Bulk traffic buys - traffic brokers
 

If you're thinking about buying traffic from any of the current brokers out there, you might want to read this. This isn't really brain surgery stuff, it's more common sense really but here goes...

If you're going to be buying traffic from one of the many brokers out there, you better be able to monetize that traffic in more ways than one. If you're only set up to monetize at the front door of your site, you're going to lose each and every time. At the (overly inflated) price of hits from just about every broker out there, you're going to have to be set up to convert those clicks several different ways be it your own paysite front door, cross-sales, a multitude of upsells, and quite likely email campaigns if you're collecting emails from that traffic at some point.

This goes for regular and mobile traffic. Any traffic really, but the new cash cow seems to be mobile.

Also... you need to scrutinize the FUCK out of that traffic you're paying for. Where does it come from? How is it being collected, diverted, re-directed, or skimmed before you pay way too much for it? Things you absolutely have to know.

A couple years ago there were a few decent brokers out there. Now I'm seeing new ones popping up weekly. I always ask the source of their traffic and always get a wishy-washy answer about how they don't want to reveal their clients, etc. Translation... just bend over.

Bottom line here is, most of the traffic that brokers are selling are hits that the publishers either a) can't convert themselves, or b) are too lazy to convert themselves.

Agree with everything you say. I also have 3-4 more methods I stick by when buying traffic that you didn't mention. It helps us minimize losses on any ad buy whatsoever on Desktop traffic. I'm still working to implement it into our mobile strategy, but I'm very close.

Chris - I agree with you on some points, but take exception to a few. Here at Trafficshop we are transparent in our process. Our full list of publishers is available to all clients. We are up front with clients and potential clients if I think their offer will work with our traffic.

Our pricing is among the lowest in the industry and this combined with our filtering options allows people to convert this type of traffic that most people find hard to convert. Several segments including Cams, Dating, Herbals etc are doing VERY well with our traffic.

In the end, if my clients arent makeing money with our traffic they won't renew campaigns - and most are renewing with me.

Great seeing you in Phoenix my friend.

I would rather contact the owners directly, than go through a third party. or buy from people i know i can convert, traffic shop, is a good one, bravos traffic is good.

traffic out, is another good one, same with juicyads, but thats pretty much it, other than owners directly.

i would buy off them before a few others, thats skimmed garbage.

I always hear the same 3 companies but have never had luck with them in the past. I must be doing something wrong, coz all the companies people talk shit about I convert like nothing else with them.

I guess its just the way it goes. Horses for courses as they say!

There are few quality traffic brokers with adult traffic, and traffic-shop is one of them, with low prices and very quality traffic!!! My recommendation is to filter traffic based on "domain", especially check how does their 'traffic/out' thumbs (cant find on all sites, but lots of them have it) look like and make landing pages to fit that thumbs, that will bust conversions up!

May I ask you these questions...

Why are there content brokers?
Why are there 3rd party merchant account brokers?
Why are there feed brokers?
Why are there traffic brokers?

The answers can be quite simple and they can be quite complex... For us who work in the traffic brokering business many of the publishers we work with want to focus their efforts on building their sites and traffic and let us handle the advertising sales. They don't want to spend all day on the phone talking to people, or handling credit card processing for advertisers, or handling invoices or handling the ad management scripts. Plus they don't want to jump between affiliate program to affiliate program trying to keep track of the next best thing. Plus on top of that tracking down the affiliate programs that don't pay them... We handle all those needs and alot more...

Chris the simple fact is that you're not converting your traffic properly and or you're just not promoting the right thing (with the traffic you're buying from other brokers) or maybe you didn't do enough research before you bought the spots? I don't think it's fair that you take your anger out on traffic brokers in general (trust me, there are some real shit ones out there i know LOL! they drive me nuts too LOL!). We've been doing this for almost 10 years now and the ones that don't take care of their clients get bounced out the door just as fast as they come in. I can pretty much count on one hand who i would honestly suggest buying traffic from and most of those guys have been around for almost as long as us.

Anyways I'm not posting this to start shit with you or other people but i just don't think it's fair that you paint us all with the same brush.

Chris is all your traffic from blind links or pop unders?

If you sell display advertising or text advertising please contact me.

You have my ICQ, facebook etc.

Mark, having said all that... do you exist to serve the publisher or the advertiser? Looks to me like the publisher, and hey best of luck to you if you're an advertiser.

I'm not angry, and I'm not painting all brokers with the same brush. You'll note that I said MOST, not all. And my post is mainly fair warning to anyone considering a traffic purchase from a broker. I'd agree with you on your points about taking care of the publisher's traffic on their behalf while they develop other things, but the mark-up on that traffic is laughably high, and I understand that IS the traffic broker's profit margin.

Since you mentioned it, what does "not converting my traffic properly" mean? Shouldn't you attempt to help the advertiser make a few good decisions? I mean, you're helping your publishers, right? Or does it mean that it behooves me to convert my purchased traffic into dollars at any cost? A lot of people (most, in fact) are simply not set up to have multiple levels of monetization in place. It's almost completely dependant on their business model.

Love that avatar.

Oh wait, on topic . . . I just wish more brokers niched their traffic out in ways useful for what I primarily sell and I wish more of them would do follow-ups to keep earning their commissions, rather than just assuming I'll remember to renew.

Chris - As a broker we are serving both the Publishers and the advertisers. Our goal is to get the highest possible price for our advertisers and the lowest possible price for our buyers. To that end we only take a small percentage (5%) from the publishers sold traffic. Personally I work closely with every client on the buying side to A) Get them the best price and B) Make sure they are sending the traffic to an appropriate page that can convert or make that traffic productive.

Chris and Mark have done very good work for me - there are a lot of brokers I wouldn't touch but it seems the two I continually work with were the first to jump in on this thread. It's tough to just leave traffic to trial and error when you are putting up the money first. Do your research and like any other investment if there's an ROI keep feeding it.

We buy from Trafficshop and FPC and both Chris and Ravo are a great help, and both will help as much as possible to make you money. We get great results from both companies and would recommend asking any questions you may have as they are happy to help.

I think that sums it all up :)

I got to thinking this through a little further.

My main point in all of this was never really addressed by anyone, and that is the traffic buyers ROI. If I make a traffic purchase of (example) $1000, I'd like to think that I can, at the very least, make that back from purchases at the front door of my site. I mean, if I can just break even at my own front door, I'd call that a win. But if I'm forced to upsell, cross-sell, email, etc. just to break even, it's a loss. Besides, how is this affecting the consumer? Or does anyone care?

I'd really like to hear from a few brokers on this question. Are you serving the publisher or the advertiser?

Nobody gives a flying fuck about the advertiser.

Hi Chris,

That's a very good question.
At ExoClick.com we do our very best to serve both sides. However we do not consider ourselves as traffic brokers but as an ad network. The difference comes from the fact that we provide a technology: a proprietary ad serving platform. Rather than just connecting publishers and advertisers by email and IOs and taking a commission, we really control both sides by buying the traffic ourselves, we filter it, geo target it and provide a real added value to our partners.

- To our Publishers by managing their ad spots and monetizing their traffic worldwide. One ad code can rotate hundreds of campaigns worldwide. Our algorythm makes sure to display the best ads to generate more earnings. Publishers can follow their statistics (impressions, CTR, CPM, earnings) in real time. Every campaign running on ExoClick.com is approved manually in order to display quality ads only. This allows our Publishers to focus on webmastering: building their sites, working on SEO and getting more traffic. We do all the rest and we've been paying weekly for 5 years.

- To our Advertisers by providing a transparent marketplace of sites to buy traffic from.
We give the opportunity to buy geo targeted traffic from the BIGGEST porn sites out there. You can signup, load 50 bucks on your account and choose the adspot you want to test. No commitment, no set up fees. In less than 15 minutes, your ads are displayed safely on the ExoClick network gathering 1 billion ad impressions a day (mostly from North America and Western Europe). If you're not satisfied, we refund the budget left on your account. No bad blood.
About conversions, we provide similar tracking tools than Google adwords: Pixel tag, s2s API to track sales and ROI in real time. Our ad serving technology also provides split testing options, multiple targeting criteria, multiple capping options to control every single aspect of the delivery of your ads. Naturally our team of account managers help our Advertisers to optimize their campaigns every day.

If, new brokers are popping up, i think that many of them won't last. Only a few are doing well and they can be counted on one hand. We've been paying Publishers every week and providing quality traffic to Advertisers worldwide for 5 years and we keep growing. Many partners have been working with us since the very first day. I believe it's because we do care about them and because we do provide a real added value to both Publishers and Advertisers.

I think I said this earlier but I'll repeat it - we have many customers that are making healthy ROI's without any additional crossells, upsellls or shenanagins - just sending traffic to their join page. A few posted in this thread, but there are many more.

As for who I am serving - I have to keep a balance between the advertiser and the publishers. See my last post.

I think you maybe you havent been able to make monery through purchased traffic? That may be the product your pushing or the landing page, or indeed the traffic. I know that VOD can be hard sell with all the free tube content.

Cheers.

If it's video on demand, then NO you cannot break even on purchased traffic, I would dare to say not from from any broker, including google adwords. If you can break even after cross selling,email etc I would call you lucky. It is a well known fact that porn site memberships have declined dramtically since tube sites came on the scene. It has gotten so bad that I have begun turning away buyers who want to send traffic to porn paysites. I know they won't make a profit so why waste their money? Dating on the other hand is very profitable with bought traffic, as are cam sites. Skimmed traffic has rarely been profitable for paysites, even 5 years ago it was tough, now it's pretty much impossible.

Thanks to the brokers who have contributed to this topic so far.

I'd have to disagree on the Adwords comment. Adwords campaigns convert our VOD sites at a very consistent 1:90 (so far this year). I made sure to check that ratio before posting it, so there is no exxageration whatsoever.

I'm currently trying out a popular broker's mobile traffic since their website says it is perfect for mobile VOD, and VODMoney is currently the ONLY VOD program to offer full features on their mobile platform. So far, no luck. I am using their premium mobile traffic so eventually it should convert if what they advertise is right.

Purchase is going to: http://m.adultvideolink.com/

If any other broker reading this thinks that mobile tour can convert on your traffic, let me know. I'd be interested in taking a look. Also, the aim of this thread is not to "out" any brokers, but only to educate myself and hopefully those who participate.

all the other chris' are posting in this thread so i thought i would aswell lol

I disagree with you on this one my friend... We have made a killing in the gay market over the last year. The gay market are still buying paysite memberships in droves. Also Amateur and GF are doing very well as well... I think obviously some of the other niches are having a tougher time (ie. Teen). I'm not arguing with you over the fact that obviously people aren't pulling 1:100 ratios anymore but there is still good money to be made.

Mark

P.S. Cams and dating are still doing awesome as well. Our biggest buyers are in those 2 areas of the biz :thumbsup

What is your cost per click on this and what is the cost per click that you have to bail out? I'm very familiar with google adwords and with every site there is a point where you have to stop raising your bid in order to stay profitable. Problem with that is you may have to stop raising your bid at a point that results in not a lot of traffic from google everyday.

By the Chris - thanks for posting this thread - I added a few customers.

I have a cam site and I purchased from everyone as a test in the years, from trafficshop / trafficholder to juicyads, ero-advertising, various tubes, just made an account at exoclick to test and so on. Actually those blind skim traffic convert bad even on cams but does clicked banner convert that better? And what about the cost and total availability?

I make one example: I have the cam plugin in member areas of several pay sites, these can convert 1:100 but how much total traffic they can send? Sure 1:100 is nice but if they send max 100 a day (then less after a while) that's 1 signup a day only, and have to deal with each site to put the link and this take lots of time as we know many webmasters are so late to reply or do things, it can take months for a link in a member area to happen.

Also I tried direct deals with medium big free sites like tgp and blogs and except few cases, I did not saved that many money or I've put the banner there and conversion sucked same as redirect blind stuff.

So it can be worth to consider also 1:10,000 conversion traffic if that can be started and stopped on same day via a control panel, after you pay it, if cost cheap enough, and you can get big amount like 20,000+ per hour that's 2 signups per hour, just an example.

The issue with direct deals is have not to icq and email many lazy webmasters who say hey bro blah blah but then never put your damn link before of spending the 6 months with 20 reminders - then you find out his site is so dead with little traffic, it was not even worth.

By the way Chocker I made an account at yours time ago then seen no one way I can pay you quickly (unless I give evidence I am not bin laden) so I gave up :)
I see you have popunders I like to try that, I'll icq you.

By the way whoever have for sale popunders geotargeted limit to us,ca,uk,de etc. good countries (spain and italy not so good imho) can hit me in ICQ 279222391 as I am buying during April.

or simply, he is over paying for it and for all he knows no one can convert that type / quality traffic for the price to buy it.

The person selling is doing so because he is getting more for it then he could if he used it himself in almost all cases. And don't give me the "well they just generate traffic to their sites they don't know how to promote sponsors or whatever, so they sell it". That is about 90% BS. How do they sell it? Either through clicks, skim, banners, text links, 404 etc... So they know "how" to send the traffic they just send it to Buyer A instead of Sponsor A. Generating the traffic is the hard part, getting the person to click the link for the ad or to go to your site in the first place. Who you send it to is easy, you just need to try a lot of sponsors out and use your aff code vs putting in the code so you can sell the traffic. One is not any harder than the other and easy for a site owner to do. So OBVIOUSLY, if they selling the traffic they doing that because they make more from selling it then they can as an affiliate. Not to mention when they sell it they are even losing money on broker fees. (all of you guys posting in this thread who take a cut) So they have to sell it for a good bit more then they could make sending it to a sponsor.

So if you are an affiliate your chances of using brokered traffic and turning a profit are pretty much nill. Now if you own a program, then you profit margin is better you have a better chance of turning a profit, likely a small one.

The traffic is going to always be priced higher then the broker could make from sending it to a sponsor himself. If the traffic is actually good quality then its price is going to go up as more people are going to want it. Either way, your % of profit is going to be slim, if you can even manage to turn a profit from it at all. Ideally most people use it for feeder traffic, but what happens with that is it's much much harder to track true sales, and most people using feed traffic are just looking to build up a site and know they going to lose money getting it going initially.

The bottom line is, if broker's traffic was great and people were doing well with it then they would never (or hardly ever) have any available to sell. If I find a source that is making me money, I tell them i want everything they have to sell and I will buy it all. Why wouldn't anyone do this? Why do these guys ALWAYS have traffic available to sell.... because everyone who used it before them lost money on the deal... seems like common sense, if just one person before you who used it was making a profit on it, then why in hell would they ever stop buying it ???

I've always done my best going to sites directly, that weren't selling traffic and working deals out with them directly, it's still hit or miss but some times people will under value their traffic and you can get a good deal and no one else has locked it up yet, then you got lucky. Also, like in my case since I promote a sponsor who pays on tiers I could be making a lot more than the site owner is with his cam sponsor, or maybe he is promoting bad ones and hasn't tested a lot of them yet and I can do better with mine. It happens, when you deal with people who never sold traffic before and you approach them and get virgin traffic. Not to mention when you deal with them directly, you cutting out the middle man and that extra expense :) BUT Being the 100th person in line with a broker, and getting extra sloppy seconds, what do you expect to make bank where everyone else couldn't off of it??? You better be selling some pretty great shit that no one else has access to.

Mark serves the almighty dollar. He plays both sides of the fence, which was evident when he admitted to selling traffic to installers back before his p2p stuff crashed. It was interesting to see him sell to an installer, which very likely was doing "things" that was counter productive to the other people he was selling to... it was kind of like AFF buying from zango and the "adware collisions" they were having with their own affiliates.

I'm actually not through with this thread. Good reading thus far, though.

CPC is always changing (sometimes 20 to 50% daily). You just need to stay on top of it. You're right in saying that VOD is a long term thing, often losing money on the initial conversion. It's customer retention (not at all like monthly membership retention) that generates the true profits. This is what VOD is all about.

These aren't customers who join a paysite and realize that they are being billed, re-billed, cross-billed, etc.. for something they aren't even using anymore and then they cancel and possibly charge-back. VOD customers stick around a very long time because they aren't getting billed unless they buy minutes. Nobody is breathing down their neck. They're in full control of their money.

But let's get back on topic. The bottom line is that search engine traffic brings a customer that is specifically looking for the product/service we provide (at least this is the way we run our campaigns). My feeling is that traffic from "brokers", "ad networks" or whatever they're calling themselves is "leftover" traffic. Traffic that these publishers cannot monetize themselves so they just ship it off for re-sale.

Precisely the type of traffic explained in post #27. So a CPC from a broker is $0.01 and, maybe $0.50 from google. If one cannot convert even 1:10000 from a broker, what's the point?

on some (many) sites I find adult traffic grossly overvalued.

I went trough my stats a week or so ago and there's a site sending me traffic that has not even 1 conversion in months, with thousands of clicks!

it's even more comical how some networks won't let you filter out specific sites out that just suck

It's always good to monetize traffic in the maximum possible way.

Yeah I don't accept credit cards. I accept paxum alertpay wire western union.

ha, I thought i killed it. I posted then everyone left for a couple days. :winkwink:

Traffic is the life-blood of webmasters.

Without traffic there is no money.

:2 cents:

Thanks, yes I read your replies but didn't have time to properly reply over the weekend.

I'd still like more brokers to add to this but I'm not holding my breath.

The bad thing about buying directly from the source is that you get raws, lots and lots of raws. A broker has multiple buyers so he can send them uniques only. IE if you buy the popunders from a tube site and the total monthly hits delivered are say 100k, I would guestimate that of that 100k hits only 15 to 20k are unique surfers. So in summary you have paid for 100k surfers but only gotten 15k or so.

I consider my brokers sales reps for our products, they bring me deals I may not normally get. I have a few mobile brokers and one main guy and they work with me to improve it for renewal but at my call - changing landing pages, sending new banners, etc. I don't look to them for advice or input on how to improve the deal. I can optimize my shit, brokers aren't familiar enough with your product to be making suggestions for improvement, they should just keep bringing you the deals.

And take it from someone who spent MILLIONS on prepays for Yappo... VOD is not for prepays.

BTW, Gamelink is a mobile VOD site.

When I buy from people directly, it's not broker style, $4 per 1K etc. I buy the banner on the top of the site, or I buy a pop under, or an im pop up, or a top link etc. I don't care about raws or even hits when I buy from people directly, i care about sales - cost to buy = profit.

ok I got tired of reading all this. Can I get a broker to tell me what it said?

Kristin, thanks for chiming in. I'm still re-reading your concept of saying your traffic brokers are sales reps for your products. I see how obvious this is, but maybe too obvious? Is there something more to what you're saying there?

MILLIONS to figure out that VOD isn't for pre-paid traffic? Who was in charge of that department? Are they still employed by you? Send them to me. I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I'm selling cheap.

BTW re: Gamelink. You're incorrect unless you're re-defining what VOD is/means as they do not charge per minute on their mobile platform.

On the sales rep, they make a commission on a deal they bring you, just like my reps. If the deal works, great we renew, onto the next sale.

If it weren't for Mark at GTS, Kevin may have never let us buy mobile traffic. It was one convo with Mark and we started buying, a lot. Who was out there getting the sites? Mark and the GTS team.

As for VOD, we followed the AFF model per the direction of the owner and it was for the release, so we had bought exits, skins, etc all for one big launch. On top of the movie cards and some other off traffic sources, we spent way more than we recouped on those deals. Live and learn, what worked for dating didn't for VOD and we saw that with VOD a lot.

I have had bum deals with every product we have pushed. When the VOD ones blew, I blamed the broker. It wasn't their fault. The same broker I yelled at and swore off because of Yappo is now my largest mobile broker. It was us, not them.. VOD wasn't meant for prepays purely because of the no recurring.

Split test, split test, split test (banners, landing pages, etc.) The more targeted and streamlined, the better.