple of comments, then replied with a link to the most suited comment. The thread didn't get much traction; stayed on the first page for little while, then dropped into the abyss after the comments died down. All in all got under 10 visitors, total fail.

Still active on the forums. I have only really name dropped / link dropped on 1 account so far, building another couple accounts on the most promising looks forums to help compose a great leaking thread. Hola.

Going to try and focus on my comment game for the next little while.

Main source of traffic is still through my info site, next up is Facebook traffic. Getting SOME forum success from the very little actual link dropping I have done, hoping the "master threads" turn things around for me though.

Looking into getting some video reviews done soonish. In the past I have done Fiverr, it's been alright, may try it again.

House of Cards in 5 days!
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@drsmiley How's this going? Did you end up having any success with reddit? How are the comments coming along? What did you do for the video reviews, did you send out merch to reviewers or?
 
Still zero success with reddit.
Got one video review live atm, another should be live in the next couple of weeks.
Sent out some free product to the reviewers in exchange for their services, so overall it was quite cheap.
Still commenting on relevant articles.
Sales are good, but could always be better.
Planning on picking the traffic leaking ball back up soon and hopefully get some success this time around.
I'l keep you all updated.
 
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