Vanna, I'd like to buy a clue please...

[Abbadon]

Okay, I'm to the point I need some advice... I've been weaking and tuning this site for a couple of weeks, and a few days ago I thought I turned the corner, but today is looking fairly bleak.

The site is at http://www.violate-me.com

Is it a TGP, or a CJ2 site? I dunno -- I've got content, but a high trade / blind percentage, and I'm trying to stay in the CJ2 rules -- one non-chained exit with a sponsor FPA.

I'm dumping about every source of traffic to it I have -- a lot of AVS exit (which in turn is mostly SE fed), plus exit from all over my other sites, plus gallery recips, plus trades from my (also traffic starved) link site.

For a few weeks, I was mostly a net exporter of traffic. I've finally got the design tweaked to where it's got an in http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ubb/redface.gifut ratio of about 1:1.5 for uniques and about 1:1.1 for raw hits. It's running S2.

The problem is my trades keep starving out. I'm trying to trade with UCJ4 sites by setting them to 150% - 180% of uniques. I try to target hopefully productive traffic to them (outside of the top list) with blinds in the appropriate category for niche trades. On Sunday, I did about 2K uniques, and everything was rocking. By yesterday I was down to 1K uniques, and this morning my top two trades starved out and died.

Do I have too few trades going? The more I add, the smaller the volume, and the easier (apparently) they starve out. Do I have too many? If I don't have enough, I don't seem to have enough uniques to go around to anyone who starts sending me decent traffic. Am I setting the trades wrong? Should I be trading on raw instead of unique? Unique Productivity? (that seems like it'd die in a hurry).

It kind of feels like I just need to dump in some fresh traffic to make it all start rocking, but I've thrown everything including the kitchen sink into it and the rest of the cupboard is bare.

Any advice would be appreciated!

[CowboySurfers.com]

I think this is a great looking site with a lot of potential. Sometimes you have to get above a certain threshold for things to work the way you want them too. One of my sites was stuck below 3k/day for 6 months (No BS), then popped up to 6k, then straight to more than 40k/day in just 6 weeks.

Remember that if you set some trades to 180%, others will do much worse.

Also, Sometimes, it is better to trade with sites that send you a lot of lower prod. hits than a few high prod. ones. Your trade with my site Z Thumbs is probably sending you low quality hits, for example, because there are a lot of bookmarkers running down the thumbs list, however, they are people that bookmark and have a greater chance of bookmarking your site when they move to it.

My guess is, you're just below a certain threshold hits needed to run up. I would keep trying trading with different sites finding ones that work better and better with your site.

Your design is great. Very nice.

[CowboySurfers.com]

I'd say it's a TGP .. the distinction, on many sites, is being blurred now.

[Abbadon]

Colin, thanks for the reply, and the kind words on the site design. It's taken a lot of tweaking, mostly from ideas gleaned from lurking here, stealing from wherever looks good (I'll have my fake directory-listing page up shortly :-))), and some good advice from others (thanks Steve!).

Now if I can ever figure out the art of driving my trade script, I'll be rocking :-)

The advice about low-productivity vs bookmarkers is a good one; thanks! Zthumbs is running about 40% for me, which isn't bad as far as most of my trades go. My lowest right now is Call-Kelly, but I think I'm going to try to ramp that one up a little now that you mentioned that. I've been accumulating a fairly steady layer of bookmarkers, the gift that keeps on giving :-)

So it's just mostly hit-or-miss regarding how trades go? Just keep adding them until you find the ones that work? I've not seen any rhyme or reason to it yet, for the most part -- I'll have trades that look good on my end shut off suddenly (I assume the productivity was low and the other party just killed it), and I'll have trades that just never take off. For example, I started a trade with Z-Thumbs and Colins Thumbs at the same time, with the same settings, and the Z-Thumbs one took off fine, while the Colins Thumbs trade just "failed to thrive". Go figure.

Well, I guess I'll go look for a couple dozen other trades :-) Anyone who wants to do piddly (at the moment, anyway) volume trades, can feel free to come sign up -- I've got it set to autostart at 150% unique, and the traffic that is there is of fairly good quality.

Re:TGP vs. CJ2 -- Yeah, it's actually got quite a bit of content on it, even if 70% of the galleries are my own so far :-) Some of the CJ2 sites appear to be cleaner than a lot of the TGPs, tho :-)

[WETDOG]

Well here is one tip you can play with:

/cgi-bin/transformer/t_out.cgi?40*
/cgi-bin/transformer/t_out.cgi?50*
/cgi-bin/transformer/t_out.cgi?60*
/cgi-bin/transformer/t_out.cgi?70*
/cgi-bin/transformer/t_out.cgi?80*

try using the 60%-80% range, as it seems to trade a bit better with ucj tgp sites, the lower ratios seem to do worst i have found.

hope that helps a bit.

Wetdog..

[CowboySurfers.com]

Abbadon,

Exactly.
I tried trading between Z Thumbs and Steve's Hi Octane site about 6 weeks ago and my trades wouldn't stick. Then this month I tried again and it's one of my best trades. Z Thumbs had to get bigger for it to work.

Just keeping trying new trades all the time.

Looks like you're having a better day today.

You'll get good bookmarkers with your design.

My guess is, you'll shoot up all of a sudden once you hit a certain level.

[Abbadon]

Wetdog, thanks -- I've been tinkering with that too... It seems like every time I make an adjustment to that, regardless of which way, my ratios take a dive. I think I've just got to be more patient in waiting for things to stabilize :-) I've cranked it to 65%, we'll see what that does...

Colin, thanks again! Yep, things seem to be doing a little better today -- I've added a couple of new trades, and my starved out ones are running again. I just wasn't sure if I was adding them too fast or not fast enough, but adding more seems to be helping considerably (and had one or two signups apparently from this thread -- thanks folks!).

An interesting thing I've noticed is the difference between trading with CJ script sites and sites just trading with a toplist (TopX refferers, X3 style). The toplists seem to be much more of a traffic leak trying to get them started (until you get on the list) but they tend to send very productive traffic once you get there. (I'm sure because it's totally non-blind). Obvious in retrospect, but it hadn't really occured to me until I saw it. The problem with those trades is trying to balance whether the extra productivity is enough to justify the loss of traffic in the beginning.

Lots to learn!

[basschick]

wow, that is a nice-looking page!

give it time and it should do well http://bbs.adultwebmasterinfo.com/ubb/smile.gif