CC9 -- Missandei

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Kimoto

Kimoto

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Here we are :smile:

About themselves
In Nov. 2011 the idea for a physical gaming accessory was born. In Nov. 2012 we failed big time to crowdfund on Indiegogo. Since then the husslin’ has begun - we got rejected by accelerators 15 times in a row. Thousands of investors didn’t want to look at our pitch. Eventually we got named top32 in the CEE region, top50 in Europe, top 10 most fun accessories and got accepted into a hardware accelerator. 2 years later we are now continuing to prepare to succeed on Kickstarter.

For this project, I'm Kimoto, but we are a team of 3 people. I'm with internet marketing backround and the latest extension of the team. Used to be in the SEO game some time ago. Then I swtiched to more content marketing - building relationship - people focused strategies. At that moment I found the CCarter's Traffic Leak thread in WF and continued my way as traffic leak opportunity seeker. I've had a success in AM and eCommerce, but it has never being something serious.

Then CC9 appeared and I decided to jump in for the good.

The general niche they are in
We are in the gaming accessories niche and actually we'll be soon launching a crowdfunding campaing to get a certain amount of preorders.

The overall goal of the traffic leak experiment
Our goal is increasing the number of the leads we collect to 10k. We currently have 800 leads.This will help us receive 100%of the preorders we are seeking from the crowdfunding campaign.

What they plan to gain out of it
We want to apply all the lessons we learn here and achieve a massive success with our gaming accessory. I see this entire journey as the Survivor of the IM world, so if I survive I know I won't be the same person who has entered the jungle at the end of 2014.

Amount of time they plan on dedicating a week
I'm the traffic leak lead in the team and the major person responsible for increasing the leads to 10k. In order to achieve the goal, I plan to invest around 15h/week on average. This may change according to the results we are getting.

Optional traffic numbers OR percentage increases:
Based on what results we acheve now, we need something like 2000% increase in traffic. (Currently 2-2.5k visitors per month)

Personal overall goals they want to achieve
Aquiring the traffic leak skill to a close to expert level, so I may start using it for my next projects.

Where they currently are at with this project
We have a site running, 2k visitors per month & 800 leads totalso far, who are interested to receive updates for the upcoming launch of our crowdfunding campaign.
 
Okay, @Kimoto. This is going to great! Congrats on being chosen and really like the angle your project is coming at. :thumbsup: It will be interesting to follow along. I'm sure there is already a load that we could learn from you. Really inspiring to be told no so many times and not give up. That's what it takes!
 
Updates will be delivered weekly... but if we are super excited for something we'll have bonus updates.
 
My Official Take:

This is unique since it's a physical product, yet the CTA is pretty simple. At this stage there isn't any SEO opportunities, so it's going to depend a lot on non-seo marketing. The fact that it's a 1 page site that's geared towards only gaining signups, makes things a bit simpler.

It's difficult to go wrong with a physical product geared towards gaming, so ust knowing where to traffic leak and applying is going to be the focus. The opportunities are huge here, since one traffic leak can take this to the next level.

I'm thinking of leveraging places like ProductHunt, and leveraging your current leads, to keep them warm since that's critical to having emails, and using that to gain top positions at ProductHunt, to generate more traffic.

I know at ProductHunt, we achieved over 10K visitors in 2 days when we pushed it with SERPWoo, and we had a rather small audience pushing the votes, so if you come in with 800+ and even 10% of those guys hit help vote with twitter, you'll see a minimum of 4K visitors that day. The thing is, it's a one time thing, and we'll need to find additional sources, which shouldn't be a problem honestly.

Anyways, I'm blabbing, since it's a product launch there should be tons of websites setup that can lead to crazy exposure, which is what you are looking for. Once the KickStarter happens, if all is good, it'll be rather successful. (I honestly hope you aren't counting on 100% conversion rate for your KickStarter, but we'll get into more details about that later on.)
 
FINALLY! Someone has come into my favorite traffic leaking space....

I've run a handful of game review blogs/dev diary type series blogs..

There is much you can leverage in this space...

Think about where A MASSIVE amount of gaming traffic is -Twitch as well as Youtube streamers are absolutely huge right now...

I don't know what this product is, but if it can be leveraged by a streamer/gameplayer online for an advantage then you could deal some serious firepower.

Last year I took a game dev diary site and added a tab to my site called "Streamers" In this tab I had partnered with streamers from twitch and Youtube in order to cross-promote each other.

By paying the streamers a monthly fee and some of them just wanted giveaway items... Think steam gift card, accessories... "MAYBE YOUR PRODUCT" you could have a gold mine of traffic.

Some of the biggest streamers sent me thousands of traffic daily. The key is finding them, talking to them in their streams and getting them to read a private message with your offer in it. In the same light... Follow those streamers that you think you can leverage on twitter/facebook and make sure you retweet them and enter basic dialogue. This helps them actually read what you've offered them.

Carter has a great point with ProductHunt - with some solid Twitter relationship building you could easily have some solid traction and votes.

P.S. I still have many of their contact info in Skype :smile:

Good Luck!
 
ProductHunt is a gem! That's already X% of our 10,000 leads goal executed, so we've added it to the plan. Right.. only some part of our leads will convert for KickStarter.

Thanks RadiantDarkness, we are discussing if we could apply this right now.

I'll post our weekly update and probably questions this Friday.
 
Wait have you already done ProductHunt? Cause if not, you should leverage your current userbase to help push the ProductHunt forward.
 
@CCarter, haven’t done the ProductHunt yet.

Weekly update

Here’s a summarized list of what we have done, what we have planned and there’s also some questions we are looking for wise advice there.

---
I’ve spent 15+ hours in:

- scraping the YT videos relevant to our niche and market our device with a link to our YT video, mention the brand or give our site URL; we did the same with the videos of our weak competitors.

1k comments on videos with total 10 million views totally = XXXX(X) visitors to the website = XXX(X) new leads.

- Penetrating 2 major groups in FB where players in our niche spent time to discuss game updates, share screenshots and show achievements. Started engagement and already sharing pics with our URL watermarked
- Created a pinterest (today stats: 13 boards, 200 pins, 5 followers) & tumblr profiles with the intention to share repursposed content there – is this a traffic leak at all?
- We have 10 accounts in relevant forums – as soon as possible I’d like to pick one of them and try interacting with the audience – want to be the coolest guy there and leverage.. though I don’t have XP in forum traffic leaking.

In doubt if we need any social media activity on our FB page with close to 500 fans. We planned promoting the improved video – uploading and sharing it here and there to attract the attention of the players spending time in their favorite FB groups.

Questions to CCarter & the wizards gang:

- What would be your suggestions to maintain hot leads until we launch in KS? We were discussing to try something with FB game or a contest, but if you have a better suggestion, we are listening.

- Regarding ProductHunt – is using ProductHunt when we launch our KickStarter a better solution. Btw, one of my teammates is not sure how is going to home page guaranteed? With many upvotes received in the first 24h?

- We aren't experienced with maintain our leads hot – seeking for advice how to keep their interest high.

- Pictures: I’m hash tagging & share the watermarked images & screenshots from games on social Medias. Any fresh approaches here are also highly appreciated.
@CCarter, What would be your pointers for using Instagram as a traffic leak?

Results:
Traffic has slightly increased. Not satisfied, will continue pushing at right directions. No change in the amount of leads we usually receive.

Summary:
I'm impatient to read all comments. Again the ProductHunt was gem, thank you so much! We want to take the most out of it.
 
Important update:
Missed to mention that we are going to CES (cesweb.org) in LA and we'll be looking for maximum exposure there. We have reserved our own stand and we'll be ready to engage with various media.

We'll be happy to take your pointers, because in that rush we could always miss something important.
 
2nd weekly update (22.12)

So, we are in the third week now, but in the last 10 days I continued seeding comments here and there. However few days ago I stopped and my focus moved to the homewotk tasks.

It's a real challenge and I'm spending a lot of hours for exploring and discovering trolling examples etc. Because of the Hollidays, I'll take a rest for 2 days (or hope so) and continue working in Friday. But even with the 2 days off, I'll surpass my 15h per week for the project with a lot more..

Even slowly, but I started seeing a shift in my knowledge and understanding of what a traffic leak is and what are the foundations of creating such kind of weapons.

I'm cutting all the externall stuff that attacks me to provide more time for the project. Today I told my side job employees I'm doubling the honorarium for January. If they refuse, even better! I'll provide + 45 h. for the project next month (if alive at all).

By the way, we are planning to launch the KickStarter campagn after the end of CES, probably by the end of the month.

So, these are the main updates with our project. It's exciting!
 
1. Hot leads - I would be updating the user/customer base with pictures of the progress of the product, like a journal of what's going on from the team, updates with images, the latest stats of what's going on in the background - "behind the scenes" on a blog. As well other blog post can be reviews of games. The key is people are signing up for your newsletter, but don't know what's happening, when things are launching, or what's the next steps, they'll eventually forget about you with no updates. My post Permission Based Marketing touches on starting up a newsletter and why it's important to constantly communicate with your audience. Maybe the KickStarter might be a good subject to get things going with your current user base, talking about leading up to the kick starter, and any behind the scenes tactics - using this leverage to start generating buzz again.

2. Product Hunt - The way we did it for SERPWoo was first gathered a group of users with producthunt accounts, anyone with a twitter account - at our home base Wickedfire (obviously go to a place where people know you and you have a loyal membership, maybe even BuSo might help - I dunno): http://www.wickedfire.com/shooting-the-shit/181093-if-your-producthunt-com-post-thread.html

We then gathered as many people as possible by email, twitter handle, or PM, then set the time to launch on that Friday for product hunt.

Here is the end page: http://www.producthunt.com/posts/serpwoo-com

Now on the day we launched, we dipped into our current userbase and sent out an email to everyone that were SERPWoo members to upvote us on ProductHunt that day. They key was to get in the top 3 or 4 for that Friday. You have to have more upvotes then the other products for that day being featured, that's why it's critical to leverage your current customers/sign ups/twitter followers/FB fans. We then continued blasting twitter to through our personal twitter accounts, and main twitter account, and pushed it on all channels we had established, which wasn't really a lot, but the end result was over 10K visitors.

What we could have done better for more traffic and possible gain the #1 spot (we did get producthunt to retweet our product so that's was good exposure too):


1. launch on a Monday.

2. Leading up to the product hunt, I should have sent an email 4 days before the producthunt launch, 2 days before, and the day before, then another one at 9am in the morning instead of just the one email we did in the morning. That would have given us some more momentum.

3. Done a lead up with other channels like Twitter, Facebook, and any other places besides just Wickedfire, where we had dominate support or established brands.
​

The critical thing is we had warm leads, rather hot, since we were brand new, and we were actively engaging our customers with updates, the latest of what's going on, images, and more. With a warm database, we were able to leverage their power to push us into the top 3 or 4, I forgot the final position we landed on. It was a Friday, so it was an easy win, but a great win would have been to push it on a Monday.

There are other websites like ProductHunt for start ups like:

http://betalist.com/
http://produktfang.de/en/

I want to see if someone or maybe I, can create a list of sites where people can submit their products to which are similar to Producthunt.

One thing I would do, is have a great description and a good looking presentation on the end site. Look up past products which are similar to yours on there and look at what people liked or didn't like about their presentation.

3. Instagram - I don't have anything for Instagram or targeting them, but I'd look into who's doing what there in your niche, most likely other sites in gaming are posting high scores or screenshots of in game action to generate buzz, but I'd think going with gaming niches within Reddit and on forums would be faster. Someone more knowledgeable with Instagram can chime in.
 
I had a project back in 2012, I was trying to keep close to my audience on all of my social accounts, but I had a small problem ( A big one lol!) I started to lose audience out of my website, I take my notes on what makes them go away ?

It was a lack of commenting, so I brain storm a bit and note a trick called, comment highlighting, I was taking a picture every week and select a comment of one of my audience, and re-post it as picture with a small paragraph about his question, a problem solving or a tip or a compliment... And also I upload all those pictures to Instagram.

My traffic increased also I start to promote moderation to my website through the same plan, now I give that project to a friend of mine, he start to bringing some additional ideas also websites audience start to promote our site for free without paying them anything, we just give them quality, friendship, and some kind of partnership (this method need a bit of homework to get a good strategy) and they stay loyal till this minute !
 
Next update 30 Dec (Bye, bye 2014)

I finally finished the 100 complelling titles task. Went through Creating compelling content a couple of times and realized I've skipped or underestimated some important details.

I created a couple of reddit profiles, one is the main. Spent hours reviewing different sub-reddits and submitted a couple posts, trying to feel the specifics of the future traffic leaks there. Spent time in Metareddit as well. Tried to utilize the rest of the tools too.

A space for the blog is created on a subdomain. Now it comes the technical part. I'm comfortable with wordpress only, but I'll try to create an html template and use it for the posts. Will try to figure this out asap.
 
Update 11 Jan '15

- Exploring Reddit & Imgur and experimenting - imgur has huge traffic and I see some possibility there - though i need to train my brain and test more
- Chosen the wp theme and creating content - pretty slowly, but I have progress with the content
- Trying to raise reputation in one of the main industry forums - based on real experience some game developers advised me on how to run a successful crowd funding campaign
- CES 2015 lead to some results, but not as high as expected
 
Update 18 Jan '15

I'll soon post some of my recent imgur & reddit results. I see other guys as well testing on Reddit. Indeed it takes time to get the right tone, pulse whatever you call it. I see most success where I'm most subtle. Today I tried to create smth compelling on imgur and I failed - so, I start seeing myself as more skilled crafter of subtle traffic leaks (for now).

I'm a bit obsessed right now, can't think and do almost anything else. The other members of the team are preparing for the crowdfunding campaign. I'll be soon involved as well, but before that I'd like to create a couple of more serious traffic leaks.

Will get back to you in a couple of days.
 
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Update 22 Jan '15

CES 2015
Led to a couple of new links, traffic increase and new subscribers. To be honest, I'm disapointed. There were 20k companies and we didn't manage to attract enough attention.

Site
Tweaking the mobile version of the page increased the conversion rates in the last 3 days.

Traffic Leaking
Up to now I've made 2 traffic leaking attempts both without link drop, both being the subtle kind.

1). Imgur - made a gallery, picked more famous tags and published it. Got a bit avove 1k - the normal amount for something that didn't catch attention & some comments (half of them negative). I'd post that in Reddit after I tweak it and remove the reasons for the negative comments.

2). Reddit - A month ago I started developing a Reddit profile and then I created one more to ensure flexibility. In the profile development I've tested a couple of subreddits with creative posts (mostly images which I shared from Imgur). I've scored 60 upvotes with a creative image compilation.

2 days ago I started writing a story, which I finished last night and published it as self/subreditname. The aim was to create something that should create a discussion. Unfortunately there wasn't even 1 comment, though it received 10 upvotes.

I know the reasons. Made my conclusions and next time I'm sure it will be better. Every subreddit has it's own game rule for scoring high..

I like the AMA type posts, and will digg in a bit further there as well.

Youtube
I'm trying to get a Youtube video done in the next days. It should include some fancy music and epic moments from a couple of games. It will include the gaming accessory in a special way as well. Youtube is a hot place for discussions - I know if done right, it will lead to new subscribers.
 
1 post = 300 upvotes on Reddit:
While developing a my latest Reddit account I received almost 300 upvotes for posting a question in a subreddit with 100k subscribers.

I got the idea from another subreddit with 5k subscribers - posted there, got comments and extracted the idea from there. The comments gave me a winning title (question type) and a link to the 100k sub reddit. I almost copy pasted and BOOM - now I have almost 300 upvotes and over 30 descriptive comments, trying to give the best answer to my question.

The Reward
I got more data on what works and what doesn't work. Things happen when every part of the game is carefully planned. In many of the cases this includes extracting ideas from other sub Redditors.

P.S.
My post is still in top 3 among most popular posts in that r/secretname.
 
That's where taking winning ideas from one platform and matching it on another comes into play. I talked about this reddit technique in the Private Group chat - remember "reddit pawnage" :wink:
 
Kimoto said:
P.S.
My post is still in top 3 among most popular posts in that r/secretname.
Click to expand...

5tZaIT5.png


false link is false.

J/K. Great work. Question:

When you say you went to a 5k-sub, then extracted the idea to the larger 100k-sub, I'm assuming they were tightly knit if you x-posted from one to the next?

ie 100k-sub is Widgets and 5k-sub is Cryogenic Widgets?
 
c4yrslf12 said:
When you say you went to a 5k-sub, then extracted the idea to the larger 100k-sub, I'm assuming they were tightly knit if you x-posted from one to the next?

ie 100k-sub is Widgets and 5k-sub is Cryogenic Widgets?
Click to expand...

The answer to this question is [ classified ]. Do not answer this question @Kimoto
 
Kimoto said:
made a gallery, picked more famous tags and published it. Got a bit avove 1k - the normal amount for something that didn't catch attention
Click to expand...

Above 1k what? Traffic? Upvotes?
 
Good job Kimoto 300 upvotes is no joke! This is the second post in bootcamp I saw today about reddit that made mention of "copy-pasting" and not caring about "unique" - really getting my mind working in different ways.
 
How much traffic did those 300 upvotes send?
 
Update 10 Feb '15

Reddit:
I'm currently measuring the results from my last traffic leak experiment. My previous attemts were all subtle ones where I was only dropping the keywords where my site rank N1 - didn't receive 100% something worked.

Now I'm receiving actual data from GA. It feels, so good to have it tracked. For this Reddit TL attempt I've dropped the link with a short story. I'll wait a couple of hours and if there is enough discussion and upvotes I'll leave it grow organically and reply some comments if needed.

Otherwise I'll just delete it to use this account for another reddit pawnage.

Forum 1k visitors traffic leak plan:
As an attempt to attract 1k visitors from a forum, I'll try trolling on a couple of new forums more and less related to my niche. By 20 Feb I need to have:

- 1k visitors from 1 forum thread - best scenario
- 1k visitors from a couple of forum threads - 2nd best scenario (in this case I'll keep trying)
- a couple of hundred visitors from more than one forum thread (3rd best, will keep trying).

Edit:
Up to now - just 21 visitors from my last Reddit test. Tomorrow I'm trying something new. I'll probably delete the old post.
 
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