Making a HUGE site, ranking on Alexa [thoughts, strategies] (15)
Making a HUGE site, ranking on Alexa [thoughts, strategies]
Just been having a few ideas lately about conquering the viral game, or at least web property game. I know a few guys whose success came with celebrity sites getting tens/hundreds of thousands of unique daily visits, and I know somebody from this forum also employing a similar strategy albeit using paid ads and arbitrage (not sure if developing for long-term success but with the money he's making it doesn't matter!).
It might benefit everyone to share some systems (not 'tips') to achieving a high-traffic viral site. Or in general getting traffic without the shitty small-time SEO tactics.
Firstly, we're not even going to talk about content. It should be great content, but that's not hard to do. Even if it's the same content, you need to put a new angle on things. This is how some big sites do it.
Promotion strategies that will get you to the 1m unique visitors per month mark:
>>>> Reddit promotion // There was a great guide posted on TheVault; OP claimed to have gotten massive traffic to several websites, using duplicate accounts and a simple strategy. You only need 20 accounts or so to conquer a certain sub-reddit. You need some seed activity; micro-turks can help out (or any outsourcing. More importantly, 5 members on STM cross-promoting content = 100-account army. Just make sure you submit reddit-friendly content.
>>>> Google News // I ran a Google News-indexed site successfully for 1 month, it was even making a profit and I was just messing around with it. Getting accepted is the hard part. It ended because I stopped posting articles as I was getting into PPC. I was not thinking about branding and the future. I rewrote 3 news articles daily (if you go below this, you get taken out of the system by Google), and was getting great comments etc. About 400-600 unique visits per article. Not bad for what took 1 hour of work each morning. I was converting via adsense only. You can't make a NICHE Google News site unless you already have a larger all-news property. This is how a site like Business Insider (with a name like that you will get authority-seeking clicks) started, and look at where it is now. Imagine if you had a writer applying Upworthy/Cracked-style headlines to 20 articles a day, 7 days a week! Implementing social features etc. would help the site grow. In the last year, Google News has sought to cull worse sites, and uses algorithms, so you definitely need to make sure your spelling and grammar is in tip-top shape. (Take it easy on "I" and exclamation marks, for example, as they are flagged and not really news-ey.)
Using both of these strategies, I KNOW for a fact you can get a million visits a month (3k visitors a day, that is 10-15 short news pieces maximum, with maybe 2-3 burst submissions on reddit every month). Monetizing is something else though. And for the news site, you kind of need to have a News site. One trick is to have it at yourdomain.com/news and after Google accepts your site and you've been running for a month, put your main strategic monetisation on yourdomain.com. Make sure internal links are in order and you will benefit SEO-wise and can now also push whatever (carefully).
Best of all, being on these two properties allows your site to get the attention of CNN, TIME and other major web outlets.
The only problem is literally the angle, and how you're going to generate the content. Upworthy has its angle (making 'important' and impactful content spread through social media through the use of clickbaiting), as do others. Business Insider started off strictly news and is now clickbaiting too, and posting some rubbish here and there. Basically, clickbaiting + [something] and you have your ticket.
Just rambling here, but it's something to think about for guys that are running their own sites. There are some other big strategies you can use to push your sites, I'm sure. These two require some work but can pay off, especially if you want to flip your site for example (you'll have quality traffic to back it up, but may not want to share the reddit portion of the system).
Nothing really new + you'll be in the soup of people who have a lot of traffic but low revenues due to lack of any purchrase-intent on that kind of traffic.
Well there are two sides to this. If just plan just to monetize off traffic alone immediately, it's not a good idea. But if you believe in your product, these will give you a leg up in achieving sustainable traffic without standard SEO. In other words, entering the public sphere.
I have some fitness apps being developed right now, and according to advice I've read, 20 upvotes in the first 3 hours (submitted at a peak time) from a non-new account on reddit will get your content to the front page of the sub. /r/fitness has nearly a million subscribers (many more millions lurking, and it's a default sub, too), celebrities like Arnold visit from time to time. If the product is great enough (assuming it is), this is the only platform you need to get your content popular, at least among that demo.
I didn't know that reddit could be manipulated with just 20 accounts to the point of attracting hundreds of thousands of clicks! Maybe everyone else knew though... hopefully my post helps just one person think about their strategy.
Also, AM is all about being "in the soup"... small slice of the big pie, bro.
"How I made a million in 3 months", by Markus Frind (PlentyofFish founder): http://webmasterworld.com/forum89/13958.htm
I would study InstantCheckmate and PetFlow.com, both were started by really experienced affiliate marketers and they're killing it.
"You can't make a NICHE Google News site unless you already have a larger all-news property." @redrummr - why do you say that?
I swear I don't know how you got into my head as I had these exact ideas, and then some, the past few days. I'm not familiar with The Vault. Is that a forum, the talk show I saw or something else. I would love to get my hands on that reddit guide.
The news site is a really good angle because all you would need to do is set up some rss feeds, google alerts, etc. send the information over to a custom spinner and then have somebody manually review them for accuracy, titles, etc. and post on a drip schedule.
Originally Posted by nzbryant
There aren't many sites that are niche, that qualify as News. Most have a heavy bias/fandom attached. Get your general site up, then make a new one for fitness or whatever you like, but write as news-ey as you can. There's a guide on how to do this, it's floating around somewhere. I imagine there'd be massive traffic whenever you can hit on a trending story with an MGID/Upworthy-ish title to make your site stand out.
Originally Posted by escondido
That reddit guide is just a little more exact than what I quoted above. TheVault.bz, I can't post the content here as they'd ban me (I use the same picture, and vaulters are on STM).
Just trying to stimulate the atmosphere here a little, there are many methods that work when you can put in the effort. Having a proper web news property that can eventually have its own voice and following, is one of the most powerful things IMO.
Hi, I'm starting a new editorial web site social based. We use a private media center to monetize our advertising space (like wpp). With these type of partnership you must guarantee an XX,XXX daily traffic. With an higher cpm you can do arbitrage with good margin. The key is find the #1 site in each traffic source (ex. upworthy on social), study their strategies, try to improve it and apply to your site. Start with social and arbitrage, build your trust on g news and try to catch every visitors for a daily newsletter. Some month ago you can do very good number with facebook, this is what we did:
That's an interesting approach on the topic San Benedict. It's tough to read that picture that you sent, but it seems your site is getting some very nice traffic. Are you merely focusing on advertising arbitrage or are you working on SEO, social ads, etc.?
I used to own a website that got 40,000 uniques a day in it's prime months. Average was closer to 10k-15k/day.
I had 100's of forum accounts, that i MANUALLY posted on all the time to keep my rep and posts up, and then added links to my site when i released the most viral content. It worked well during its time.
Originally Posted by stackman
Remember also that reddit seeded lots of fake accounts and content to start with. It seems to be a matter of manual labour until a project gains natural traction.
I wonder how WhatsApp got its first 10,000 users?
Originally Posted by redrummr
- http://blog.textit.in/your-path-to-a...ild-a-j2me-app
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7266796
Worth nothing though that the founder, Jan Koum, was an early Yahoo employee and made out around $400K in stock options once he left. That's what let him bank-roll Whatsapp during the first few years, build a great product, and really scale it without VC funding and without giving up control early on.
@redrummr, have you been able to get any traction on this?
I have been following Playbuzz for about the past 10 months, and I have been just floored. They have been killing it in terms of traffic.
I am getting around 40k Uniques a day ...... I pay for all the traffic though not seeing much free traffic
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