How do you get the most and best traffic to your Web site?
"Take your time, do it right," said Ron Cohen of Internet Supply, at a well-attended ia2000 seminar on generating the maximum site traffic.
"You've got to find the right domain for your site," Cohen told the audience. "You've got to make sure your content and your customers are suited to each other. Trade links off with other sites. Just take your time, just do it right.
"And don't be afraid to comparison surf," he continued.
And, added JMR's Jonathan Lieberman, spam works like a charm - but don't even think about using it - it can do wonders against your reputation.
Wasteland's Colin Rowntree agreed with getting the right domain name. He also told the seminar's audience that it's a smart idea, if your aim is a well-attended pay site, to build ten small free sites as a kind of lead-in to the pay site, and make sure they offer the best possible content to make your potential customers graduate to secured customers.
Rowntree also said it's not a bad idea to seek out and buy erotic fiction, with the genre being one of the sleepers of the online adult industry.
Lieberman said testing Web traffic is one of the smarter things you can do, especially if you're going to spend a lot of money with traffic providers. "Test it out," he said, "know which of it works and which of it doesn't."
He also warned against singular Internet service provider relationships. "It can't hurt you to have a relationship with more than one," he said. "You're going to get more if you have more."
As for the future? Panelist Andy Edmund of SexTracker predicted heavier use of Web demographics, which he added wasn't necessarily a bad thing. Rowntree said the future was going to pay closer attention to "the look and the language."
But Edmund also said one thing would not change, no matter what else changes in cyberspace. "You have to sell to the user," he said. "Don't force them."
