Recently, Pirate Bay, a Peer to Peer Tracking site specializing in sharing music and film was ordered to be shut down. To do this, the Swedish court ordered their ISP (Internet Service Provider) to pull their plugs on hosting. That ISP, happened to be “Black Internet”.

Per an article on http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1530549/pirate-bay-pulled-internet..

Swedish authorities ordered that The Pirate Bay be disconnected from the Internet and the site’s bandwidth supplier Black Internet was threatened with a fine of $70,600 if it didn’t pull the plug.

However Black Internet’s shut down had hardly any effect on Pirate Bay. The site was completely offline for only a short while until another ISP was found. A Pirate Bay insider told TorrentFreak that it “got a new connection to the net” pretty quickly.

Our serendipity came in as our site is optimized for decent traffic from the search terms “Black Internet”.

Tips and Suggestions For Analytical Serendipity.

1.  Watch your stats.  As seen below, we have a site that lately, has not gotten a lot of traffic.  However, a major spike from a reputable Analytics program like Google Analytics  lets you know that traffic is real.  (normally, Google will rule out Spider and bot traffic).

In this case, traffic increased over 900% in one day.

Traffic Boost for "Black Internet"

2.  Determine traffic source:  In this case, we know from the search engine report what keywords were successful.  “Black Internet”.  But whatever the source of the referrer traffic needs to be investigated.  Sometimes, this may even be social sites, such as Myspace, Facebook etc.  In this case, it was search engine positioning.

3.  Go research the traffic source:  If the source was a blog or article, then investigate to understand what you think caused the traffic boost.

In this case, our traffic boost came from the search engines.  So our next step was to do a search for those terms.  When that happened, immediately, we saw the reason for the surge of traffic.

"Black Internet" Search Engine Ranking

Ideas to Monetize Traffic.

1.  Try different products that may cater to the story.  In this case, we are evidently catering to:

• those who like peer to peer file sharing.
• those who may like films and music
• those who may need web hosting
• build an email list for future marketing.

Therefore, we can always start with Google Adwords to offer contextual ads.  OR we could offer affiliate marketing/CPC offers that may resonate with this audience.

Short Term Traffic.

The buzz will soon bust.  So utilizing this time to your advantage is KEY!

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I have noticed an interesting trend on one of my B2C sites… one with extremely high organic traffic and search engine penetration.

Your Low Days?

The circled two days are Saturday and Sunday.  This helps me to deduce the following:

• My traffic is highest, of course, during the week.
• That site visitors must either spend more time on the internet during the week OR
• Site visitors have a higher opportunity to surf the net at work.

Now, if I can just crack the nut that helps me monetize that weekday traffic!

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I was reviewing my stats for one of our sites:  BlackAtlanta.com.  That site received:

• 13 million hits from January to November 2008
• 3.1 Million page views
• 650K visits
• 501K unique visitors

But I have to admit.  Funneling that many visitors into a conversion path on my own products or even affiliate products was not done in the numbers that I wished and hoped for. 

So now, I must either:

• focus on better traffic or
• improve landing page experience for existing traffic or
• learn the site visitor and what they are looking for!

For 2009, I am focusing less on BIG HUGE unqualified numbers for traffic and more on focused traffic where we can funnel those users into a great conversion funnel. 

What are your website traffic goals for 2009?

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Hair and Fashion have a huge market place online.  Do a web search for Hair Braids or Hair Braiding or Braids By Breslin to see how…

A couple of years ago, I advertised on BlackAtlanta.com for a company called “Braids By Breslin”.  The banners did not really have a very high click through rate for the general population of site visitors.  However, I quickly noticed in the stats that the term “Hair Braiding” was quickly becoming very popular as far as natural organic traffic for the site.

This was because of some ancillary content that I had added as a landing page for the terms.

So I contacted Braids By Breslin by email, and coincidentally, they were starting an Affiliate program.  I was their first affiliate.

For months, I enjoyed easy affiliate commissions from natural search engine traffic for “Hair Braiding”, and was even able to tweak search engine optimization for other keywords like “hair weaving” or “Kinky Twists”.   And then the GOOGLE flip out occurred.  Google flopped on me and my stream of revenue went down the drain.

Some Key Learnings

• Search engine optimization is a GREAT way for free traffic opportunities.  It is also VERY direct, in that the end user is definitely looking for your product or service.
• However, when Organic traffic is the ONLY source, if SEO efforts flop, then one should be prepared to supplement traffic in other ways.

A Solid Hair Braiding Product

Another key learning opportunity was basically that, you should promote strong products.  In this case, promoting an affiliate program, with strong products.  Here are some high quality Hair Braiding Examples!

With The Complete Training Package, You Get…

The Braids By Breslin “Four Hairstyles In One ” DVD

The Braids By Breslin “Cornrow Compilation” DVD

The Braids By Breslin “Weave Compilation: Volume 1 DVD”

The Braids By Breslin “Weave Compilation: Volume 2 DVD”

The Braids By Breslin “Master Wig Maker DVD”

The Braids By Breslin “Fusion DVD”

And The Braids By Breslin “Extensions” DVD

So,

1. Look for a niche in your traffic (Check your Stats!)
2. Then look for a product in which you could put in front of that demographic to buy!

Good Luck!

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In our article “Size Length and Size Matter? Home Page Testing on BlackAtlanta.com…”, we discuss landing page bounce rates.

High bounce rates normally means 1 of 2 things:

1. Marketing Deficiencies: You have lost the attention of the user based on how they got to your page (PPC or Organic Positioning) This happens because you have not properly matched landing page content to the reason the site visitor lands on your page. If using PPC, your landing page needs to cater to the content of the Ad!
2. Technical Glitches: Perhaps the page loads too slowly and the site visitor just … well, uh… BOUNCES off of our your page on to other surfing fun.

Now, if a page has a high bounce rate, you should use analytics to find out how they are coming to the page. At that time, you will be able to determine what you can improve. For example, if they are coming from Google search to your page for the keyword “cool pianos”, you need to cater that landing page to COOL PIANOS.

Now, here is the challenge: Because the page has a high bounce rate, once you improve the page, you need some immediate attention-grabbing content and/or features.

My suggestion is to install an analytics program such as Google Analytics. Learn which pages and section of your website are getting traffic and WHY. Then, even if you are getting high bounce rates, strategize on how to take advantage of that traffic coming to the page.

Catch the attention of your visitor ABOVE THE FOLD OF THE PAGE!!!

Lastly, if you are PAYING via PPC ads, SUSPEND and pause your campaigns until you figure out what you can do to decrease bounce rate while improving the completion of the desired action.

Read more on our experience with BOUNCE RATES at http://blackinternetmarketing.com/size-length-and-size-matter-home-page-testing-on-blackatlantacom/-/Black-Internet-Marketing/2008/11/10/

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The importance of your email list is extremely important.  Building a list, nurturing it, and yes… making money from it should be a high priority of yours.

So you’ve worked extremely hard to get traffic to your site.  A mix of Natural organic traffic and paid traffic campaigns has elevated those unique visitors.  What should you include in your marketing plan?  Yep, you guessed it… email marketing.

Email marketing is basically setting up a list of emails of site visitors that have visited your site.  You know they have an interest in your topic… or at least you are sure they have a PROBABLE interest in your site niche topic.  So the next best thing is to acquire that email address to stay in touch with willing email recipients. 

This type of marketing allows:

1. Multiple “touches”.  You may not sell your product or service to them on the first site visit.  Now, you can “Touch” them again with a series of marketing mails.
2. ROI.  Yes, in a way, if you paid to get site visitors to your site, then acquiring an email from them allows you to possibly sell an item to them in the future… allowing you to possibly recover the cost of getting them to your site!
3. Cross Promotion.  You may be able to sell another product or service to your site visitor/email recipient. 

There are multiple other reasons why building a good list is extremely important.  I use Aweber.com to:

• build my lists
• pre-load strategic autoresponder messages to the list recipients
• handle double opt-in features to comply with SPAM Act
• Segment my list according to open, sign ups, conversions, and more
• handle post-purchase communication to my client base.
• handle sign-up form creation, so that I can easily embed the forms in my pages.

Lastly, Aweber also has a great forum and blog, that gives tips and tutorials on how to increase the number of people on your list, and ways to strategically market to that list. 

Check out Aweber.com and read through some of the features of their services.  Check out the blogs and forums and learn.  Then sign up and use the service to start building your lists.  You will find that nurturing those lists are the key to staying in touch with your web site visitors and eventually, providing valuable products and services to them while increasing your bottom line revenue. 

Click here to visit aweber! … or even BETTER yet…

Try the free trial below!

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