Underground Web Traffic (A Marketing Cheat)

"Underground web traffic" is a new strategy being employed by top Internet marketers to grow their businesses.

The good news is, you're going to learn exactly what it is and how to do it yourself. When you're done you'll learn how to generate 1,000's of real live visitors to your site every day for years to come for just pennies.

The bad news is the opportunity to exploit this strategy will not be available for very long so you need to jump on this right now. Although, to some extent it will always be available, the best time to capture this opportunity will be over the next 11 months and I'll explain why shortly.

First let me explain the concept of 'underground web traffic' and then we'll discuss how you can exploit it.

If you have been on the Internet for a few years you'll recall that the Internet 'boom' started around 1996 and ended in the spring of 2000 or there abouts.

During those years thousands and thousands of would-be entrepreneurs spent millions of dollars creating and generating traffic to web sites they built. Only after they built it and generated traffic to it did they discover their business model didn't generate any profits - so they went out of business - very fast.

Here's the rub: They spent millions to generate web traffic, get listed in search engines and left an incredible opportunity for the average person to make a killing by spending less than $9 on a domain name.

How?

Underground web traffic - the traffic that was and still is being sent to domains that were once 'high flyers' and are now ready to expire.

The exploit:

Thousands of domain names expire each and every day. Quietly top marketing gurus have been buying these expired domain names and profiting from the traffic that these domains still get.

Here's a quick overview of ways to monetize the expired 'underground' web traffic:

1) Using Archive.org's WayBack machine, determine what the site looked like and recreate the site - but use affiliate links of yours instead.

2) Re-direct the traffic using a script to your existing site.

3) Using a pay-per-click affiliate program monetize the existing inbound traffic.

The last exploit mentioned is the same method being used by Ultsearch.com. Have you ever seen this site on the Internet:

Ultsearch.com- The ULTIMATE Underground Traffic King?

You probably have... the owner of this site is making upwards of 5 figures each day from these sites. All he does is find expired domains with existing web traffic and put this site up on each of them.

There's an excellent article on this business model you can read here that explains what one man is doing to earn thousands a day from expired or 'underground' traffic. When you get to the site just go to the right column and click on "Ultsearch Expose".

So how do you find these expiring traffic domains?

Not easy.

If you were to do it yourself, you would need access to "domain drops"- times and dates of registrars that make expired domains available. Luckily there is a service to help you do that.

Now that you understand what 'underground web traffic' is and how you can profit from it, all you need is a few tools to get rolling.

Tools and Wholesale traffic reseller accounts:

Exody.com
Exody is a really interesting and useful service that provides 2 key solutions for helping you find expired traffic domains: 1) 'Drop lists' by registrar; and 2) A 'live' (yes, as they happen in real time!) update of expiring domains.

Caveat: This site is not for 'newbies'. It's cryptic and hard to find the lists you want.

Here's an interesting screen capture I took of the domains being dropped over the next few months...

Notice how the SIZE of the list bulks out beginning in March 2003 (2003-03) ?


Take a look at how the size of the lists of expiring domains bulks in size from March 2003 to February 2004. After that the size of the lists begin to decline. That's why I stated earlier that the window of this opportunity is short- about 11 months. The majority of expiring domains with traffic will be released and available to the public in this short time-frame.

Now these are 'text files' and you can see that the one's starting in March 2003 are over 10MB! These lists are huge and contain thousands of expiring domains!

These are 'bulk' lists and don't tell you which ones have any kind of 'popularity' or are still receiving traffic.

In order to do that you need a tool like Mozzle Pro to determine link popularity of thousands of domains at once.

If you're not the 'do-it-yourself' type you can get in on the ground-floor of a service (from expired-traffic.com)that will send you expired traffic domains weekly by email.

Here's a screen of the type of reports they send:



List of expired traffic domains with popularity link counts (the list is very long- I cut the size to fit this screen)


The domain is on the left and the total 'link popularity' for that domain is on the right.

The rule of thumb is that you will receive approximately 10% of the link pop number as visitor to the site on a daily basis. So if the link pop is 200 you should receive 20 new visitors a day from registering that domain. Of course, it's just a rule of thumb... your traffic could be much higher or much lower depending mostly on the quality of links pointing back to the domain.

After 100's of hours of research on this subject on the Internet we found that the services and tools mentioned here are the best for finding 'fresh' expired traffic domains. There are a lot of Wholesale traffic reseller accounts popping up everyday that claim to have 'fresh' lists, but many of them are buying their lists directly from exody.com- so you might as well go directly to the source.

As you begin to do some research of your own into this opportunity you'll discover that some expired domains are even listed in Yahoo! Registering a domain that's been grand-fathered into Yahoo! saves you the $299 listing fee each year. A domain like that is worth a great deal more than the $9 for registration- it's pure gold.

Remember the best time to exploit this opporunity will be short. So act now.


How To Generate A Constant Flow Of Web Traffic and Sales With Almost ZERO Marketing and Advertising Costs

The problem for most small businesses is not finding a product or service to sell, or customer service or how to count the money you make…it's…

"How do you find hungry markets for your products or services and make enough sales every day to make a living?"

Internet marketing gurus will tell you that you need to start an ezine …or participate in discussion groups …or use bulk opt-in email …or do reciprocal linking …or do banner advertising through a free exchange …or become a search engine positioning specialist…etc… etc… etc…

Hey, I'm not against any of these things. They all have their place in Internet marketing.

But, for the small business person or the mom or dad who wants to someday quit their job so they can have a life with their kids, or the store that's beginning to feel the pinch of Internet competition and wants to learn how to make a web site make money…all of the things mentioned above take…

+ Time,
+ Money, and
+ Non-cash Wholesale traffic reseller accounts (that you probably don't have).

Let's take starting an ezine, for example. Have you ever started a newsletter or magazine or newspaper?

Starting an ezine is not as hard to put together as these, but you have to deal with a lot of the same issues:

+ Who going to write each issue?
+ What's the editorial focus going to be?
+ How will you build a subscriber list?
+ Will it be verified opt-in or double opt-in?
+ Will you sell classified ads in the ezine?
+ If you sell classified ads how much will you charge?
+ How will you verify mailings for the advertiser?
+ Where will the ezine be hosted?
+ How will you deliver the issues? Will you send plain text or HTML or PDF or…?
+ How will you let your subscribers opt-out of your list?
+ Will you keep your list private or place it with a list broker?
+ Have you developed a Privacy Policy?

All of these questions (and much more…this is only a partial list) must be answered before starting your ezine. AND it's before you have even made $1 profit from your Internet business.

Let's talk about participating in discussion groups to market your web site.

Most, if not all of the really good discussion groups will not allow blatant advertising messages. So you really have to participate and be willing and ready to offer helpful advice and tips or ask serious questions in your posts.

To do that you need to study the discussion thread for a while, or "lurk". Find a discussion thread that interests you, ask a reasonable and intelligent question or post a brilliant and helpful response to a question. You will get some traffic to your site doing this.

It takes time though. I've spent days lurking groups and responded to less than 6 questions I felt competent to answer. For all that work I only got 35 new visitors to my web site. If you start to become recognized as an 'expert' on the board in a certain area, you will get qualified traffic to your site every time you post.

You might say, well, gee Dave, why not post more often to the discussions- you know- post once an hour or something?

Believe me, you don't want to get flip or post something really stupid… remember you're trying to share your knowledge. You have to at least look like you know what you're doing!

If you post more often than once or twice a day to any of these groups you're going to look like a discussion board spammer- that's a very bad thing.

OK, let's take reciprocal linking.

Sounds pretty good…and if done right…will work beautifully. Not an overnight solution but in 4 to 6 months you can dramatically increase traffic to your site.

But again -- it's time consuming. It may take days and weeks to get just a few links on other sites. And remember since you're exchanging links you have to set up a page on your site with all these links and maintain it. But it does work... but for an easier and better way to do it read my report Need Links To Your Site? (A Marketing Cheat).

If you're going to do reciprocal linking the 'traditional way' and ignore the advice I give you in Need Links To Your Site? (A Marketing Cheat) look into a program called Zeus or use Arelis by Axandra.com. They will automate most of the tasks of setting up the links for you including automatic robotic search of web sites you can link to, automatic email requests for linking to the webmaster of each site and automatic creation of the link directory for your site. It's pretty amazing but expensive and lately I've been hearing that some search engines are actually avoiding pages with a Zeus reciprocal link 'farm' on them. Yikes.

So, how does the average web site owner or wanna-be Internet entrepreneur begin to generate a constant flow of traffic and sales in less than 7 days from today with ZERO marketing and advertising costs?

The answer is by leveraging the use of trading communities or Central Internet Markets (CIM's) on the Internet.

Leverage in business transactions is what created millions for stock traders during the early 1900's. If you bought stocks on margin in 1910 you only had to put up 10% cash.

So you buy $10,000 worth of stocks for just $1,000.

That's L-E-V-E-R-A-G-E at work.

Real estate fortunes are created using leverage. As little as 5% down allows anyone with decent credit to purchase and control hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars worth of real estate.

That's L-E-V-E-R-A-G-E at work.

Another form of leverage is called "employees". Your boss or employer hires you to 'leverage' his or her time. Since they can't do everything, they hire you to do it.

One of the key ratios that business analysts look at is the 'Revenue Per Employee' - how much average revenue is generated by each employee for the company.

You can guarantee that the "Revenue Per Employee" figure will be 3 to 5 times larger than the 'salary' that employee gets to take home.

When I was the CEO of a non-profit community development corporation, we used this ratio as a benchmark for the organization. Yes, even non-profits measure this.

My "Revenue Per Employee" averaged about $250,000. That's how much the average employee was measured in the form of gross revenue each year. Can you guess how much the average employee in my organization actually made? Less than $20,000 a year. That's about a 10 to 1 ratio. Most businesses operate in the 3 to 1 ratio.

Where did the rest of those funds go? Well, since we were a non-profit most of our revenue went directly into economic development programs: entrepreneurial training, micro-enterprise development, housing programs and services that benefited the community. We weren't in it to make a profit, but one of our organizational goals included increasing our operating funds to provide a cushion against hard times.

But if we were a 'for-profit' business entity, the difference between "Revenue Per Employee" and operating expenses would be a contribution to profits.

Why would a company hire people to work for them if they lost money doing it? Does that make sense? Of course not.

Listen, you get hired for a job for one simple reason: It will make a profit for the employer. And you thought it was for some other reason??

Leverage is the key to business success in the 'physical world' and it's the key to success in the 'virtual business' world too.

But "Markets" are equally important. In the above examples you could not employ leverage unless you were able to tap into the right 'markets':

The Stock Market
The Real Estate Market
The Employment Market

Central Internet Markets include eBay, Amazon.com, elance.com and hundreds of other less known, but still, active markets on the Internet.

Is that the limit to CIM's? No, not at all.

In fact I mentioned two other CIM's just a few moments ago: Discussion boards. Yes, these too are CIM's. They do not exist for purely economic exchanges - they exist for the exchange of information and advice. Information markets.

Email lists that you belong to are also potentially CIM's. I say 'potentially' because there needs to be a mechanism in place that allows you to post - to ask questions and to respond to questions to make it a CIM. It's this 'exchange' of information that makes it a 'marketplace'. If it's a list that you can only read messages sent from the owner- but are not allowed to post- then it really doesn't fit the definition of a CIM.

The email discussion lists that allow posting (even though moderated) are good CIM's. There is sharing and information exchange there and indirect economic exchanges.

What do I mean by 'indirect'?

I mean that, in most cases, a moderator or group leader will allow people who post to the group to include a "signature". This is usually a 3-4 line advertisement about you and includes a URL for your web site or you email address.

There is a lot of 'indirect' economic exchanges on discussion boards and email lists - maybe more than you think.

For example, I'm a regular at Tony Blake's Forum and the SowPub forum. When I post a question to the group or answer a question, a lot of people will read my post. How do I know that?

Well, at the bottom of my post I always include a link to one of my web sites. I then read my web site log files and referrer logs to see where my traffic is coming from. A lot of it comes from the posts I made on discussion forums.

Let's wrap up this concept of CIM's with a definition. That way if you run into what you think may be a CIM, but aren't sure, you can always come back to this page and have something to measure it against:

Central Internet Markets or CIM's (pronounced "sim's") directly or indirectly encourage and expedite economic exchanges between individuals, business entities or groups by facilitating and allowing direct or moderated communication between participants.

Some CIM's are better than others. eBay, for example is a far superior CIM to Dan's Internet Auction Barn. And Tony Blake's forum is far superior to say… Jayjay's Amazing Fast-Buck-Good-A-Luck Forum on Angelfire.



How Any Small Business Can Use Central Internet Markets To Generate More Business

We will now see how to use the Internet as L-E-V-E-R-A-G-E to promote your product or service and generate a constant flow of web traffic and sales on your web site with the added bonus of self-generating and automatic testimonials.

As I mentioned, I 'lurk' on dozens of Internet discussion boards.

Once in a Blue Moon someone will ask if there are any good business 'uses' for … online auction sites...let me think....

Most businesses on and off the net just don't get online auctions.

They think they're flea markets.

They started that way, but have evolved way - way beyond that.

Online auctions started in 1995 (Labor Day, 1995 to be exact).

And trading communities were born.

Who is the poster boy for online auctions today?

"eBay".

They opened for business on Labor Day, 1995.

Listen very carefully. There are now hundreds of trading communities (TC's) around the net.

EBay (and other TC's) are not about trading Pokemon cards or Pez dispensers…they're about …

Leverage.

What is the stock, bond and commodities market? A 'central marketplace' where millions of registered users trade stocks of companies that produce goods and services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, non-stop, world-wide.

Are you beginning to see the BIG picture here?

eBay has expanded to the point where just 30% of it's transactions have to do with antiques or collectible items.

That means that 70% of the items being sold on eBay are goods and services that do not fit the collectible and antiques category such as brand new digital cameras, computers, books, stereos, etc.

Sun Microsystems sells its $6,000+ servers on eBay. It makes money, finds new customers and generates leads - all for free.

Restuarant.com sells 'digital gift certificates' on ebaY and makes $100,000+ per month in net profits with no physical delivery costs.

There are literally hundreds of 'business uses' for eBay or any of the other Trading Communities like Ubid.com, keen.com and more.

One of the least understood and least used business uses of TC's is generating constant traffic to your web site, sales and FREE lead generation for just about any kind of business.

eBay is the biggest and the best online auction site around. It is 'the market' for dynamically priced goods and services on the Internet. I mention eBay a lot, but the strategies and techniques are applicable to any online auction site or trading community.

You might say, 'Well Dave, I have a service business. How can eBay help ME develop constant flow of traffic, sales and generate leads?"

Done right, eBay can be set up as a lead generation machine for any kind of business.

Here's how:

Let's say you have a service business. This is what I would suggest you do (because it's what I do to make money online):

Put together articles you've written (original material is best) and posts to discussion groups and organize them into an short e-book (or e-booklet) and list it under the appropriate category on eBay. In your description you include a link back to your web site (more about this later).

Of course, in the book you'll demonstrate your superior knowledge of your subject area for your type of business and include a link (or several) to your website and include additional contact information…and how much easier it is to use *your* services than if the customer did the service themselves ;-)

If you're selling a service, use the eBooklet technique to generate leads. Or if you want to actually make money on eBay and generate leads...you could spend extra time on your eBook, put together some great original material and sell it for a good/fair/reasonable price.

It doesn't matter what kind of service your provide...you should always be ready to educate your buyers. This technique has been very effective for me (selling rare and collectible books and eBooks) - plus - if you do it right - your leads will actually cost you nothing.

But first a WARNING: This 'system' will do you no good whatsoever if you don't follow-through with the leads that you get. You must think about what you're going to do with the leads after you get them. Letters? Emails? Audio tapes? All of these can be sent to your prospects from this system to make a sale.

Okay?

Here's how it works:

You have an eBook you want to sell. But you did some research and most of the ebooks on ebay sell for less than $20 and yours is $49.95.

Create a 'mini' version of your book- a 20 page "report" on the subject of your larger work. You put it up for sale on eBay for $1.00 or .50 cents or whatever you think will draw the most bids.

If you have a good title, good cover design etc, people interested in the subject will bid on it. You collect your $1.00 per eBook-- your delivery costs are "ZERO" because it's "digitally delivered" and your only fees are eBay's listing fees, which should be covered by the buck you get from each successful bidder.

Now here's a bonus to this "system": All the email addresses are sent to you *automatically* when the auction is complete by eBay.

Bammm! You have a built-in automatic lead generating machine going--all you have to do is make your eBook so attractive people bid the dollar to get it- all the email addresses are sent to your mail box automatically.

You can build a significant mailing list in a very short period of time using this method.

Just make sure after you have delivered everyone with their eBook that you ask permission to keep them on your FREE "updates list"- and give them an opportunity to sign-up or opt-out.

How about non-payers? My humble opinion on that is- send them the eBook anyway! Hey! You're trying to generate leads and work your back-end!

Who knows, they may feel so guilty so sent the darned thing for free- they may just buy your book to relieve some of that gnawing guilt!

Here's the "Formula" in numbered order:

1. Create an 'eBook' or 'eBooklet' educating people about your product or service or create a "report' that's a mini version of the book you're really selling;

2. List it on eBay in the appropriate categories at a nominal opening bid and put a link back to your website;

3. Collect the money at the end of the auction or not;

4. Collect the "qualified' leads and get them to opt-in to your mail list then follow-up with them to sell them your real book or service.

This works for other items too. Not just service businesses and eBooks.

Do you have a sample of your merchandise that you can auction for a $1.00?

Do you have a low-priced item that can be auctioned for less than $5 like a gift certificate, etc...?

What about the link back to your web site? How does that fit in?

There are a lot of people who see your listing (ad) on eBay. At last count eBay had 32 million registered users.

Some of those people will be sold on your product or service as soon as they read your listing (ad).

Including a link back to you web site is allowed by eBay on your "About Me" page... use it!

There's another factor working here…it's called 'feedback' on eBay's site.

Here's how it works:

You sell something. The person you sell it to likes it. They go to eBay's site and are given a chance to 'leave a comment' about how well you handled the entire transaction-they call it 'feedback'.

If you did a GREAT job, they leave you "Positive" feedback. (This is the BEST)

If you did just an "Okay" job they will leave you "Neutral" feedback. (You don't want "Neutral")

If you did a really poor job they will leave you "Negative" feedback. (This is very BAD for you)


Here's the secret to this part of the program:

All feedback really is, is "Testimonials" for your product or service or you!

The system is really ingenious. It generates for you AUTOMATIC, CONSTANT testimonials for your business.

The hardest thing for most small businesses is to ask for testimonials from their customers. It's tough. You have to ask them to say nice things about you…in writing!

But with eBay's system of feedback, you get these automatically!

Now, not everyone will leave you feedback. Some people forget or they get busy so you have to remind them.

THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. When people want to bid on your auction they WILL check your feedback. If the feedback you have is 99.9% positive…chances are they will see you as:

o Credible
o Reliable, and
o Someone they want to do business with

Since the "Feedback's" you receive are public comments, you can also use them:

o On your web site
o In your email marketing
o In your direct mail pieces
o Anywhere you want!

If you can't picture what 'feedback' is and have never seen it before click here to view one of mine:

infoproductlab*com

Last time I looked it was 99% positive.

Putting It All Together: The Basic System For Profiting From eBay and CIM's

We have now seen that we can use eBay and other online auction sites (or CIM's) as L-E-V-E-R-A-G-E to :

o Promote your product or service, and

o Generate a constant flow of traffic to your web site, and

o Generate leads and sales with the added bonus of

o Self-generating and automatic testimonials, and

o How to build a customer and opt-in list quickly and almost automatically.

The point is that you can use eBay and other online auctions sites like eBay to generate constant traffic to your web site, generate sales and receive great testimonials, automatically.

As long as you continue to use the program you will begin to see dozens of ways to LEVERAGE online auctions and other CIM's to drive traffic and sales on your web site.

Hey!! There are more way to make money on eBay than meets the eye. I've tested hundreds of ways...and keep finding more every week.

Remember you can use eBay NOW to L-E-V-E-R-A-G-E:

1) Your Time,
2) Your Money,
3) Your Non-Cash Wholesale traffic reseller accounts.

Ok, that's a good start…

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© Copyright 2003 by InfoProductLab.com

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