Flipping Big Brand Magazine Site - Journal

Few months ago I came across this site that had an option to pick a subreddit and you could see top sites that are shared on that specific subreddit.
I am looking for a few days now and I can't find it. Anyone knows what I am talking about?
 


One more good example of traffic leak happening right now: Some Interesting Facts - Imgur

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It looks like it is not his only leak, he is doing it regularly. Nice.
 
IN that example, he is leaking ttraffic from where? Reddit to imgur to..?

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IN that example, he is leaking ttraffic from where? Reddit to imgur to..?

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Directly from imgur to his site? There is no link to from reddit to imgur, but I think imgur acts like separate community? And there is no direct link to his site but he watermarked his pictures with url.
 
Yeah, sorry I was not awake yet.

kickassfacts is known on imgur, there is also another one... or several that copy what he does.

Also nice leak (FB to URL) is Ifuckinglovescience.com

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One older example of traffic leak from reddit with watermark:

Content Marketing Guy Nets 2.7 Million Pageviews in Reddit Experiment | Betabeat

My friend won't approach cliff edges because he says the risk isn't worth it. This is how he looks over, every time. : funny


I am preparing to move my site from shitty hostgator to digital ocean this weekend. Hope to see some increase in site speed.

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My site load time is 2.73 seconds from witch 1.20 seconds is wait time, so I assume that is hosting problem?

Also saw this guy sell his site on flippa for 20k today: https://flippa.com/3280207-71k-uniques-mo-site-making-1200-mo-plus-on-auto-pilot

He has no verified Google analytics, no verified adsense, semrush showing that he lost all traffic in mid 2013, he is showing some screencast from wordpress analytics showing trafic stats, mostly from pinterest as I see. He is mentioning some old content partnership with one site, when asked to show example he shows article with link to some other site with simmilar name.

Is there something shady going on or what?

I am also trying to get one fanpage of the ground in my niche (not my official fanpage) which I can use to get traffic to my site, and maybe use it on other sites in similar niches in future. Getting fans by spamming other fanpages on similar topics.

Brainstorming some ideas for traffic leaks from Reddit and similar sites using watermarking.
 
Word on digital ocean... stuff has been unstable for me, I went to another host for "real sites" keeping DO for experiments.

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Word on digital ocean... stuff has been unstable for me, I went to another host for "real sites" keeping DO for experiments.

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Damn, I picked digital ocean because I saw lots of good things about it here in wf... Any specific problems? Lots of downtime? Do you mind sharing that other hosting that you use? Tnx
 
It broke down twice in one month.
  • Both times, wordpress couldn't access the DB anymore.
  • Both times I had to manually restart the mySQL service.
  • Both times it was right after they had some "minor" troubles that "should not affect" me
  • Both times, they had "done nothing" to my sites / servers
  • Both times, they told me to spend more money on a bigger instance
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Update time!

Sup guys! Almost three months from last update. Damn, time flies. I am not updating regularly because there was nothing exciting to report. We are mostly creating content, making site improvements like changing hosting and trying to improve site speed.

Good thing is that our content strategy evolved. Now we know exactly what kind of content our audience reads and share the most. So our articles changed from lots of content to lots of pictures + little less content.

Traffic

Last time I reported there was 20 visitors a day.

At this time we are almost at 600 visitors a day. For example yesterday we had 580 visitors and 720 page views.

Traffic is combination of organic and social. Social is mostly Pinterest.

Here is the screenshoot from last time I updated until today:

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Last 30 days:

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I am monetizing with adsense. Basically cpc suck balls. Earnings are around $2 a day for now. For example 9 clicks today and earnings are $1.80. Ballin.

Plans for the future is to grow both organic and social/direct traffic with more focus on social/direct and implementing more traffic leaks.

Cheers!
 
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Hey congrats on your increased traffic.

So I'm in the middle of outlining content for my next project, setting up social, etc... but I'm curious: What's your strategy for attracting Pinterest followers? I have literally zero experience with Pinterest but I suspect it might suit my niche.

Do you follow ppl and interact with them in hopes they follow back?
 
Hey congrats on your increased traffic.

So I'm in the middle of outlining content for my next project, setting up social, etc... but I'm curious: What's your strategy for attracting Pinterest followers? I have literally zero experience with Pinterest but I suspect it might suit my niche.

Do you follow ppl and interact with them in hopes they follow back?

Thanks man!

First off all, I focused on Pinterest because it looked like that I can accomplish more things with less money. For example, for Facebook you need to pay for likes in one way or another, but from some examples on Pinterest I assumed that you can grow organically without paying for followers.

Also in my case, and in some other cases that I saw, it seems that to get some pic/article repined/liked many times, you don't need to have many followers. Of course it is easier later when you get followers but it is not crucial in start.

I have few pins that have around 1k repins and likes. And those are the pins that I posted at the time I had maybe 100 followers. They are bringing regular traffic every day.

At that time I also started following people who follow my competitors. Again I noticed that for two people that I follow I get one follow back. Also it is interesting that people who follow back are not people who I followed. Only small number of actual people who I followed follow back, but somehow other people find me at that time when I follow larger number of people (50-100). I have around 900 followers and I follow around 1600 people. Now I organically get followers everyday without following other people.

Also for future expansion on Pinterest I plan to utilize group boards (grow my own or try to get in other) and use giveaways. I think that most effective giveaways are group giveaways with other bloggers/site owners. Check out this great post about giveaways by BlueYonder. While I share links this is also good post from BabyGotBacklink about Pinterest.

It is also weird how much spam there is at popular page. So obvious pins with thousands repins promoting various products and when you look at people who repined/liked those pins you can obviously see that they are fake accounts. I hope I am not outing anything lol.

I don't do anything special. I just try to copy successful posts and try to follow seasonal trends and things get repined/liked.

If your niche have anything to do with women then you should try Pinterest out. There is also great potential for niches without direct connection to women. There is also male fashion community there. I have read one article about some guy who made his boards only about soccer and soccer players and got viral and now have millions of followers. If you get creative you can utilize Pinterest in any niche.

Hope I make some sense about what I am doing/trying to do here.
 
Thanks man!

First off all, I focused on Pinterest because it looked like that I can accomplish more things with less money. For example, for Facebook you need to pay for likes in one way or another, but from some examples on Pinterest I assumed that you can grow organically without paying for followers.



Hope I make some sense about what I am doing/trying to do here.

Holy shit, you have no clue how helpful that was. Thank you.

It's nice to hear gaining followers doesn't take a heroic effort. Likewise, hearing your success with traffic is pretty inspiring.

Definitely gonna take pinterest more seriously now.
 
Great to see your progress coming from 20 visitors a day to 600. Will be looking into Pinterest as an avenue for my current project. Was going to buy some followers to kick things off but I think I'll try and avoid that given the advice above.

Subbed. Keep it up, good luck.
 
You've got a very interesting thread here. It's great to see how you're getting over 600 visitors a day now from using Pinterest and social media. Do you have any updates?
 
Small update.

Organic traffic is increasing every day. I am now at 900-1000 visitors a day. Little over half the traffic is organic.

I also did first "bigger" traffic leak from Reddit before Christmas.

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5k visitors in two days from ~30k subreddit.

In next few days I need to recap goals and plans for this site. I have little problems with organisation (and productivity). Managing goals, projects, organizing my work based on goals and shit like that. Need to look at GTD or something like that.
 
Looks like you're making steady progress. What kind of server do you use, if you don't mind me asking?

Sure, here you go:

I switched from Hostgator shared hosting to semi-dedicated package on Hawkhost. Site speed increased noticeably and their customer service is top notch. They migrated my sites in matter of hours and answer to most of my tickets in matter of minutes (never above one hour). They always have some discounts, so make sure to look for them on their blog, social media or on webhostingtalk forum.