can someone explain these stats or draw any conclusions

[roseau]

Hi

Hopefully someone has more experience with this than me.

I bought 10,000 general hits to a my sweepstakes page.

I read my server logs and they showed the traffic came. I also had the page set up with an independent third party company. So everything seemed to check out.

The affiliate program whose sweepstakes I promoted showed about 150 clickthrus for the 10,000 so again I know people came and did something.

BUT I have not received one revenue generated lead from these 150. It seems odd to me because I usually make about $40-$50 per month with my own traffic. (all the people have to do is enter a contest! - no credit card - no nothing)

Does this seem right to you? Is it possible for the traffic company to click on links to make it look like people wanted to sign up for the sweepstakes.

I find this dilemma strange. I got the traffic and I got the clickthrus I anticipated and the affiliate program has been honest with leads in the past.

What am I missing here? Any insight would be appreciated.

[aspen]

The first thing you did wrong was buy traffic.

If its not a machine generating the impressions (don't call them hits) its a bunch of chinese people or something like that.

[ChrisRoss]

Where did you buy traffic from? You have to be carful where you purchase traffic and what kind of traffic you purchase.

Aspen has a good point there are many traffic companies out there that just use computers or foreign sites to generate traffic. The best thing you can do is ask questions. Where is the traffic coming from? If pop ups (which I think don't work) ask for some example sites (more then 5) of where your pop up ad will be displaying. Basically if they can't tell you where the traffic is coming from that don't buy it..

Not all purchased traffic is a scam.

[mjames]

Originally posted by aspen
If its not a machine generating the impressions (don't call them hits) its a bunch of chinese people or something like that.

That's got to be the funniest thing I've read all day. Thanks for that -- just envision what he said.

Anyway, I think aspen means if you are buying traffic, you are wasting your money. You can advertise on sites that are targeted to yours and that will yield better results than buying traffic, which is often untargeted. Although nothing is guaranteed with targeted advertising, it gets better results than buying visitors.

[aspen]

You may find it funny but not too long ago someone posted here saying how they were ripped off when they bought traffic because all of the visitors were chinese, which doesn't do you much good if your site is in english.

[Archbob]

Buying blind traffic from offers such as "1000000 hits for $100" or something like that is not reliable at all. It completely untargeted. Pay for a listing in Yahoo or ask for reciprocal links. The money would also be better spent on looksmart oroverture as well.

[roseau]

Hi

Thanks for your help. I did think I was buying from a credible company. I went even one step further and bought their memebrship at $29.95 to get my traffic at wholesale.
I even bought EXPENSIVE "targeted casino" traffic to a program that has a 1/5 conversion rate. You guesssed it. I wasted a lot of money.

On the positive note, I was seriously thinking about pay per click search engines and I am glad you have mentionned them to me. I will start to move my advertising dollars in that direction and hopefully see a difference.

[Automated]

This may sound a little defeatest of me but i beleive that if a site makes you think you are going to make easy money sitting about, its a scam.

These traffic sites that you talk of are probably start exhcanges where every time you open a new browser.

Matthew Taylor