My conversion rate for my current traffic isn’t bad at all (around 1 in 40 sign up), I haven’t made a serious effort as my product is only in it’s initial sign up stage, so I’m hoping when I finally launch I’ll reach a decent amount of traffic that I can then work on the quality of conversion.

Great book by the way, just finished the freebie and I’m going to purchase the full version soon!

Having done little advertising on the other PPC networks I would assume they would fall in with #8. But it’s just a guess.

>Also no mention of video? One good video on youtube >can drive huge traffic.

Good point. It actually depends how they find the video. If they find it using the YouTube (or other video website) search mechanism, or through a Google search then traffic would likely fall into 5 or 7, though video has a bit more potential to engage its audience than a standard web page.

But since a lot of YouTube-related traffic winds up being direct, type-in traffic I’m not sure where it performs.

>Also by having a facebook group with active users >about the subject matter/problem/solution etc it can >fall into category 3.5 maybe?

It depends. In my experience most Micropreneur niches do not benefit from having a Facebook group. But if you put one together I would guess it would fall between 2 and 3.

>NO mention of JV’s either although it could be said >that is point 3.

Correct. JV’s are almost always a recommendation from someone who has an audience that trusts them to some degree.

NO mention of JV’s either although it could be said that is point 3.

You’re falling into the “any traffic is good” trap. Startups aren’t here to build a brand – they’re not Proctor and Gamble or Versace…as a startup you’re here to acquire customers, and non-targeted traffic is almost worthless.

If you sell hammers from your website and 10,000 people from TechCrunch visit your site but none of them needs a hammer then this traffic is virtually worthless. Having 10,000 people hear about your startup and then forget about it 3 seconds later (which is what happens) is as good as them never hearing about it.

>I can probably point out quite a few startups that didn’t take advantage of that TC surge

This is because it’s almost impossible to take advantage of TC traffic – this traffic doesn’t convert well and doesn’t click on ads. No amount of optimization is going to make this traffic turn into gold unless your target market is people who are interested in tech startups.

Higher quality, niche traffic is typically 2-10x more profitable than the drive-by traffic you see from TC.

Yes. AdWords are a difficult one to place on this list. For some of my websites it falls as #5, for some it falls at #8. In either case, it’s low because it’s not a trusted source for most people – no one is speaking on your behalf like they tend to be with a link from a referring website.

When people realize it’s advertising (some people know AdWords are advertising, others don’t), you don’t have as much credibility as when someone is vouching for your product or service.

While that is true, sometimes with startups you want the traffic. In fact with most startups, without the traffic, people don’t even know you exist. So by getting the attention via TC, they accomplish that.

Now the sad thing is that the startups usually don’t figure out that they need to convert those people until it’s too late. In fact I can probably point out quite a few startups that didn’t take advantage of that TC surge. I know of some personally where I helped to get that TC surge and the company went flat because they didn’t know the gift I gave them.

So it seems as though after #5, you’re dealing with people that haven’t heard of your site/app before. That completely makes sense to me. I found Google AdWords traffic at #8 interesting. Is it so low because it’s advertising? Targeted advertising, but advertising nonetheless I suppose.

I disagree. The purpose of traffic is to convert into customers or provide SEO benefit. TC provides some SEO benefit, but it’s not the golden ticket many people make it out to be in terms of bringing people who convert to customers.

Now while the above is true, it does provide your site with a ton of traffic, even if your startup is the biggest head scratching company ever conceived. It does serve it’s purpose, as limited as that might be; oh and it’s made the owner of TC a very nice income.

What are your thoughts about testing such a list of 9 items you listed above? Do you think a site like http://www.performable.com could help?