According to Internet investment guide Web-Invest.com, anyone who takes money and invests it must create a well balanced investment portfolio in order to minimize the risks while maximizing the potential gains.
“A balanced investment portfolio allows your money to grow with minimal problems and a lower risk of major losses,” explains a Web-Invest.com spokesperson. “A poorly balanced portfolio has the potential to lose everything if one or two investments suddenly drop or even go bankrupt.”
Today, tube sites have become a major part of the online adult entertainment landscape, serving as both a desirable distribution channel for content producers and other rights holders and as a way to build brands and generate revenues.
Adult website traffic managers can take a cue from the financial community in this regard when planning their acquisitions — with the ongoing tumult in the search engine marketing arena serving as a prime example of this handy principle’s application to those responsible for bringing fresh audiences to a website.
Whether pandas, penguins or the persecution of porn is to blame, many operators have reported significant declines in organic search engine traffic over the past year or so, and Tumblr sites are now in the crosshairs as well.
This situation has caused the collapse of sites that were particularly dependent on these sources for their traffic flow and sent others scrambling to disperse the eggs they once placed in a single basket, contrary to the common wisdom warning against doing so.
Zen Investor’s Erik Conley notes that one common mistake that investors make is not maintaining a proper balance in their overall investment portfolio, swinging back and forth between the extremes of being too heavily invested in the stock market when times are good, and not invested enough when times are bad.
“Balance refers to the way your entire nest egg is divided among the major asset classes of stocks, bonds, and cash,” Conley stated. “It’s the big picture — the view from 10,000 feet — the all encompassing summary of your financial resources.”
Substitute Google for the stock market and you see where many fortunes are failing.
This leaves you with two options: either try to trick Google into giving you the goods, or find other sources for the flow of visitors your websites and offers need.
For example, the time honored affiliate program has proven a reliable traffic source for program owners (also known as sponsors), as well as a profitable revenue stream for affiliates, although challenges from fraud and dwindling traffic levels complicate the situation today, forcing many paysites to bring their traffic generation efforts in-house in order to save costs while gaining more control over promotions and content distribution.
This shift is a back to basics approach to doing for yourself what you might otherwise have someone else do for you, such as posting links to directories, link lists, picture posts (including their pin board brethren), TGPs, MGPs and other websites. Today, tube sites have become a major part of the online adult entertainment landscape, serving as both a desirable distribution channel for content producers and other rights holders and as a way to build brands and generate revenues.
Pimproll’s PaidPerView.com and Pornhub’s Content Partner Program are two means by which website owners can gain traffic while boosting their bottom line with tube sites.
Other valuable traffic resources include trading between sites, using traditional text links or banner exchanges, plugs or posts. Sometimes blind trades are used, other times it is clicked traffic with a higher value. While organic linking is a proven strategy, having a more organized structure in place will provide a steadier source of website visitors.
For some, this means buying up existing networks to obtain their established traffic, for others, it will entail a more hands on approach.
For example, informational articles, news items and other promotional media can be used to help develop a direct audience, boosted by the added benefit of building a better search engine trail that will lead secondary visitors to your site through search discovery.
A similar result can be obtained through a comprehensive social media campaign that leverages Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter, among other platforms, as a way of interacting with existing fans while attracting new audiences. Onsite social engagement techniques such as commenting, polling and ratings also deliver long-tail increases in visitor volume.
All of these techniques work to balance a website’s traffic portfolio.
Perhaps some avenues may produce better results (but often with more hand-holding), but for operators seeking predictable traffic flows managed with automation and metrics, paid ad placements are an attractive way to put an offer in front of a large, highly targeted audience, the limits to which are as large as your budget allows. This may involve the use of banner ads, pop-up and/or popunder ads, pre- or post-roll video ads, targeted redirects and e-mail blasts, along with other advertising techniques; and enables resource planning so that your webhost can take any necessary steps in anticipation of sudden traffic surges.
That last point is an essential ingredient of having a well balanced portfolio, as some traffic sources, such as organic search and link exchanges, tend to have highly fluctuating volumes at unpredictable times; whereas many advertising buys, as well as placements such as a tube site clip or high volume gallery post, may deliver a server-crushing spike of visitors, but at a programmed time and date — allowing website owners to ensure that items such as extra customer support are in place as needed, to handle greater volumes.
Finally, website traffic managers involved in paid ad buys can take another lesson from the financial community by keeping an eye on things such as exchange rates, hold times and fulfillment windows, funding options and any other factor affecting your funds.
Just as with other forms of investment where stocks cannot be ignored, you do not want to ignore the benefits of Google or other third-party venues that are outside of your control, as many Tumblr promoters are also now discovering; you just need to diversify the impact that any sudden crash will have on your finances and your website’s future.
All it requires is finding the right balance for your site’s visitor acquisition portfolio.
