Recently, we’ve had some big successes with two
unique traffic sources that I want to share with
you this month. The first allows you to drive tons
of high-quality local traffic with advertising — at a
fraction of the cost you’d expect to pay through
similar sources. Then I’m going to show you how
you can actually get paid to drive leads for your
own business. As you read, I want you to start
thinking of more creative ways you can use these
ideas for your own business.
Underground “Mommy” Blogging Networks
A little over a year ago we started to see the “Groupon” craze
sweep across the country, and we wanted to be part of it. So
we found a cool domain and brand, created a killer website
and early last year launched CitySmart.com.
Now, as an “internet marketing guru,” I thought that this site
would be as simple to launch as any of the other niches we
play in, but we quickly ran into some problems.
First, because we were the first “deal of the day” site in Boise,
we had to do a lot to educate our market, both business
owners and consumers. Second (and a much bigger
problem), was figuring out how to drive local traffic quickly to
our new startup business.
So we started to pull out our bag of marketing tricks to see
what would work best. At first we thought we’d just target
local search using pay per click and organic search, but we
quickly found it was too slow, and didn’t generate the
momentum we needed to launch our website.
Next, we decided to try some offline media because we
thought it would be easier to target local consumers. So our
next test was radio. After a few thousand dollars in radio ads,
and very few actual website impressions, we pulled the plug
on that, too.
Then we decided to go “guerilla.” We printed out sticky notes
and got a team of people to run around neighborhoods
sticking our notes with ads on front doors all over Boise. We
quickly found the ROI on that wasn’t really worth it either. So
our site had been live for almost two weeks, and sales were
coming in, but not at the rate we had hoped for. We were
frustrated and almost ready to give up, but lucky for us, we
didn’t.

During that time, we met a few “mommy” bloggers at a
networking event, and one of them posted a blog entry about
an offer we ran on our website. What happened next was
amazing.
We sold 1,528 coupons that one day! Up to that point, I don’t
think we even had a total of 1,500 visitors to the site. So
obviously, after that, we wanted to replicate it. So we started
to buy advertising on that one blog. We then found six more
local “mommy” blogs in our town, and started buying ads on
their websites also. The results have been amazing.
We are buying ads at a huge discount over any other
advertising we have ever tried. Most of these women don’t
understand the value of the traffic they have, and for a few
hundred dollars a month, they will send you thousands and
thousands of visitors.
The visitors who come from these sites not only are great
customers, but they tend to pass our offers around to others
more often than any other traffic source I have ever had.
Most of these visitors are women looking for deals, and they
get to share the deals they find with everyone they know.
After our tests with CitySmart worked so well, we decided to
try the same strategy with some of our other businesses, to
see whether it was just a fluke. I’m happy to report that we
have filled seminars, sold info products and made money as
an affiliate by buying very cheap, high quality traffic from local
“mommy” blogs. Start looking in your local area for the
underground mommy blogging networks and align your
business with them immediately. You will see huge surges of
traffic and an increase in quality customers almost overnight!
Customer Path Targeting
I want to share a strategy that some of you will dismiss
because you’ve heard it “just doesn’t work anymore.” But
what’s happening with this traffic source is similar to what
people were saying about banner ads for years, while others
were secretly making eight- and nine-figure incomes
exploiting them.
I’m talking about the concept of co-registration paths, not
necessarily because I want you to do co-reg, but to
understand how it works. It can open up a whole world of
possibilities for any business.
A few months back I had a chance to go to London for a
week to attend a seminar. That night, during a get-together
with the attendees, I had a chance to sit next to a woman
who owned a very successful co-reg company.
I spent about an hour dissecting her business to understand it
better from her point of view, but more importantly, so I could
figure out ways to exploit it for my own profits.
Her business creates offers for general consumers, and then
pays to drive traffic to those offers. For example, their website
might have you opt in to get a free mp3 from iTunes or a free
online gift card.
Then they create a co-registration “path,” where, after the
person opts in to the offer, a series of other offers is
presented. As the visitor responds to each offer, their contact
information is sold to the company owning that offer.
So, they may get a subscriber, costing them $2 to $3 to
generate using PPC, banner ads, or affiliates. They then
guide that person through the offer path, selling the name to
6 to 10 other companies, for $2 to $5 each.
In theory, they paid $3 to generate the customer, and then got
paid between $10 and $15 by others that they sold the lead
to; and generated a new subscriber for their own marketing
purposes.
So, based on this process, I came up with a few simple and
powerful ways to use this concept to make money and build
our lists. First, look at the co-reg game from my friend’s point
of view. She got paid $10 to $15 to generate a new
subscriber. How many of you reading this actually make
money generating a new subscriber?
Does Google or Facebook pay you to generate an opt in? No,
most people I know are paying $2 to $6 per opt in, where she
is getting paid more than that per subscriber!
Wouldn’t it be 10 times smarter to find other people (who
aren’t competitors in your niche), who benefit from the same
customer you are trying to acquire? What if you set up your
own customer co-reg paths, and plug in your partners and let
them pay you for each new lead you generate. What a great
way to self liquidate (and make some money) on your lead
generation.
Another big takeaway from talking to my new friend was to
look at the paths my ideal customers are already following,
and figure out ways to plug my offers into those customer
paths.
Recently we found some CPA offers that generated more
than 1,000 new subscribers a day, and they were paying up
to $5 to acquire each subscriber! I negotiated with the offer
owners for their leads, and I pay them $0.25 to $0.50 for
each! So I get the same data at a huge fraction of the cost,
and they cut the costs of their lead generation. It’s a win-win.
When you start identifying your current customer paths, you
can tap into a huge source of leads at a very nice discount.
Once you understand the concept of monetizing your
customer path, you can find partners to fund your lead
generation.

– By Russell Brunson, President of DotComSecrets.com