Straight to the Source

A look at some of 2011’s top sources of website traffic reveals that oftentimes today’s best sources are the same as yesterday’s — with a few twists along the way.

Perennial favorites such as search engines, targeted link exchanges, affiliates and the cultivation of repeat visitors through bookmarking and email newsletter campaigns are still highly favored. While social media has become an extremely hot topic, the typically mixed results obtained by many adult marketers have dulled some of that channel’s shine — although these limitations may be more a matter of social site acceptable use policies, than they are an indication of the overall popularity of adult entertainment offers.

It’s not a matter of where a site’s visitors come from, but of how much you earn from them once they arrive.

Keep in mind that the concept of “social media” tends to devolve into a Facebook-centric view of the market (and with good reason); however, social bookmarking and user commenting may prove far more valuable to adult website operators.

Leveraging your content base, for example, via image and video transcript searches, as well as employing social media sharing of this material where appropriate, may prove among the best ways to develop a sustainable organic traffic base these days; but without automation and know how, this is a time-consuming and problematic process.

On the surface, paid advertising and traffic buys are the most likely ways to ensure a steady flow of visitors, but the perils of such endeavors include risks from click fraud and poor quality traffic that is simply the result of exhausted traffic trades sent to a broker for monetization and recycling.

While it is said that “all traffic is good traffic,” some of these deals stretch the point; so before you decide on taking a shortcut to trafficville, be sure to do some research as to just what is being paid for — and what the true cost of those visitors may be.

Of course, each website has its own traffic mix, with some sources being much more productive than others, which leads to the bottom line: it’s not a matter of where a site’s visitors come from, but of how much you earn from them once they arrive.

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