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Pinterest - Great for traffic, but not sales?


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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/pinterest-will-boost-your-referral-traffic-but-can-it-boost-sales.php

 

Makes sense to me. I know people are wanting to try to convert that traffic into sales numbers, but really, that's not how Pinterest is built. Sure, if you're in the right niche or after a big target that you find there (like maybe mommy bloggers), then that traffic could trickle into sales...but that's just not the case for most people.

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Exactly. I've been watching inbound and outbound traffic from pinterest. They aren't converting for ANYTHING! I like the traffic, but converting is at 0%. Oh well... time goes on, and another social site will come along that i really like! ;)

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Just noticed this morning, when I tried to pin summat, they've added Captcha to the login. Don't know if it's every time or once-every-so-many, but that's seriously good news for spam-fighting.

 

The down-side is that it didn't work. I entered the Captcha and it logged me in but didn't post my pin, so I had to go through it again (without a Captcha the second time). Bit buggy but a neat addition, IMHO.

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Exactly. I've been watching inbound and outbound traffic from pinterest. They aren't converting for ANYTHING! I like the traffic, but converting is at 0%. Oh well... time goes on, and another social site will come along that i really like! ;)

Converting on site traffic is different depending on the site. One site dedicated to eCommerce, lets say a store that sales shoes where the owner would need traffic from people wanting buys shoes. To do this effectively one would need to:

 

A.) Predict what sites its target audience often visit.

B.) Predict what sites people go to who buy online.

Getting people to actually purchase would be much more difficult than a site that just needs numbers or offer a free service.

 

A site such as a blog that makes money from ad revenue would benefit from Pinterest as the more hits you receive; the more money you can make. The person doesnt need to be anything special, just a statistic.

Edited by redinit
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A site such as a blog that makes money from ad revenue would benefit from Pinterest as the more hits you receive; the more money you can make. The person doesnt need to be anything special, just a statistic.

 

That depends on your opinion. Personally, I think that's why so many people fail dismally at online marketing: because they just want hits and expect to make money from them. Total depersonalisation of the visitor, complete disregard for what they want, treating everyone as just a faceless, nameless click-source. If you're going to treat your visitors like that, you might as well just do PTC advertising (and we all know how appalling the conversion rates are from that, right?).

 

The ONLY income sources that benefit from this kind of traffic (purely visits with no other interest) are those which pay per view, not per click. Views mean nothing if you're on a per-click model and have a 0% conversion rate - a million hits still means no clicks. If you're on per-view, though, it's another matter: a million views is a massive difference.

 

Quite simply, that's the difference between successful per-click sites and unsuccessful ones: the former care (at least a little) more about their audience than the latter, who don't give a damn. Trust me on that: I've run both kinds of sites and the income from the former FAR outstretches that from the latter.

 

I hate CAPTCHAs, they are so pointless, there are much better methods to fight spam on a site.

 

They stop bots. Good enough for me. Human spam is virtually impossible to stop, to be honest. :D

 

Edit: clarification of "this kind of traffic".

Edited by SpikeTheLobster
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That depends on your opinion. Personally, I think that's why so many people fail dismally at online marketing: because they just want hits and expect to make money from them. Total depersonalisation of the visitor, complete disregard for what they want, treating everyone as just a faceless, nameless click-source. If you're going to treat your visitors like that, you might as well just do PTC advertising (and we all know how appalling the conversion rates are from that, right?).

 

The ONLY income sources that benefit from this kind of traffic (purely visits with no other interest) are those which pay per view, not per click. Views mean nothing if you're on a per-click model and have a 0% conversion rate - a million hits still means no clicks. If you're on per-view, though, it's another matter: a million views is a massive difference.

 

Quite simply, that's the difference between successful per-click sites and unsuccessful ones: the former care (at least a little) more about their audience than the latter, who don't give a damn. Trust me on that: I've run both kinds of sites and the income from the former FAR outstretches that from the latter.

I think we are actually on the same page, we said the same thing but you had an extra use case which makes my point better than I did.

 

They stop bots. Good enough for me. Human spam is virtually impossible to stop, to be honest. :D

It stops some bots, but big named sites like Gmail, Windows Live, Yahoo have had there CAPTCHA system cracked. There's a University in Newcastle with a research team that has a 90% success rate of getting pass Windows Live CAPTCHA. There are a handful of methods to crack CAPTCHAs, thats why software such as phpBB, Wordpress constantly need to update their techniques. Which is why you are starting to see some ridiculous CAPTCHAs. Namely the ones where you enter two words that you need a magnifying glass and the amulet of Zeus to read. Or the ones where you have to solve algebraic equation.

Edited by redinit
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Which is why you are starting to see some ridiculous CAPTCHAs. Namely the ones where you enter two words that you need a magnifying glass and the amulet of Zeus to read. Or the ones where you have to solve algebraic equation.

 

Indeed. But from personal experience on my forum, switching to a simple "sorting" Captcha (the ones where you put three vegetables on the left and three celebrities on the right - not always easy to tell, I know...) hasn't stopped any registrations and has cut my bot spam to zero. Which I'm pretty darned happy about, I must say.

 

By the way, can I borrow the amulet when you're done? Got a Captcha I need to solve here... ;)

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Pinterest is pretty profitable provided you use tools and some demographic research. Basically anything for woman between 18-45 would sell there if its below 100$. You just need some good no of followers and repins.

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