Bitcoin Forum

I'm curious where other bitcoin businesses get their traffic.  SquareWear gets the majority of its traffic from the forum.  I have to really try to only post things when I actually have something to say, but the impulse is to post all the time, since it generates sales.

I get a trickle of hits from bitcoin review sites.  I get even less from the places I actually pay to advertise via OperationFabulous.com. I probably get a good amount of traffic from the Trade section of the wiki, but that doesn't show up in any of my tracking information. 

MetaCo.in has done better with traffic (at least for its first two days) because we had an email/newsletter campaign that people signed up for.  People have also been posting links and retweeting our deal, which is nice. 

So where do you get traffic from and what is your long term plan for getting the word out about your site? 

This is also of interest to me... for two reasons.

(1)   Of course, we sell advertising on the daily talk show, The Bitcoin Show, and the weekly Spanish language show, El Show de Bitcoin.

(2)   This weekend, I am completely revamping and polishing up http://BitcoinMe.com --- the site for bitcoin newbies to learn the basics.

On the "What Can I Buy with Bitcoin" page, I need some suggestions of the very best directory(ies) of merchants who accept Bitcoin.   ( See the "Shopping" tab at http://bitcoinme.com/index.php/merchants/ )

Please take a look at what I have so far, and email me your criticisms and comments.   I've got to get the whole site completed (and the tech rebuilding of Studio 3 with all new computers, cameras, microphones, and audio equipment ) by TODAY.  :-)

Thanks!    bruce@onlyonetv.com

Right now I'm getting the most traffic from the Metaco.in deal that's currently under way. (Thanks Gabriel!)

I notice I get a bump in traffic after I post in the forum , but I also try to limit my contributions to substantive comments, not just spam. Advertising with Operation Fabulous sends a bit my way, and I've found that advertising on related sites helps the most.

Since I started The Bitcoin List (http://www.thebitcoinlist.com/), I've also gotten some traffic from there, as well as other directories. I plan on doing some promotions on Facebook and Twitter and non-Bitcoin related sites as soon as I have more time. I'll keep you updated if I come across something that works really well.

As a side question, I want to ask about Operation Fabulous.  I noticed that for a while the bidding on advertising was getting pretty heated for a couple of the high traffic sites.  However, it seems that recently the bottom dropped out.  Was this because people weren't getting much return on investment, or is it somehow related to the mtgox thing?

Twitter
http://twitter.com/bitcoinforum

Use all of the free resources you can find:  social networking, forums, interest groups, etc..  I think twitter was a great suggestion; don't forget Craigslist -- I've seen some BTC action in my local listings.

I do not have stats, but I think 50-70% of my app's users come from this forum - from threads about my tool, from the link in the signature, and the link on the left in my profile. Outside of this forum, I added a new website to the bitcoin wiki (also added a category "Software" to wiki frontpage, so that my app is two clicks away from the front page), I wrote about my app on other low-traffic forums, added to a few low-traffic websites. And submitted to reddit - they have a nice audience of 4K subscribed users (probably much more users reading the group, but not signed up to reddit) http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin .
I agree that besides this forum, other good ways of reaching bitcoin users basically do not exist (maybe only the reddit group for one-time advertisement). I do not have a long term marketing plan. I guess there is not much I can do, I have to rely on other people activity and contribution, and wait for the whole project to grow.

Some ideas of what is possible to do now:
1. Start a mailing list with weekly news about new websites, new versions of software, etc. It would be all right for me if it were paid 0.05 btc per one entry.
2. Gather a big list of ALL bitcoin related websites and software and put it on one website (not hierarchy of 400 websites like bitcoin wiki, but just one large html website with all links, split on categories).

Basically the whole difficulty is that 80%-90% of people here, I guess, are mainly here for speculation, and just wait for the price to grow, and are not concerned much about exploring the world of bitcoin outside of exchange markets and charts. There are also miners (1-3% of bitcoin users?), who, similarly like traders, are interested much more in the price, less in the developing economy of bitcoin. Contrary to what is said in the buzz in media, there are very few things that can be bought for coins (for some people it is opportunity), and there are few people interested in buying things for coins (this is uniformly bad).
Things needed most by today's users are: 1) websites and tools for traders, and maybe 2) websites and tools for securely storing bitcoins and securely transmitting bitcoins.

simple 'blackhat' seo tricks i learned on blackhatforums and syndk8
even still most of my traffic is from facebook/twitter surprisingly. i don't even use them but built company pages there

Hey Gabriel, I recently bought one of your shirts.  Once I get it, I'd like to leave a positive review.  Perhaps you can add a review section to your site to add a level of trust?  Trustworthy and legitimate stores are something lacking in BTC at the moment.

There is an existing part under each shirt to leave reviews, but it would probably be good to be able to leave store-reviews instead of shirt-reviews. I could add a section like did something like that.  Good idea gmann.

60%+ of all the traffic to stuffpoints is coming from this forum. The rest is just split up among really tiny sources.

If I was looking to increase relevant traffic I'd just look into Google Adwords and try to target sites/pages that mention bitcoin.