In 2007 I was guilty of  spending $5,000 to $17,000 per month on advertising. Around February or March of 2008 I put an end to about 90% of my ad purchases. Then I dropped the last of the ad campaigns.

Last night I was somewhat bored and still had some extra cash left in my Traffic Holder account and decided to test some traffic sources for productivity.

How did I test the traffic you ask?

I created a hybrid thumb/text page in TGP X with 100% tracked urls consisting of thumbnails and text links – both visible above the fold. I also removed iframe/java ads since I don’t know a method to track those withTrade Expert. I’m not even 100% sure it’s yet possible to track the traffic on an iframe ad without setting up a campaign in your sponsors admin, but I wasn’t going through that trouble just to test a few traffic sources; removing it was much easier and more efficient in tracking.

Now I have a page where any click will register as a productive click, and the page was very similar to my homepage. I mimiced my homepage because if the traffic turned out to be worth purchasing, then I would purchase more and utilize it to build bigger trades.

Once my page was created, I logged into Traffic Holder and my next step was deciding which method to browse. I know for a fact that testing the traffic is easiest when you purchase by domain. I scrolled through the list of domains selling traffic and looked at their “projected” or “listed” productivity.

I looked for every domain offering productivity over 100%.

Next was narrowing it down to the domains whose content was similar. I used teen content, so any of the high productivity domains who were milfs, blacks, shemale, or anything NOT teen – I nixed immediately.

What I was left with were about 6 domains with 100%+ productivity and teen content. It was a mix of thumb and text sites, and I figured I have a little of both:, 4 200 x 160 thumbs across and text links down the right column.

I ordered a few thousand hits from each domain.

I recieved a MAX of 47% productivity.

Awful results from a site that listed these domains as 100%+ productivity.

It’s a good thing I suspended the orders, and now I know not to ever purchase traffic from those domains.

Even worse, one of the sites I purchased from I have a hardlink exchange, and the traffic from the hardlink is great. Once I recieved their skimmed traffic through the broker, it went to shit.

The bad thing is that Traffic Holder listed the domains at a half decent productivity…but smart buyers know to test traffic before splurging.

I’m just glad I didn’t spend $17,000 and find out at the end of a campaign how awful it was. I learned my lesson the hard way in 2007.