27,000 visitors from StumbleUpon in one week is my personal high score for generating social media traffic. 40k is my overall best in one day.

But if you ever look at my SU profile, by all outward appearances, I’m a pretty average user.

I don’t have 1000 subscribers, like Andy Beard, who can rock my server with one stumble.

And my both my Stumbling record and number of reviews certainly pale in comparison to someone like Zaibatsu.

And yet. Whether you’re talking social media or online news site, online reputation management or offline social networks, I seem to have a knack for knowing where all the pressure points are, and where to apply – or relax – force, to get the coverage that I want, and to pass that on to my customers and clients.

You can’t buy social media traffic, with the exception of Stumble Ads and Facebook Ads, which really aren’t the same as what I’d call social media traffic – even under those circumstances, it’s just not the same.

It’s the same way you can’t buy good vibes. Either you can get them, or you can’t. You can’t pay someone to genuinely feel good about your products, services, and customer support. Though I’m sure in this economy, lots of people would fake it really well if you offered them the right price.

As I get closer to retiring, I’ve wondered- and studied, what it is that I’m doing differently , more and more frequently. What  am I dong in half an hour on StumbleUpon that has the same effect as what some others do in 40 hours?

As it began to dawn on me, I started to take notes. This excerpt is from a PDF guide I wrote about what I have logically concluded, and repeatedly tested, to be the Secret to my Success in drawing social media traffic and generating massive traffic in general. [download it | pdf].

For the next 24 hours, I’m not going to ask for your email address or anything else in order for you to read it. After the opening day sale is over, there’s no more free peeks – you’ll have to give somethin to get somethin. wink wink.

Have a Happy Weekend. If you’re in the DC metro area, remember to stop by Faith Gifts and Stationery in Laurel Mall across from the Macy’s to visit me between 11 am and 2 pm. You can corner me and ask me questions about your web site.

I already have an update planned for the Facebook (Un)marketing release that came out on Thursday (you still have about an hour to act before I start cleaning up the sales page and raising the price to retail.)

From earlier tonight to the next 36 hours or so, if you’ve been a client of mine in the past, you’ll be getting a notice telling you what list to join for free updates of my products and special client freebies.

They’re for clients only and I’m emailing you the initial notices out one at a time. After tonight if you want an update, you’ll have to be on one of the lists – manual updates are just too time consuming. We’re talking several thousand emails here.

This includes PDF, audio and video updates to The Blog Optimization Package, Free Traffic Tips, the book, the 2007 versions of any of the guides from the 2006 version of the Get Them All Special, Blogs that Sell, The Art of Speed Blogging and Hidden Google traffic tactics.

High Profile Article Marketing and Marketing Success with RSS are legacy products that will only be available as part of larger packages.

If you have resale rights to any of my products, make sure you’ve joined the list from the original package — this gives you a good reason to contact former clients to say hello and remind them that you can help them!

… of the Year, is now online.

You have no idea how close it came to being the last one ever…

Whew!

In this Christmas Issue:

Five Seasons Freebies
Four Traffic Weapons
Three Blogger’s Resources
Two On-Going Contest
and a Funny Chirstmas Video of Me!

Can’t wait to see you there!

… You have a realistic goal.

Which is why it really irks me when I see a traffic program/software package/course that promises you thousands of visitors when it’s done. What if I already have thousands of visitors? How many thousands are we talking about anyway?

Whenever these things come out, I know that within a week to a month, someone is going to write me saying “I used x product and I’m failing. Can you help me?” And there are potential clients I turn away because they want to get 10,000 visitors a day like this program promised them, when they aren’t going to get much more than 2000 a day with their site the way it is.

This isn’t to say that some high-yield traffic programs don’t work if used properly. And to be sure, sometimes failure is about the fact that the person failed, not the program.

Some work (and I’ll make a post about evaluating these programs another time), but in my opinion, most of them

1. Make the whole idea of increasing traffic organically too hard
2. Behave as if raising traffic, as opposed to profit, is the one and only point
3. Don’t tell you that the quality of traffic you’ll get might not be what you want
4. Lead you to believe you’ll never have to spend a penny to increase your traffic.That’s BS. Sooner or later, someone has to advertise, or make an improvement to your site, products, services, sales pages, etc that is going to cost you money.There WILL be a traffic-related expense. The trick is to minimize it, or shift the cost elsewhere. And faced with a consistenly converting product, your affiliates will probably be happy to foot the cost of advertising, but you will still have to improve your web design, or hire a copywriter, something.Even if it’s the phone call to an expert to JV with you, at some point you will spend money. You can bootstap your way a surprisingly significant part of the way without funds.

I do believe that a million visitors or a million page views even, is a realistic goal for traffic.

However, for someone who is starting at zero, or getting one hundred unique visitors a day and actually converting some of those people into sales, on your way to a million, you have to start somewhere. What do you think is a realistic, starting-out goal?