Crackvertising - Internet Marketing Addiction

[Linda Buquet]

What do online advertisers and crack users have in common? Both are locked in a disastrous end game, a downward spiral leading to certain doom.

I admit I'm an addict. I was in sales and sales management for years and always got a 'high' when I made a big sale or was crowned the sales rep or manager of the year. Then when I started my SEO business several years ago I got addicted to rankings and traffic. I still am. Normal women get a thrill from a good buy at the mall. I get a MAJOR RUSH every time I make a great ad buy. I am NOT a normal woman. I am a Crackvertiser!

I check traffic stats at least 20 times a day. I use Extreme Tracking so I can see referrals to each page LIVE as they come in. Live graphs show me if my traffic is moving up or down. If it's down I go into sweats and can't function. If its up I go into a manic high and turn into wonder woman on speed. I've tried everything to stop being a Crackvertiser. I try to hold myself back from ad buys, chronic PPC abuse & compulsive stats checking. But a voice always comes into my head "It's OK, one more time won't hurt, you can quit tomorrow." ;-)

If you want to lighten up your Monday morning, check out Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg's blog titled Crackvertising - Are You Addicted? I know many affiliates that are addicted to their stats and will get a kick out of this.

"Crackvertiser's start innocently enough, harnessing free search result referrals as a moneymaking tool. Why start with free traffic? As any skilled dealer will say, "The first bag is always free." In both cases, a free first taste leads to exhilaration, and then a desire for more. The story for crack addicts is sad, straightforward and severe. Search marketers find referrals to be merely a gateway and rapidly move on to impressions, paying search engines to deliver their ad to web surfers. Soon they seek improved quality of traffic by entering bidding wars for favored position.

It's all about traffic. The crackvertiser needs progressively higher traffic volumes to sustain the sales levels. If that traffic level drops, or if conversion rates fluctuate or fall, crackvertisers work themselves into a panic trying to devise ways to bring traffic levels back up."

Check out Crackvertising - Are You Addicted? It's well worth a read.

They say it helps to talk about it and the 1st step is admitting you have a problem. I got up and shared. Now it's your turn to come 'clean'.

Are you an addict?

[Linda Buquet]

Come-on... I'm the only addict on this forum???

I think NOT!

[Rob_TID]

I must be one - I got to "Extreme Tracking" in the article before I got too excited and needed to leave and find this great new LIVE stats tracking system! Back soon!

[lingstar]

Good morning,

Yes indeed, it's a thrill to see the different kinds of stats and earnings. My favorite trackings are those for referrals and page views...today I saw several inbound links from disney.com to my site! While I'd love to claim my site is on their homepage, somehow...I don't think that's quite the case. So it must be a spoof... (but it was nice to consider for the 3.9 seconds that I did). :-)

Best wishes,

Barbara

[Linda Buquet]

Hey Rob and all,

Here's a link to the free tracker with a demo you can try.
http://extremetracking.com/?reg

The paid tracker is better and give you sep stats for every page of your site plus path trcking tosee where visitors go and which keywords they use.

"Non Public Tracker" only 4.50 a month
http://extremetracking.com/?npt (not an affiliate link, that's the page name.)

I knew there were other stats addicts on this board!

[Rob_TID]

Linda - post an affiliate link and I will be sure to buy through it when I sign up with those guys. You made me aware of it and it looks pretty good.

[Linda Buquet]

Hi Rob, thanks but no need. I'm not an affiliate and it's only 4.50 a month so no money in it if they even have one - I don't think so. But thanks for offering.

[Teli]

ROFL!!

This is too funny Linda and yep, you're not alone. I'm addicted to the internet, period.

Crackvertising...that one's gonna have me giggling all day

[scorpion68a]

It is very funny! I thought there are not many out there like me, checking on their websites stats 20+ times a day. I imagined this happens only because I'm new in this business and I'm eager to see how it develops, so I want to know and analyse all little steps I do, I want to know when I get traffic spikes and why, who is generating the highest amount of leads... I was sure this would go away after one-two months, but now I understand that I might have become addicted. And you know what? There is a saying that in a human being, the sum of vices is a constant. Last year I quit smoking and I was sure that I contradict this saying. Now I'm not so sure anymore.
I use Statcounter for tracking and I'm comfortable with it. Some things, though, are missing: I cannot trace the exit links and I don't see the traffic split by hours of the day (which is not a big loss for the moment, as I'm checking the stats every 30 minutes as a real crackvertiser).

And you know what? I like my new addiction (although I think my boyfriend does not share this feeling at all).

[Lisa76]

This is funny. Yes, I call myself a "track addict". I was REALLY bad when I first started my site years ago. I'd be at work constantly logging into SiteMeter.com, at least 5 times an hour, and at that point my site was only getting about 200 hits per day so I don't know what I was looking for! lol