Results of my Twitter traffic experiment.
May 5, 2009
Last week I started using Twitter, and was immediately hooked. Twitter is a great way to keep in closer contact with your list members, to grow your list of contacts, and to build traffic.
I decided to test just how much traffic I could build through Twitter, and so performed an experiment: I offered a free gift to everyone who "retweeted" (reposted) a specific tweet (Twitter message). I started this experiment on April 29th. The results were quite impressive, with hundreds of people reposting the tweet.
The biggest accomplishment of this experiment was the quick growth of my Twitter followers (people who are notified when I post new tweets). I started the experiment with 590 followers. As of today I have over 1,200. That's a growth of more than 600 followers in just 7 days.
The tweet that I had people retweeting had a link in it that has generated (as of my writing this) 4,766 click-throughs to my blog post about OffTo.net, my free link cloaking service. Not bad at all!
Thanks to those click-throughs, I grew my OffTo.net user base by more than 150 users (each user is an opt-in into a mailing list as well). That's another great benefit.
There were some unanticipated benefits as well. Because I was readily accessible and answering people's questions via a public tweet or a private message at Twitter, I generated some sales of some of my products. I also picked up some affiliates who made more sales of my products. I also got some great advice from a registered Nutrtionalist who was kind enough to answer my questions to her.
All in all, I'd call my Twitter traffic experiment quite successful. Because of it's success, I have decided to continue answering questions posted to me via a tweet directed publicly to @jonathanleger — so feel free to hop over to Twitter and ask me any Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization or general business questions you might have.
Please post your thoughts in a comment below.
Comments
100 Responses to “Results of my Twitter traffic experiment.”
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Jonathan Leger has been earning his living online full-time since the fall of 2004. He regularly posts advice about search engine optimization (his current passion), AdSense and Internet Marketing. He is the creator of a suite of popular software tools, including: Jonathan L Leger 
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I enjoyed participating in your experiment. It was very cool to be able to ask you direct questions and get informative answers that really helped with what I was trying to accomplish. Thanks!
I have had no luck on twitter. How much of your success would you attribute to your notoriety.
How much of a role do you see it playing in your future business ideas and promotions?
I think your tweeter experiment is successful because because people see you as a trustable marketer and your free gift. If you don't provide value, nobody is going to follow you. I think you have done a great job.
Hi Jonathan
What a fantastic result in such a short period of time.
Can you tell me something?
Do you go to twitter each time you want to tweet or do you use a free piece of software like 'tweetdeck' to keep track of everything?
John O'Hara
United Kingdom
I am happy that your twitter experiment worked well but I have been trying to contact you as I have some questions and you never respond.
Nice article. I think it was a success as well. I found that creating a name on twitter that makes it appear as though you are an expert, people will follow you.
This is a very eye opening experiement. I just opened a Twitter account myself last week so I can't share any personal experiences.
I can say, however, that I had several people tweet about my WordPress Sales Letter bundle product using their affiliate links and I've seen several hundred visits to the site as a result of Twitter.
Thank you for sharing!
Jason
I am so glad that you have had fantastic luck in such a short time. Twitter's community can be somewhat hard to read and be disheartening for people who are looking for immediate ROI.
Now where is your follow me button on this blog?
I enjoy following all of you experiments and have profited by doing so. With twitter I am only following less than 100 people and on average it only takes about three hours for a post to disappear down at the bottom of the page.
I know you can call it back but I wonder how many do. Very seldom do I. Whats out of site is out of mind - at least for me. If you post say at 10AM and I don't get home till 6PM. I'll never see your post.
Just a thought.
Terry
HI Jonathan
I was reading some of the comments above - I grew my twitter list 2000 in the last couple months without too much effort so I know it's not too hard if you keep your eyes open to the various methods to do it. Certainly I am not well known so that wasn't a factor. (Although I am a trustable marketer lol)
Programs like tweetlater and tweetgetter and linking it all to your blogs and facebook seem to work well - I average a follow every 5 minutes or so..
Best Regards
Phil Eugene
That's great… what software did you use or service did you use to do the retweeting?
Twitter is just the greatest thing, but yes Jon, I agree with the comments above regarding your reputation. That can help a lot in gaining followers.
In my experience over the months that I have been on Twitter, I have found that providing value to your followers is the best way of growing your follower base. I find the best way of doing this is twofold. First of all, being helpful by responding to questions and providing assistance to others where you can. This will build a reputation a a giving person who cares about helping others, not just building a following.
The second thing is providing good quality links in Tweets to valuable information others may not have seen. To do this I use the Feedly RSS reader extension in Firefox. My feeds come in and I can tweet them direct from the page. This generates a lot of retweets and others appreciate the information.
The only thing left to say of course is "Follow me on Twitter!"
Cheers,
Ric
Jon
)
It may be good for you because you have had a "head start" as it were, mainly due to your large readership/email list. I think someone trying to start from scratch with Twitter (purely from an IM point of view) would struggle to get followers (is that what they're called
Anyway, still love all the experiments though so keep up the great work.
Tont
Hello Dear Jonathan and all, I too participated in your Twitter Experiment. I must say your results were astounding. That you were able to get that much additional traffic to your cloaking site and then make sales is phenomenal. Way to go Johnathan. And Way to Go everyone who pitched in a Tweeted.
All my best,
Beatrix
Nice! Congrats on the success
Twitter mania is sweeping the land.
Here a link to a Twitter related post on my blog:
{no urls in comments please}
Best of success,
Robert A. Kearse
This was a great test of Twitter and it demonstrates clearly how powerful it can be. I never thought I was going to like Twitter until I got involved and I haven't looked back.
Congrats on the success of the experiment.
Hi Jon,
I really like the way you do all this test and let al your reader know about the result.
I think you are the only marketer who does this on a regular basis.
Hats Off to you…
Anish
On another note… i would like to know how you know for sure when someone retweeted your post… is there some kind of tools to know about that.
Anish
Jonathan,
Is this your Twitter profile: http://twitter.com/jonathan_leger ?
I did the experiment but I never got the gift.
Jon,
Your results are impressive, although I still remain to be convinced about Twitter as a business tool.
We are getting a few followers on our main Twitter account, not that we can detect any clickthroughs yet, but it has to be said we could probably do more to get additional followers.
However, I really appreciate the ability to ask you questions directly, and I hope you don't get so swamped that you remove this facility.
Best wishes,
Mark
great job on your experiment. who knew that such a simple social site would turn into the next google?
wow nice result
my twitter just get 6 follower per day but you have been succeed to get 600 additional follower within 7 days.
congrats
Jon,
My experience has been the same as an earlier commenter-Twitter gives a lot of people with large followings another avenue to interact with them. I see quite a few people who spend a lot of time on it like an instant messager and that's an end in itself.
For now, I'll keep my Tweeting to a minimum and spend the time on other means of getting traffic and links.
Jeff
I too wonder if you got the response you did because of the fact that you're Jonathan Leger.
Although I don't believe everyone who signed up did it just because of your name more so then because of the great information you give.
None the less I loved the experiment that you did and plan on doing one myself. My site is about health and nutrition and I have a wonderful healthy ebook I have PLR rights to and I am going to give it away to anyone who retweets me.
I just have one question, how did you know when someone retweeted you? I retweeted you, you then emailed me however I've been on your mailing list. I don't recall putting in an email address.
Can you let me know how you did this?
Thanks and I love your information.
I too wonder if you got the response you did because of the fact that you're Jonathan Leger.
Although I don't believe everyone who signed up did it just because of your name more so then because of the great information you give.
None the less I loved the experiment that you did and plan on doing one myself. My site is about health and nutrition and I have a wonderful healthy ebook I have PLR rights to and I am going to give it away to anyone who retweets me.
I just have one question, how did you know when someone retweeted you? I retweeted you, you then emailed me however I've been on your mailing list. I don't recall putting in an email address.
Can you let me know how you did this?
Thanks and I love your information.
I discovered twitter at the same time and your email popped into my tray within an hour of my joining.
I did "retweet" your message but didn't get the gift as I added you afterwards! lol.
Then, being the patient type, after I messaged you to say what had happened when we both realised the slip-up something went amis. I never did get acknowledgement of the posting.
I wont hold it against you as I have learned more from you for free than anything I ever paid for elsewhere
Thank you for being you.
Thanks Jon,
I really enjoy all the information you bring your subscribers. However, I don't feel just any average Joe is going to have the same kind of success. But, you know what they say. You never know unless you try.
Hi,
I thought the experiment went well, and the click throughs back to your site is great. I get about 200 people per week following me of which I first followed about 100 of them. I will be making use of your experiment to increase those numbers further.
Thanks,
Kelly
The experiment was fun because I learned twitter, learned offto.net, spent some time researching (maybe even procrastinated a bit…) and, having something else very urgent occurring, stopped everything and took a week before deciding on a nickname.
Then I sent a message that never went into the webspace… and when I could finally send it then discovered I had to be a follower, so quickly resent the message after deleting the original message.
Everything was OK today, then I just found the results were out and the experiment was finished so I didn't get the book
Positive results anyway.
1- now have a twitter account, know the way to use it, even got half a dozen followers in my niche already in less than six hours.
2- now have an offto.net account set-up for multiple domains and ready to use this feature too.
Till the new project, thanks Jon.
I did all the stuff asked, where's the free stuff we were promised?
searchtempo:
Are you following me on twitter? If not, I can't DM you the gift.
Jonathan,
Thank you for the interesting information. Was wondering, though, how on earth you managed to convert social traffic to actual buyers? Typically, as you know, social traffic does not click on ads or convert if they do. Do the sales you made outweigh the cost of what you spent on the free gift?
Thanks in advance
I think Twitter is an interesting tool but I have still to see it perform any better than ordinary IM tools. It can be a great addition but also something that can steal a lot of time.
Twitter is still new to me. I have been the member. But, I am learning how twitter can increase traffic to our websites.
Hello Jonathan,
I have used Twitter on several occasions and, like you, found it to be of value. I must admit I go off it for days at a time.
I missed your promotion but will be adding you to my twitter account shortly.
I always enjoy the great advice you share freely and like visiting your site often to keep up to date. Cheers
Hi Jon,
I did follow you because my respect to you. I don't think though twitter or any other social sites are my cup of tea, especially with very limited time on the hand.
But, I am really happy for your success. You do deserve it.
Anna
Hi Jon,
Thanks for sharing this with us all. I am pleased for you that your experiment went well.
However, I don't believe that the same experiment would go as well for me, and others like me, who do not yet have a twitter page. Getting the page is easy to achieve, but we don't have the same following that you have. We don't have the ready-built lists that you have been building for the last few years, so we have nobody to ask to 'retweet' anything, and this makes all the difference to the success of any promotion.
In time, we can build a list - obviously, but it is no quick fix solution to our current situation. We simply would not have the same speed of success in whatever we do as you have had in this instance.
Whilst what you have taught here is helpful, it may be even more helpful if you would do your experiments as someone who has no lists to help to build your credibility within twitter. That way, we can see how a newbie could have the same success as you achieved, which you have done in some of your older experiments, like using 3-way links on a new site, etc.
Keep the good information coming.
Barry
I like the way of your experiment and let me know how much traffic increased? I have also got registered as user at twitter. Now I am learning how can i got maximum traffic to my website. Did you have any guideline please let me know ?
Hi,
I'm already on your list and I'm surely getting benefit… Thanks.
I think I'm following you on twitter.. please let me know if I'm there, I'll follow immediately… I'd opted in for your traffic experiment and I've got a few followers too. It's great !
I'm a new blogger, my blog is a month old and I'm writing about work from home opportunities. Can you help me with my blog ?
Please visit and let me know how I should improve it, both in content and traffic. Can I be cheeky and ask for a link exchange ?
I'm new to twitter and don't know much about how to operate most features. Is there any place I should go and learn ??
Thanks again
Shyamala
Hi,
Jon, we've had similar results, even with newbies. We have and share the percentages i.e. how many follow you back, how many click through, how many sign up etc. Without doubt, Twitter, at the moment, is one of the best ways to build a list on the Internet. Not sure how long it will last but it is certainly worth getting involved at the moment (and it is very addictive).
All the very best, Allen
Thanks for the useful info as I've just recently started with twitter and it gives me a few ideas to build the list of followers.
I've never used twitter but I'll try used it as soon as possible. Maybe I'll got more follower using twitter. Anyway Great share Jon
Interesting how Twitter has developed into the mainstream. It seemed to reach a tipping point a couple of months ago and now everyone is talking about it.
From a marketer's point of view, what seems to work for me is an integrated approach. In other words, it's no use JUST using Twitter (or Squidoo, or your Blogger or Wordpress blog, or whatever social networking platform is in vogue). You must also use it in conjunction with other media. Make sure that links point to your own website (as that is the one element that you want to endure) and don't forget the importance of the RSS feed. Get the URL of the feed and submit it to RSS aggregators.
Do all of these things in a loop, without any reciprocality getting in the way, and you will have a self-perpetuating recipe for success.
I admit, I actually followed you and did get your gift. It was great and I am glad you followed me back. I follow all. I was inspired by your test and I launched my new affiliate article rewriting software mainly on Twitter. The sales were coming in at about 3 an hour when I tweeted.
The software sells itself, but it was Twitter that made it successful. I agree with you, Twitter is now the way for social marketing. As an aside though, anyone who knows you would be thrilled to follow you on Twitter, and I am one of those people.
Well, i think twitter is just too much of a mess… I mean - if you want to have 1000s people to follow you, you have to follow similar number as well… meaning - there is just an overwhelming amount of twitts to read, so eventually people stop doing it..
Strange out of all the emails i get and "delete LOL" yours often get saved for later reading you must be doing something right, nice experiment I'm running one of my own after seeing a few friends develop some decent pages on the social networks
thanks again for all info its alot to obsorb in short time line but atleast its availible thanks jon
is web feeds the next best alternative to traffic building ???
thanks for all info we ll try to absorb it asap thanks jon
i agree with electric chair, twitter is not practical because of the need to reciprocate when people follow you + how do you know that your tweets get read as i understand that there is software that enables you to just view the tweets from people you really want to follow … so having 1000's of tweets looks impressive but what percentage read your tweets? and i am speaking as a 'nobody' as opposed to someone who already has a following
how do you know that your tweets get read as i understand that there is software that enables you to just view the tweets from people you really want to follow
You track clicks using scripts or free services like OffTo.net. That's how.
When I post a tweet and track the results, I get anywhere from 50 - 200 people clicking-through to see what I'm linking to.
Multiply that over 5-10 tweets a day… lots of traffic. You just have to work the system like it's intended to be worked — be helpful and useful to the people who follow you and they WILL read what you tweet.
I have started twitter a few weeks ago, but I have not found it is interesting to play with it. There are so many people on it but I do not them, do you think they could bring traffic to my site?
Good to know the results and how it works. I wonder if retweeting could possibly be organized in a similar fashion as mywaylinks?
I've heard of people using Twitter successfully, but once again, you have taken it to the next level. I have a Twitter account but I don't use it much, mainly because I don't follow and don't have many followers. I make the occasional tweet though; very, very occasional.
I imagine that Twitter would work for the top 2% of online marketers and would be a time vampire for the rest of us. But I admire Jonathan's offer to help people by answering questions.
Personally I find Instant messaging irritating since it interrupts you and is a big distraction, especially if you have the headphones on and are listening to music or watching a movie and you get pinged. Now I try and remember to turn it off when I don't want to be interrupted.
Another annoying form of IM in my opinion is the message: "did you read the email I sent?".
I wonder how many marketers try and game twitter by pretending to be interested in you but only want you to follow them. Possibly they might use software to simulate reading your tweets?
A rival service could perhaps be called Stalker where you Stalk rather than Tweet and it is web cam enabled.
Andy
Censorship at its best…. Jonathan Leger please do the right thing for your customers and stop deleting my posts unless you are actually going to do something to rectify the situation that you have created by selling a product that is sub-standard and creates illegal activities…. I am not happy about losing a client due to your product! Please contact because you have not heard the last of this. You may think you are the king of the internet, but you simply are not. I would not be upset at all if there was a way to contact you and if you showed any kind of integrity at all, but alas, you go about your scam without any consideration for others who are working hard.
Hmm, you just might have convinced me to start using Twitter. I've been skeptical, as I am with every new thing people get overly excited about. But the results of your experiment are really astonishing, no way could I reach similar results without twitter.
Time to go with the tide it seems ….
Twitter is one the best social networking tools yet. Being able to search and see results in real time is un-rivaled. And I wouldn't be at all surprised if the search engines somehow try to get their hands in this market.
Glad to know your experiment is going well!
I've been thinking about using twitter but somehow think it will take too much of my time and not be worth it.
I'll look into it more now though. I agree with the dude above, time to go with the tide…soonish
I personally haven't had any success with twitter. But, I believe with the right plan twitter can bring tons of followers. I am a firm believer in search engines though.
That's awesome- when I write the free ebook that I will give away to build my list I will definitely use your twitter strategy to promote it.
Thanks for telling us about it =)
All the best,
Eren
I signed up with Twitter but I haven't really gotten that into it yet.
Twitter is great for building traffic when you post interesting posts. It's not the best idea to spam twitter with every post you make.
I think my biggest vote of confidence was when Shaquille O'Neal got into the Twitter trend also. Now that's validation
- Abraham
Jonathan, your success with Twitter blew me away! I'm still a little afraid of getting my feet wet there. I'm afraid of collecting more flies than followers. But your story has convinced me to study Twitter in greater detail as a marketing tool
Thats a very cool idea. But can you tell me what gift you offered to people who re-twitted you?
I have started using twitter some weeks ago… and I'm building my following… do you have any suggestions on how to do that are there any tips or tricks you can share with us?
Many thanks
I heard that twittering can build better traffic but I haven't tried that out. Maybe one of these days.
That's a fantastic result! Certainly sounds like you are getting the hang of twitter
Jonathan, how do you manage to blog, twitter, and come up with all these link-exchange programs while still staying productive? I can handle a certain amount of social media, but Twitter has proven the breaking point in terms of my productivity (or lack thereof). Any advice is much appreciated.
Wow….that is all I can say about this! LOL Twitter has become a very dynamic force in the microblogging community. The owners of the site were just on the "view" talking about how Google was trying to buy them out because they knew how powerful it was becoming! I haven't taken much time to use it because in order for it to work, you have to have people following you! This is the hardest part.
Hi Jonathan. Thank you for introducing me to Twitter. I'm going to have to get used to the new environment, but that's all part of growth. I'm excited to hear about the unexpected results especially and can't wait to find out what with my twitter site. I'm sorry I have to cut this short but I hear supper calling.
Take and God bless,
Bruce
Matt. 6: 33
Twitter is one of the best tools that each of us can use to gain traffic and stay in touch with our friends.
I think the best thing about using Twitter is the real time search system it uses.
That's powerful!
Twitter is the best networking site where u can promote your business and make your strong profile. Very Good twitter result in very short time Period …
I've tried over-and-over again to figure out a efficient way to work Twitter into my online marketing plans… The problem is, I flat-out know too many people online and by making Twitter a mainstay of my marketing efforts opens my up to all kinds of productivity-killing interruptions by people who in no way help me to achieve whatever my goals happen to be for a given day.
Few things drive me crazy more than my cell phone buzzing because somebody just couldn't resist Tweeting the news that his/her car got a flat tire and they just got finished changing it in the rain…
It's productivity suicide!
Impressive results. I tried to leverage Twitter about 6 months ago and just couldn't get a large number of followers. I'll have to take another run at it!
Like you said you had join the Twitter to experiment whether it works or not, I also joined the twitter when I heard and read lots of thing about it and for the same experiment I started twitting. And I would say it works, I got a good amount of traffic from twitter. It is a good place to advertise your products and services.
Thanks for sharing. Great post
I use Twitter as part of my marketing strategy. Twitter do ban accounts that rapidly grows so it's neat if you keep a gradual increase in your twitter network rather that immediately having a lot of followers(vice versa)
Twitter is the best thing to happen to the WWW since the advent of google. I've seen my traffic grow exponentially!
Twitter is a very good tool indeed. Its easy to use and FREE
Any updates or new thoughts? We need more posts from you dude
wow, I have to say that Twitter is a really good tool to use when you are trying to make sales online. I think the biggest thing is who follows you. I have been using a lot of social networking that has Twitter enable within their bookmarking like Mister-Wong. i have over 71 followers in just a short amount of time and that was done without me even advertising my Tweet! Good post
Yeah. I just found another tool called Gigya. But I think it required programming skills though. But, it worth to try
Though I had provided lots of useful information for my followers, I haven't had much luck with Twitter.
I loved the post about twitter. I too just started using it and have found it to be beneficial to my success. I like twitter because you can keep in touch with others who have the same interests and background knowledge that you do. It has been great for me.
I heard different opinions. Some people say they had amazing results with twitter while others claim it to be a waste of time. We could definitely use some kind of "guidelines to twitter marketing".
you are right setai,
For some people twitter is worth spending their time and for some other people its simply a waste of time. There should be some authenticated text regarding the proper use of twitter,
Great Experiment Jon, I am also using twitter and more than 350 people following me till now
So when are you going to release a step-by-step twitter guide? I am just getting into twitter and building my own passion business so to speak.
Sounds impressive but Im still struggling to understand how Twitter is different from Facebook status updates? I need to get into the land of Twitter!
Sounds great but could do with some 'pros and cons' as I have heard mixed opnions on Twitter…
Hi,.
Congratulations for success of experiment.twitter itself is the best.I think For creativity. Working alone can be hard and Twitter constantly feeds ideas to me.To get me thinking about different aspects of life, different topics, different cultures. It makes me think globally and stops me being insular.
Great post about twiter…Can we set link in twitter tweet which is not nofollow? I notice some bit.ly links are nofollow-ed.
And I'm not too Twitter and I'm happy.
Hi Jon, thank you for sharing this beautiful and helpful post. Twitter is really offering great way to do social media optimization.
Effective and awesome tips.
Thanks for the article.
keep posting.
Very Cool Experiment Jon… I have registered at twitter last week but I could not get the response. Anyway, I will try this technique.
Thanks for this post.
Jon,
I have registered at twitter and using for last 1 year but I did not see the improvement in my sales. Now, i am going to do this experiment and let see what will be results…
Thank you for the post.
James