Am I getting enough traffic?

You can never get enough traffic.

All depends how you're promoting yourself. Maybe you need to do more/different promotions.

5,000 isn't much at all, I'm afraid. My site gets about 60,000 impressions a month I feel that is pretty ordinary, nothing special. So keep promoting, keep marketing, and you'll eventually find success. The saying also goes, its quality, not quantity that matters, so keep that in mind. And you can never have too much traffic, right?

"So keep promoting, keep marketing, and you'll eventually find success."

That is what I'm having difficulties with - any suggestions? Because I know that I'm getting very little traffic, but there are actually few sites that have the number of reviews we do (growing each day too) wth the quality of review (6-10 paragraphs each). Thus I know that I'm doing something wrong in the marketing aspect.

How long has your site been going? Rome wasn't built in a day.

About 6 months

I have the same problem as you. My site is better then the others in it's area with such things like more frequent updates, much better looking site, more content, etc. However I have trouble getting to 300 uniques hits per day. I opened 3 weeks ago and have spent $200 in GoTo, built a seemingly successful community, but the hits aren't coming .

sianews, I recommend you ask for a site critique. (After being helpful and reviewing a few others first.) I would be glad to help.

Link exchanges are very important. If you cross-promote with sites that get decent traffic and compliment your site's topic and theme, you will get more popular. And partnerships can push you over the hump - finding popular, quality sites that link to you prominently will help you immensely. Also, make sure you're listed in all the popular search engines.

Time.

Give it time.

Unless you're site is some cutting edge social thing like Brittney Spears or Madonna etc you aren't going to get 10,000 hits in the first week.

Besides, hits are one thing but sales are another. I'd rather have 100 visits from good leads than a 1,000 casual viewers.

Okay you have 500 reviews.. Reviews are not really that big of a thing. I can get reviews on a hundred different sites. There are over 1,000 movies released every year.

There is only one way you are going to beat your competition... Don't think anyone compares check out imdb.com/.

You way to win is Community Involvement. You can take those 5,000 monthly page views and turn them into 50,000 simply by getting people involved in your site.

You have 18 writers and 15 community members. This is your monthly traffic right here. (33 people averaging 5 page views a day). You need to get your word out. Here are some tips that will both increase the average page view and help you get more uniques.

1. Get listed in Google, DMOZ, Yahoo. If you have the money pay Inktomi to index your front page (just pay for that one right now) and get into Looksmart. Also get listed in Fast and Alta Vista. A search for your domain name in Google shows no results. This means you are not listed.

2. Create a newsletter. You can host it at Topica.com or YahooGroups.com. Having your mailing list in their directories gives you a bonus. Get all 33 people signed up on it.

3. Visit other movie sites, post in their communities with a good Signature but don't spam them.

4. Let everyone submit reviews. You will find that your number rises from 500 to 5000 really fast. Heck, I personally watch an average of 10 movies a week. I own over 600 Video Tapes and 100 DVD's, I have 12 premium movie channels. Believe or not, I am a pretty typical movie fan.

5. Set up a Movie store at vStore.com. Similar commissions to Amazon.com but you make more because it is YOUR store. Integrate this into your site. Link the products into the reviews. vStore handles the fulfillment and billing and you can buy from your own store (again unlike Amazon.com).

6. Link up with Fansites. These sites devote to a single movie or genre linking to them will give people a place to look for more information

7. Do we really care about the "top movies"? What is a top movie anyway? Is it based on the revenues? The author's whim? a vote of the site visitors?

8. Structure your movies by Genre. This is how people rent videos. Follow established logic.

9. Beef up your search. Include a little snippet of each movie.

10. Eliminate the actual search page and integrate the search box in every page, since there are no advanced options the extra click is superfluous and will drive away people.

11. Integrate CafePress into your site more... Either Frame it so your standard header is still there or use the header box they provide to show your logo.

12. Integrate the forums so they look like they are part of your site.

13. Offer small giveaways for people to sign up. DVD's are good prizes. Others include Video Tapes, Movie Memorabilia books and movie related items. If you follow #4 you can buy these from your own store and save money on them.

14. Once your newsletter is running nicely and has over 1000 members, swap ads with complimentary sites like fan sites, television sites, video game sites.

Look at your competition. What are they doing differently? How successful does it appear. What can you do?

All in all this will take time and dedication. Nothing grows overnight.

Excellent tips, Wayne. Very useful!

Okay, this helps a lot, I'm just going to make a note on each one if you don't mind:

Quote: Originally posted by Wayne Luke
Okay you have 500 reviews.. Reviews are not really that big of a thing. I can get reviews on a hundred different sites. There are over 1,000 movies released every year.

There is only one way you are going to beat your competition... Don't think anyone compares check out imdb.com/.
Of course imdb is the king, but have you really read their reviews? They stink.. this is why I don't want to allow the public to allow to review a movie.. they write 1-2 paragraphs with poor grammar and call it a review.

You way to win is Community Involvement. You can take those 5,000 monthly page views and turn them into 50,000 simply by getting people involved in your site.

You have 18 writers and 15 community members. This is your monthly traffic right here. (33 people averaging 5 page views a day). You need to get your word out. Here are some tips that will both increase the average page view and help you get more uniques.

Geesh, I never thought of it like that! I guess that is right.. most of the traffic is from the staff.

1. Get listed in Google, DMOZ, Yahoo. If you have the money pay Inktomi to index your front page (just pay for that one right now) and get into Looksmart. Also get listed in Fast and Alta Vista. A search for your domain name in Google shows no results. This means you are not listed.

I have absolutely no money to help advertise. That said, I am in google, as they are my top referrer, I'm also on Yahoo.. I get a lot of results on that.. but of course it could be better

2. Create a newsletter. You can host it at Topica.com or YahooGroups.com. Having your mailing list in their directories gives you a bonus. Get all 33 people signed up on it.

I was thinking of establishing a newsletter.. only I really don't know if anyone would sign up.. I mean.. if I don't have traffic in the first place..

3. Visit other movie sites, post in their communities with a good Signature but don't spam them.

Yup.. I'm doing this..

4. Let everyone submit reviews. You will find that your number rises from 500 to 5000 really fast. Heck, I personally watch an average of 10 movies a week. I own over 600 Video Tapes and 100 DVD's, I have 12 premium movie channels. Believe or not, I am a pretty typical movie fan.

I don't want to allow the public to allow to review a movie.. they write 1-2 paragraphs with poor grammar and call it a review. That's what I'm trying to be unique from..

5. Set up a Movie store at vStore.com. Similar commissions to Amazon.com but you make more because it is YOUR store. Integrate this into your site. Link the products into the reviews. vStore handles the fulfillment and billing and you can buy from your own store (again unlike Amazon.com).

I WAS with vstore.com - but nobody bought anything so they shut us down.

6. Link up with Fansites. These sites devote to a single movie or genre linking to them will give people a place to look for more information

Link please?

7. Do we really care about the "top movies"? What is a top movie anyway? Is it based on the revenues? The author's whim? a vote of the site visitors?

Hmm... Yeahh.. I need to think of something to replace that with.. I might be replacing it with 'upcoming movies'

8. Structure your movies by Genre. This is how people rent videos. Follow established logic.

I'm currently thinking of how to do this via Perl.

9. Beef up your search. Include a little snippet of each movie.

I'm currently thinking of how to do this via Perl.

10. Eliminate the actual search page and integrate the search box in every page, since there are no advanced options the extra click is superfluous and will drive away people.

Yeah, there is no real need for the search page.

11. Integrate CafePress into your site more... Either Frame it so your standard header is still there or use the header box they provide to show your logo.

Yeah good idea, I'll try that

12. Integrate the forums so they look like they are part of your site.

Yeah good idea, I'll try that

13. Offer small giveaways for people to sign up. DVD's are good prizes. Others include Video Tapes, Movie Memorabilia books and movie related items. If you follow #4 you can buy these from your own store and save money on them.

I'm giving away 3 great packages right now, but only 2 people signed up for it!

14. Once your newsletter is running nicely and has over 1000 members, swap ads with complimentary sites like fan sites, television sites, video game sites.

Look at your competition. What are they doing differently? How successful does it appear. What can you do?

All in all this will take time and dedication. Nothing grows overnight.

Thanks for taking the time to give me pointers!

Just a quick suggestion, do as Wayne said and ask visitors for their reviews, but offer a prize of a dvd of the winners choice for the best review each month. Hopefully that will build up interactivity.
Good luck

PS. Ah just seen this
"I don't want to allow the public to allow to review a movie.. they write 1-2 paragraphs with poor grammar and call it a review. That's what I'm trying to be unique from.."

Still, perhaps the competition will persuade them to write better reviews.

That's not a bad idea, but then, that would mean me pocketing out a DVD each month.. which, in my case, is a lot of money.. I'd rather buy some online advertising than get more reviews from the public, because we are currently receiving around 5 reviews a day, which isn't too bad, as they are long and well written

Maybe you could partner with a DVD site to give them away and you could get reduced prices on them in return for the promotion?

5,000 page views per month is kinda low.
We sell real estate in the Bahamas and we got 48,076 page views last month.

Gavin

>>(If you want detailed statistics you can go to http://www.movie-vault.com/wwwstat - I don't use this, I use FastClick's reports though).<<

Try Live Stats from http://www.mediahouse.com/ I won't promote without it. Comes free with some hosting packages. We use InnerHost.com pay $22.95 per month hosting and Live Stats is free.

Gavin

Wayne's tips are all Excellent but the one about setting a Vstore: I've never heard about anyone being successful with those...

Well, 5k is low, I run offa free host and get over 7k a month, going more advertising schemes.

If you're willing to spend out some money, I highly recommended to advertise in GoogleAdSense (http://google.com/adsense/) I am not sure if this is the page for being an advertiser anyway.
But if you are also willing to give out some bandwidth, try to make something that attracts people to your site by seeing your site link in others. Let's make an example, open up a banner exchange, any movies-related site joins must add a link to a page (in an inline frame) which contains random banners of other members, add your site link in the bottom of that page which will make your link visible in all the members that have joined in. A topsite is an exccelent idea too, other webmasters would keep joining up. I suggest using a topsite that counts by unique clicks in. However topsites that count the visitors/day of the member like AAdvark topsites (sorry it seems like I have lost the url, you cna google for it) are pretty good too, but it needs a very high bandwidth.

Considering the poster started this thread almost three years ago, I doubt your advice will help now.

Don't drag up old posts, it's fairly pointless and it just wastes peoples time.