You know you want traffic.
Lately I’ve heard lots of good things about Compete.com, an Alexa competitor. However, when I went to go grab some screen shots for today’s post, it was down.
That’s not a good way to compete with Alexa.
However, we can see here that since its launch in late 06, Compete.com has become a wildly popular traffic comparison tool. I’d love to demonstrate it, but the site is down. 
Take home message:
Site down = bad.
As a unique idea for a developing story, I have chosen to ONLY promote my blog through Entrecard. It offered me everything I need anyway, free 125×125 advertising across nearly 300 blogs.
I have been actively dropping cards and buying adverts every day. Here have been the results so far:
These are UNIQUE visitors to my blog per day.
Here is another shot from Google Analytics, that details the unique hits I’ve gotten both from the widget, and just from being listed on the Entrecard site:
There you have it. 149 visits from ads I ran on others’ Widgets and 138 visits from my listing at the site. I have been running Entrecard for a week and a half.
Take Home Message:
If you’re not using Entrecard, you should be. 280 unique hits in 10 days is nothing to sneeze at.
Maddox is the notorious author behind TheBestPageInTheUniverse.net, otherwise known to be hosted at Maddox.XMission.com. Make no mistake, he is a web 1.0 HERO. He has written some of the funniest stuff I have ever read on the internet, and his following is damn loyal. Here are some of my favorites:
How to render the Segway Obsolete
Fast forward to 2007
So how does this web hero fair today, with a 1.0 style living in an internet that is now officially “2.0″? Well he can still bring in a crowd, I’ll tell you that. The people visiting his site don’t care that its doesn’t look 2.0. They’re there for the words on the screen. And the pictures.
Here’s the resulting spike from his latest post bashing women’s fashion, and his previous post:
Yep, he only makes about one post every 4 months, but he gets a damn solid response every time.
Take home message:
Content is still king. Maddox can have plenty of traffic every day, because he is genuinely funny. If you read his articles, you are GOING TO LAUGH. And people don’t care how long they have to wait for the next good laugh, or how many articles they’ll have to read through while they’re waiting.
Think about it. If you wanted to have a good laugh right now, where would you go? This is my point. Resources are limited. Only a select few places can deliver laughs every time, and Maddox happens to be one of those. Even with an awful design, no RSS option, or any of the fancy jazz, Maddox is still a king on the net.
With X-Mas season in full swing, it stands to reason that there are plenty of cash-traffic trails to follow.
For example, if I had a golden SEO wand to wave, I would set up an affiliate site for Ipods, and position myself around keywords I know people are going to be searching for.
Make no mistake, the volume for the following searches is going to be immense:
“Best deal on Ipod”
“Best price on Ipod”
And so, the number one google result for those searches, dealmac.com and nextag.com respectively, tell the tale of bargain hunting shoppers doing a google search and hitting the first result:
(dealmac.com is the number 1 result on google for “Best deal on ipod” )
(nextag.com is the number 1 result on google for “Best price on ipod”)
Take home message:
If you can find out how to wave that golden SEO wand, and position yourself for a hot keyword string like “best deal on ipod” or “best price on ipod” you’re going to make a fortune. Then again, if you know how to do that, you already are making a fortune and sure don’t need me to tell you that.
Here’s a real no brainer: After thanksgiving, a lot of traffic shifts into online retailers. I mentioned it in my last post, and we can already see it taking effect:
Look at the nice spiking we start to see in amazon now, after thanksgiving. It’s more pronounced and dramatic than the general uptrend it’s been in for most of november.
Take home message:
Folks, over the next two weeks, we’re going to see these two powerhouse players in the online retail game spike huge. Sure’ they’ll drop after X-Mas, but make no mistake. Being that these sites are online retailers, those spikes translate directly into cash. In amazon’s case, hundreds of Millions of dollars. In buy.com’s case, also millions and millions of dollars. Traffic=money, and that equation couldn’t be more true for anyone than it is for online retailers.
So the other day, I mentioned how sweet it is to be a well positioned recipe website in November. I showed how direct navigation sites such as recipes.com and cooking.com saw nice spikes, and top google results such as Allrecipes.com, Foodnetwork.com and epicurious.com all saw amazing traffic as well.
Now lets take a look at what happens to these sites in the days directly proceeding Thanksgiving.
Timberrrr
My, how the mighty have fallen.
Take home message:
Everyone has there bread and butter. These cycles are as right as rain, and as natural as a hot buttermilk biscuit with breakfast in the countryside. People aren’t on cooking websites anymore, now they’re in retail, spending lots of money. It’s retails turn, and affiliates’ turn.
Watch for traffic spikes for online retailers like Amazon and Buy.com
I’ve often commented that sites seem to get even MORE traffic when John Chow trashes them. Just look back to the hilarious review Chow gave to AndrewTalk.com where he basically says that AndrewTalk is crap, with stolen content, and has no clue why he ordered the review in the first place.
Once again, Chow is runnin’ his mouth, and this time at the paid-inclusion rss feed project by Colin Lahay, rsshugger.com. Chow reviewed the site, and wasn’t too kind. My favorite quotes were:
“From what I can tell, rssHugger is nothing more than a web directory of RSS feeds.”
“The question many would have at this point is why would you pay to list your RSS feed on rssHugger when you can get listed it for free at a site like Technorati or Facebook and get a ton more exposure?”
Ouch! But Colin must be laughing all the way to Alexa, because the spike was monumental:
Look at that spike to 6,000! In the day that followed, rsshugger signed up 30 blog feeds. That means that a sharp dip is coming for sure. But then we’re going to have another spike, because John Chow issued an update that rsshugger is no longer charging an admission fee, just an admission blog post. They signed up another 30 members. So 30 people around the web are going to blog about it and send more traffic their way.We should see a little more of a peak. But now I’ve deviated so far from my message its not even funny.
Take home message:
Any publicity is good publicity. All the trash talkin on Chow’s part always gets the maximum impact in terms of traffic from his audience.
Sometimes in hindsight certain things look like no-brainers. I was doing a little digging around to see how well recipe and cooking related sites do in November during the lead-up to Thanksgiving, the biggest cooking day of the year. The results were interesting, but utterly expected.
What I was targeting were websites that the majority of America could just nonsensically type in to try to find recipes, without doing a search or any jazz like that.
Recipes.com spikes nicely
We can see that 
Definitely not a coincidence that Recipe.com starts spiking mid-November.
Cooking.com spikes even more nicely…
Because of an overall better quality site, Cooking.com spikes even more heavily in November. My guess is that recipes.com is a fairly deserted site most of the year, and they get people in November sitting down in a last-minute attempt to find some good recipes, whereas Cooking.com has a loyal following all year round, who come back en masse in November for recipes, along with general people “direct-navigating” to cooking.com because they know its a good shot that they’ll find recipes there.
The power of SEO
Now, direct navigation takes place in another form too. Every day, millions of people do a google search and hit the first result. If you do a google search for “Recipes”, the first result is allrecipes.com. They are the true winner this holiday season, and the truth is in the spike:
Sure, I could go on forever with sites that reap in the traffic in November. Foodnetwork.com, which also ranks extremely well on Google gets a pat on the back this thanksgiving, and so does Epicurious.com:
Folks these sites rake in serious traffic in November because they’re well positioned on the internet for recipe ideas and cooking. They take full advantage of the fact that every household in America cooks their hearts out this one day of the year, and spends a whole month preparing for it.
Take home message:
Did you blog about a recipe this November? Did you do your best to make it viral? If not, keep this in mind for next year. Maybe you want to start a recipe blog in September in preparation, then get your recipes all over digg and stumble. Do some SEO leg work. Add a viral component, maybe some funny pictures or video. Do what it takes to share in a piece of the pie next thanksgiving.
John Chow reviewed uberaffiiliate.com and yes it had a spike. But what differs this spike is that it spiked all the way to 6,000. Any spike that breaks 10,000 on Alexa is a spike worth mentioning. So what was it about this review in particular that caught everyone’s interest? Was it that he was 19 years old? Was it the controversy that he blatantly lied and said he had a ludicrous 87,000 RSS subscribers? (controversy always does well for traffic). One thing is for sure, it wasn’t simply the fact that chow talked about it. I’ve seen chow talk about sites and barely give them a bump. This one worked. Good for the uber affiliate.
Of course, with all that traffic, you would think that the uber would make at least a post a day to try to grow his blog. Well he does. But frankly they’re so long and boring, devoid of any real gold that tells affiliate marketers getting started how to make some money. Oh well.
Bottom line:
Visitors are lazy. They want you to get to the point. They don’t want to read an essay as to what party you attended or what you had for dinner. If its an affiliate marketing blog, they want you to get down to business and TELL THEM HOW TO MAKE MONEY.
