Twitter Monetization vs The rest

Hmmm Twitter Monetization… I have been playing with traffic generation and conversions on a number of websites and twitter accounts for some time now… So this report on performance of my top traffic sources is well overdue.

1. SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
   As well as pulling in a large chuck of the visitors, Search Engine traffic is converting the best. This is due to the concept of permission marketing, which in theory would mean that Google is matching my content with customer queries and instead of interrupting the visitors train of thought with irrelevant offers, I always target keywords with high commercial intent.
2. Email (Newsletter Lists)
   The high conversion rate related to this traffic source would vary according to the age and trust that you have developed inside your list of email subscribers. If they have been on your list for a year and are still clicking on your links, the trust is high and therefore so are the conversions
3. Videos
   Videos still carry an extremely high ‘perceived value’ online. Email your list about a new video and it will get more click-throughs than telling them about a new article. And when your traffic watches a video featuring your mug or voice, some serious bonding takes place increasing the trust and final conversion rate.
4. Blogs
   These versatile yet simple ‘conquerors of the interweb’ are still flying, very much, under the radar as a sales vehicle. Still considered to be a news source rather than a sales platform. The get a higher flow of of clicking through traffic and higher conversions.
5. Social Sites
   Yes… I know. They can be a huge time suck and its very hard to measure the value of your social efforts online. But don’t let that stop you from signing up to sites like Delicious, Digg, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace, Twitter, and YouTube. Your profile pages will become a great source of traffic and valuable back-links to increase your search engine rankings.
6. Partners
   There is a massive push at the moment to ‘increase your followers’… It seems every other person you meet on a social site is selling an ebook or system to do just that! But this really is quite useless. What you should be looking for are alliances and mutual friends (real friends) that will return the long list of favors you have been showering them with. Yaro Starak will teach you how to be a popular, famous and rich blogger like himself, but the truth is he got his break the old fashioned way, when Darren Rowse (Problogger) featured him on his already popular blog. That old business tip is still alive and well on the net. - “It’s not what you know… It’s who you know!”
7. Twitter
   Twitter is a great fresh source of traffic for your website, blog and sales letters but the conversions as yet a comparatively low. Probably due to the inbuilt conditioning towards short attention spans and a touch of interruption marketing. Lets face it, 140 characters may build intrigue but its certainly not enough communication to secure a sale. However, I am still not ready to turn off this stream of traffic just yet.
8. RSS Feeds
   While I highly recommend submitting your website/blog to RSS directories, your actual RSS followers can often be asleep at the wheel. When they do actual notice your stream of information again, you can bet that your marketing efforts are firmly situated in the murky waters of ‘interruption marketing’.