Revisitors.com certainly have a compelling value proposition, it goes something like this, everyday they purchase expired domain names that still have traffic on them, then sort those domains into 160 plus categories
based on their traffic, after which they analyze their clients websites and redirect the most relevant domains to them. Sounds pretty reasonable, in fact I had often thought of buying an expired domain in an appropriate category myself in the hope that I could shorten the time it takes for a site to come to prominence (yes, it takes time…usually lots of it) but hadn’t really pursued it.
I wont go into too much detail regarding the revisitors.com sales pitch as it’s all there when you visit their site but, in a nutshell, the message, which is both stated, and strongly implied by the graphics on the site, comes down to the simple equation, targeted traffic = leads = big profits!
Let’s examine the revisitors.com promise then. First you are presented with a before and after graphic which pretty much implies that with their product you’ll see steady traffic, your PayPal receipts will grow from hundreds to thousands of dollars, and your Alexa rank will head steadily north (ironically enough you could say that although the before graph is patchy, it’s actually trending up, whereas the after graph has peaked in the middle and is now trending down…but that’s just being pedantic isn’t it?). Then they go on to emphasize that it delivers 100% genuine and unique visitors.
Show me a webmaster who doesn’t want thousands of highly targeted visitors every day, and I’ll show you a standards compliant Microsoft browser…I decided to give it a run.
TotallyAweseomeFreebies.com is my crash test dummy site, they say that you learn from your mistakes and, if that’s the case, I’ve learned a lot from this site, but I think that it’s vital to your success as an Internet marketer to have a site where you can afford to take risks, then apply the knowledge to your more lucrative sites. Revisitors.com offer a variety of traffic plans, starting from 2500 visitors and going up to the hundreds of thousands, I chose 25,000 visitors for the reasonable price of $99 or .004¢ per visitor!
My plan started on August 20th 2007, take a look at the following stats taken from Google Analytics for TotallyAwesomeFreebies.com.
| July/August 2007 | August 20th–Sept 22nd | |
|---|---|---|
| Traffic Source: | PPC/Organic | Revisitors.com |
| Visitors: | 6556 | 5978 |
| Pages/Visit | 3.33 | 1.01 |
| Avg.Time On Site | 00:02:33 | 00:00:01 |
| Bounce Rate | 38.22% | 98.91% |
| Avg.Lead | $1.36 | $1.28 |
| Conversion Rate | 7.16 | 21.06 |
| Visitor Value | -0.06¢ | -0.03¢ |
Now, when you look at the July/August 2007 column you can see the problem I was intent on solving.
Every 7 visitors to the site converted to a $1.36 average lead, but, getting them there with PPC actually meant that every visitor was costing me .06¢. I needed to get this into the positive. Looking at this extremely optimistically you do the maths and 2500 visitors a day kisses the day job goodbye, as long as the traffic is either organic, or much cheaper. That’s why the Revisitors.com offer looks attractive…but, does it work?
A look at the second row pretty much answers the question. Revsitors.com traffic actually arrives via a server called yourtrafficserver.com so Google Analytics makes it very easy to distinguish this traffic from anything else. You remember that I bought the 25,000 visitor plan, sure enough, on 22nd September my account stated that they had in fact delivered 25,000 visitors to my site over the course of approximately one month. Google Analytics, on the other hand, reported 5978 visits from the server at revisitors.com, a discrepancy of 19,022.
Looking at the number of pages visited, and the time spent on the site, an average of one second, raises significant questions about the validity of their claim to targeted traffic. Ok, it could mean that my site completely sucks, but the numbers from PPC/Organic would seem to indicate otherwise. Then, when you look at the bounce rate, the number of visitors from revisitors.com who clicked the back button, and see that it’s 98.91% you have a serious problem. Search engines, seeing a site with a bounce rate this bad would rate it of very low relevance. I had to turn the PPC back on just so this figure would improve. There’s no point pursuing the discrepancy in traffic volume with them, the quality of the traffic is so bad it’s not worth the effort.
On another note, my Alexa rank didn’t budge.
I’ll conclude by saying that in trying this product I chose to ignore the absolute bleeding obvious; why, if you could simply buy targeted traffic in this quantity and have it convert to a respectable percentage, would there be a multi million dollar Internet marketing training industry at all? It didn’t work for me and I doubt that it will work for you, but you could always try it for yourself.
Finally, if you’re interested in knowing more about the site metrics I referred to in the table above, you might want to check this out.
{ 3 comments }
Damian, just wanted to thank you for this insightful review. As it happens, we also tried a month long campaign, albeit the smallest 2500 visitor campaign, and can confirm your findings. Average time on site for revisitors traffic never broke the 1:30 mark. There was no increase in CTR. In fact, the only thing this traffic did do was throw our bounce rate stats way out of perspective.
Sir: I had been reading your artical on Revisited.com Your URL on the artical for 2007 is:http://www.damiansaunders.net/2007/10/17/reviews/revisitorscomdoes-it-work/
I had been wondering if they are the only ones that you had tested or have you tested others. As a Website owner I can use some insight as to the best places to pay for advertising.
Thanks
Mike
That’s a very good question, but I think it should be; where is the best place to buy traffic to my website that will bring visitors who are well targeted to the products or services I have to offer?
Obviously, form my post, you can see that Revisitors.com is a complete waste of time. Anything else that seems too good to be true, always is, without exception.
My business (that’s mine and my partners), cogentads.com has just passed the $1m revenue target, 11 months into it’s first full financial year. Prior to starting that business I had spent over $20,000 on products by so called internet marketing gurus and I can tell you there are really only two products that you should buy, and you should consume all the information that they offer before considering anything else. There are no silver bullets.
When ever we want immediate and well targeted traffic to our websites or campaigns we use Google Adwords. We give very little or no consideration to using any other form of advertising. Adwords just works, but you have to know how.
One of the most vital pieces of information you need to know as far as your site, and conversion rates are concerned is your visitor value. This is the equation that tells you how much you can afford to spend on Adwords. Get that right and you have your traffic source wired. Ok, it’s not quite that easy but it’s the secret source. Obviously then , you need a handle on Google Adwords itself – otherwise you can just as easily loose your shirt.
These are the two products I recommend.
Marketing Tips – The Insider’s Guide to Marketing Your Business on the Internet This is a very well rounded approach to all the facets of online marketing including the “secret source” metrics you need to have nailed. This was the one I would choose if I was stranded on a desert island and was only allowed one book on Internet Marketing. You can get a 30 day free trial here.
Perry Marshall’s – The Definitive Guide to Google Adwords is, well, definitive. Forget all that “spy on your Adwords competition” rubbish, there’s no point, and if you’re running a successful business you wont have time anyway.
Hope that helps.
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