Forum Moderators: phranque
The visitors are coming but I have 2 problems:-
1. Although I can see guests appearing in my forum there doesn't seem to be much activity in terms of them reading posts and I've had no new memebrs or no new posts.
2. I have adsense on my website but I have next to zero click through rate.
Are the sites where you buy visitors just a big con? Does anyone know if visitors are really coming or is it just bots?
[edited by: martinibuster at 5:49 pm (utc) on Feb. 24, 2007]
[edit reason] Removed Specifics. See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]
You should be able to clearly see the originating IP number in your log files...and the subsequent traffic spike...
Take that IP number and plug it into Google ... you may be surprised what you find...
If you see a spike in "first time visitors" but your page views are flat...then likely this "traffic" showed up on the home page and did not stick around (bots don't have many hobbies)
You probably paid $29.95 for 10,000 "visitors" or something along these lines...
Buying "traffic" from these type providers is a waste of money..but can be educational on the log analysis side... ;-)
Do you walk into a party and offer up $50 per person to be your friend? It's the same concept. Sure they'll take your fifty bucks, but unless they like you or you have anything in common you won't see much of them.
Garbage traffic sucks up bandwidth and wastes EVERYONE'S time. It's not just worthless, it's les than worthless, subtracting from zero. What you want is targeted visitors, people who come to your site and are interested in your topic, who will seek out every link even on a badly constructed website to find what they want. And the only way to do that, really, is to build quality content on your own. You can try stupid web tricks but they only work for the short term. Like anything else in life, you need long term results or you die.
I needed people to sign up and start adding content otherwise I fear it will never get off the ground.
You have this backwards. You need to start building unique content that draws people to visit your site, once they hang around and start liking you they will be compelled to start a conversation with you and others on your board (see 'friends' analogy above.)
You can't just put up a message board and buy your way to success. You have to put yourself into it. If you ignore the above part about building your own content, and rely only on a message board, you need to seed it off by posting a few topics of your own, something controversial or interesting. This is one way to get a board going - open a topic or discussion you know will start an argument. People can't resist an argument. :-)
Sorry to start off your first visit with some hard realities, but welcome aboard! You will find many useful links and responses around here.
