Its been almost 1 year since the twitter name ShoeMoney was turned over to me and I started using it.
Its now the 2nd biggest source of referral traffic to my blog.
April Stats:
I know what most of you are thinking…. “Well if I had 30k followers I could get traffic too” You would probably be surprised to learn that less then 5% of the twitter traffic came from my tweets.
Just engaging in the twittosphere has been amazingly rewarding.
But if you still “don’t get it” its cool. Less competition 
About the author...
Jeremy Schoemaker – who has written 2475 posts on ShoeMoney.com.
Hi I am Jeremy Schoemaker and ShoeMoney.com is my blog. 99% of the post here are done by me but you will see others occasionally make guest posts. This blog is fun to write but for my day job I run several online companies.
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{ 134 comments… read them below or add one }
33% of my referrals are from Twitter. People who “don’t get” Twitter are just complete idiots, plain and simple.
Twitter still seems like a force for generating traffic, how good the traffic is another issue all together.
No doubt, twitter ranks in my top 15 sources of traffic even though I don’t have a huge following.
wow if that’s the case I will need to get to work than b building up my twitter followers
me too ..
As for me, I still cannot understand why Twitter is so popular, and what it is for.
I didn’t understand it at all either at first but I started playing around with it and doing some reading. It is one of those things that it is so simple you think you are missing something and doing it wrong but you aren’t. I make a few “tweets” on an account for a website of mine and once I saw the traffic I received from it on analytic the next day I was hooked.
Initially I did not take twitter seriously. I thought what’s the big deal in sending updates to people.
But because it has been getting so much attention for past few months I made my research and decided to join the service.
Yes I agree It is not just a great way to keep in touch with people you care about, it is also an innovative marketing tool.
I believe they are going to expand their operations, lets wait and watch the new things they will offer in the times to come.
it is funny that microsoft has a search engine call msn.com and another one call live.com…. one day they will find their unique name lool…
twitter is everywhere … I mean every one use their API.. so if your are not on twitter… you miss a chance to spread your name, tweet message and brand freely everywhere….
I need to get a smart phone that can do twitter. Greg Ellison
I agree! I didn’t see the use in it, until I started using it. Then I definately saw the benefits
I know it! The whole platform of it makes sense after a while. I’m glad I started using twitter when i did.
I’ve definitely seen traffic, sales and friends come from Twitter! From the comments I see around the internet.. you either love it or hate it!
then how do they find you? via twitter search?
why yes they did find me via search…and retweets…and aggregators.
thanks for the question
I’m just getting started on Twitter…while i’m not sure I would use it from a personal perspective I can see how a lot of people would and the business benefits are quickly becoming obvious
Jeremy, you just put into writing what I have been telling people all along. Twitter is a tool a business owner can’t live without!
@23Kazoos
Well first of all let give you many congrats for getting such a HUGE traffic from Twitter. Actually Twitter has become HUGE source of traffic on Internet these days. I have recently opened Twitter account and i was amazed looking at the results on my blog, although i just have 1000 followers ..lol
So I’ve been using my Twitter feed a lot in the past month but only until now checked my Analytics against it to find that it’s not even in my top 20 referrals. I wonder why the difference between me and you. Is it because you’re pushing your Twitter feed more than myself or is it because you have a better community. I’m going to guess the latter.
I don’t understand why people don’t understand?
I am noticing more and more spam. the ‘spam’ can be harder to spot in some cases though. The noise level is getting crazy.
Jeremy, are you also using it by creating an account for each of your sites or is just on a ‘personal’ level? The bigger it gets the more I can tell I need to separate, focus and channel the info.
Depends on your market. It is still mostly used by Internet marketers and celebs. So if you market is Internet marketers you should be getting more traffic.
It hasn’t fully trickled down to “regular people” yet, despite what you hear on the news.
Hey Matt, You might be right in saying that it has not trickled down to the “regular people”.
But I have had quite a fair success with Twitter for my career and job website. I found that there were a lot of people on Twitter who were interested in career advice and couselling. So it is not just Internet Marketers and celebs who are benefitting from Twitter, but there are other businesses as well.
Twitter is great for getting traffic. There are like 5 sites now that take twitter links and give you linkbacks to your site when you post.
wow, amazing stat numbers ! congrats !
I do agree with novick the traffic stats you get from Twitter is far from crazy!!!!
Are your xr.com redirects coming from Twitter too? If so you are closer to 30k visits.
amazing report…..twetter is very powerful social media
I am happy to find this very useful for me, as it contains lot of information. I always prefer to read the quality content
00
That’s pretty amazing.
A lot of marketers do not want to take full advantage of the amazing exposure potential Twitter has to follow, sometimes for no good reason other than to be different, or not hop on the bandwagon.
Your numbers speak for themselves.
I have also written an article about this in the AWeber affiliate newsletter scheduled for release later this month. It’s quite an eye opener!
Thank you for the info!
I agree with you Ron, in the fact that people don’t want to hop into the bandwagon.
But there is another aspect to it. There are people who spend so much of time on Twitter that they end up being burnt and unproductive. You have to be very cautious with social media websites like facebook and twitter. These can eat up on precious time of your and would not even yield anything. Ultimately you would have no other choice but quit it and discourage a few hundred people you know, thus preventing them from hoping onto the bandwagon.
Twitter is viral marketing at its best. As with most this in life it works when you participate and results take time…
unless your Ryan Seacrest…or maybe Jeremy.
Ok, I’ll Bite – I don’t get it. I did a 5 day experiment on twitter right after the CNN / Dorker race. I asked the question does twitter work for a nobody? right after the tweet posted 6 people unfollowed. In the 5 days, I retweeted my blog link 4 times, I didn’t want to abuse like some and my traffic increased by 3 people.
It seems to me that the people who get traffic are those who have the “twitter secrets” and the “get traffic secrets”.
I am still pretty new to twitter and trying to build a base. I see it can be a GREAT resource and the benefits are evedient!
I see huuuge potential in twitter.. not seeing a lot of referral traffic just yet (although i have only a few hundred followers) but i have made some great industry contacts with people who i would not have met other wise..
i think it will be interesting to see what people do with twitter in the next year or so as it grows more mainstream.
I am just wondering what % of the twitter visitors are new to your site.
Great example of Twitter success!
Yo Shoe,
The best part is that the referral traffic is probably only 1/3 of the overall traffic you’re getting from twitter. All the traffic from desktop/mobile clients show up as (direct) / (none)
this is an awesome traffic source for you, it’s not that good for me but still very usefull
So whats the best way to track people coming to your site who use twitter?
The reason I ask is Google Analytics are only going to show people coming to your site you are using twitters web interface. Or is what I have read about that wrong?
How do you track everyone else that uses applications or other website interfaces like HootSuite, DestroyTwitter, TweetDeck, Seesmic, and on and on i can go.
I have GA running on the site and I use tr.im for all my links I send out on twitter but I feel as though I am not seeing all the traffic that is coming to my site.
Any other suggestions?
I don’t really think you need to say anything else about Twitter.
So true. Twitter has been good for my blog traffic as well.
Twitter is an excellent marketing tool, I could not agree more with the importance of getting and maintaining a Twitter account.
Occasionally twittering has allowed me to “listen in” on what internet marketers are touting as the latest topics and get different ideas to try. It’s allowed me to meet a few people based on the same interests and form aliances. I do agree that non IMers are still trying to figure Twitter out and not usng it as much. It’s definitely the kind of thing you just start using and see how it goes overtime.
Poker jerk? Nice name. Twitter is a cool tool for people that blog about GRQ stuff. But for joe schmoe selling BBQ Grills online, I’m not so sure how many more sales he’s getting from it. And I’m sure people like Poker Jerk have no clue how much money those twitter referrals are making them anyways.
I am a huge, obscene, disgusting twitter slut and it is my #1 *free* source of traffic generation and income. No, I’m not going to spam my profile here, but I’m sure if any of you are interested you can track it down and see exactly what I’m doing.
I guess the thing is that I don’t really “get” twitter, either. But then again, you don’t have to “get it” if all you want to do with it is make money.
If I were to offer anyone advice about twitter, I’d just say that you should get in now while the getting is good, because the current model is unsustainable and will collapse within a year.
Stay rad.
Does Twitter has anything to do with ranking ?
Wow that’s crazy. Twitter is my first biggest source of traffic. I love Twitter!
have few k followers, traffic to my ww is very sporadic, no sales yet. Some day can be 5 referrals, other day 55
What are you talking about? Twitter sucks! No one should use it!
I don’t think Twitter bombs but I don’t necessarily get it.
I think Twitter is great! But a lot of people don’t use the full potential of Twitter (me included) because they don’t know how.
Jeremy, a timely reminder of just how powerful Twitter can be. I only have a modest number of followers, and have only really been active on Twitter for a couple of months, but definitely seen a difference.
Of course what really helps is to offer something of value on Twitter, simply spamming the airwaves with endless affiliate links ain’t going to get you far. But my experience is showing that if you put some effort into your Twitter presence, plus add in FriendFeed etc, it’s a valuable traffic source.
Cheers….David
http://www.NicheContentMillionaire.com
What gives? Why was my comment deleted? There were valid questions in my comment?
Watch this one will be deleted to now I bet….
How about some samples of “Just engaging in the twittosphere has been amazingly rewarding?”
Any engaging ideas? I’m a niche.
All, especially the Big Shoe, claim that you are here to help people get the “skills to pay your bills”. And yet, not one, including shoemoney provided one tip on how to for example get many followers, or get followers to link to you, or how to monetize on those followers. Kind of sucks to claim that you are running a blog to help others get skills when you don’t always provide them. Is that part of the game?
don’t think you can get 30K followers I’ve taken an account from ~300 in january to over 30K in less than 6 months. No incentives, contest, or prizes, and fake “brownie” profiles are very few. And it’s a commercial account.
You’ve just gotta be willing to hustle.
How could you not love Twitter?
Another reason why I use twitter to generate traffic to my blog
I believe it! twitter is my top 5 traffic sources for me as well.
Nice. Twitter for me is about my third/fourth referral source for traffic. The first two being Google and Facebook, mainly from groups etc. and linking my RSS feed to my status.
Speaking of Twitter, I still can’t tweet at you Shoe! :p
there you go, that says it all. i gotta check my referrer sources to see what the “fuzz” is all about
Wooow, I didn’t know Twitter is so powerful. Twitter is so powerful because it can spread the message like fire with RT.
Yup.i totally agree with you.Twitter is one of the best source to get more traffic.i love the Twitter…
number 3 , very good source…… more better than stumble
so good
Twitter is a pretty good platform to build traffic on. Personally, all I do is use the search to find my targeted group simple as that.
Same here… Twitter drives a good amount of traffic to my blog.
YA ITS SEEMS INTERSTING TO USE TWITTTER.I WILL TRY TO IMPLEMENT ALSO
@SEO Provider, India – If you do, type in upper and lower case!
Cheers,
–Mark
http://www.highton-ridley.co.uk – bw wall art photography
I get nothing from Twitter. I tried Twitterfeed, commenting, responding to people, getting more followers and nada. I just feel if you are not an established person already twitter is hard to see results from.
I think being a leader in a field makes getting traffic from anyplace easier, but for smaller less known sites it seems like a waste.
Any tips to improve this would be appreciated.
JP
its all relative.
It seems to me that you have to talk to people about your topic and do so knowledgably to become an “established person” and twitter is the perfect avenue for this…if you aren’t established you can’t expect to immediately get thousands of followers out of it, but its a great way to generate credibility
You are right in the point that an unestablished Internet Marketer or, a blogger will find it difficult to generate a huge number of followers and get traffic to their website from Twitter. It is because they do not have knowledge of using the various resources available.
If you know how to use twitter search to your benefit and you can provide quality advice and content for the few visitors that come to you site, then slowly and gradually your followers count will increase and you will get traffic as well. There are tool like Hummingbird out there in the market which claims to do all of this for you, but I am not sure about its success.
That’s a lot of traffic, but less than 5%? That means that twitter as a marketing tool is very fare away.
Now that’s talk’n from an ass
I have used twitter to both market websites and to gain awareness for clients. I heard many have also used it to help gain more clients. I have now seen numerous websites who say twitter is in their top 3 for traffic generation.
Jeremy,
After nine months of building relationships with ‘marketing guru’s’, yourself, John Chow, Chris Brogan, Steve Rubel, Tyler Cruz, Ian Fernando, John Reese, Darren Rowse, Brian Clark, Tim Ferriss, and joining Affiliate networks (over 20!), attending BlogWorld Expo 2008, Affiliate Summit West 2009 and reading every .PDF and eBook on the subject of web marketing, taking PPC courseware, Online Profits Courseware, reading membership site blogs, reading “how to blog in your pajama’s” etc ad naseum I have come to one conclusion.
Without a mentor, web-administrator, copywriter, and / or someone who can help you navigate the endless computer-programmer level tasks associated with an online business, you are not going to make a living on the internet.
Requirement to learn all of the following:
.CSS
.PHP
.html
cPanel
WordPress
Writing good content on your blog
Learning CPA, CPM, PPC, SEO (not sure about SEO..)
Landing page design
Social Media relationship-building
I’m sure I could add a few more here but my brain is sore from reading this list…
Oh and watching to see if your campaign profits are being siphoned-off by an Affiliate Network insider!
The challenges for an unemployed, ex- Sony senior systems design engineer are insurmountable.
I’m no stranger to complexity, but I do not have the time to learn all of these web-disciplines and try to continue in this business.
In other fields, engineering for example the classes actually teach hard facts applicable to a job in the field.
Web marketing by it’s very nature is ’secretive’ and no one will reveal the truth behind the marketing success, that it took years of 16-hour days, and large sums of $$ spent grinding it out.
Successful web marketing requires an individual with plenty of time, the skills and attributes listed above and a stable source of income to ‘finance’ the click-budget’ expenses which can quickly max-out a credit card.
After nine months of attempts to breakthrough to success online have ended in near bankruptcy for me and my family.
While individuals such as yourself ‘get it’ for the rest of us newbies the success rate has to be astronomically low.
I know that I could be successful if I could ‘out-source’ all of the tasks listed above, but others seem to bypass thsi requirement and “just do it”.
For a 57 year-old old-school type worker, this challenge has proven to be unreachable…
Respectfully,
Nicholas Chase
http://www.twitter.com/nachase
4% of traffic, are you spending more than 4% of your time with it?
What’s the relative return compared to other ways you drive traffic?
What industry/product?
How much $ is being driven from Twitter relative to other traffic sources, is that your second best source of revenue?
You are a bit of a celebrity as well, would other organizations/individuals fair as well?
The referrals stat is interesting, but leads me to then look for a more complete analysis.
Organizations not using it are likely waiting to see if it is worth the investment of time and resources relative to other things they have on their overloaded plates.
Please build out a complete justification for this medium, I’d love to see it, pretty sure a lot of other people would check it out too.
Nice time on site too…better than Google, Yahoo, MSN and Live Search
Twiter is fantastic, I will apply one!
Twitter is the best thing who happen to the web for over ten years. I hope that this service will remain independent, to keep all his spontaneity
Twitter is really doing the business for our blog. Our twitter following is increasingly steadily as we tweet more and more and we’re our twitter refferrals are on the rise.
If you’re not already using it, it’s time to jump on board…
In response t Nicholas Chase – i started my site with no background in any of this. Found Wordpress by mistake and learned how to create content. After a year I finally got accepted into a solid ad network and have done quite well earnings wise.
No coding experience, no seo skills, not conventions, no real contacts in the biz…I just created a site I enjoyed working on and found the top ad networks for that type of site and kept bugging them til one caved and said I could play.
I notice that your Twitter referrals have a higher average view time / number of page visits, so it’s arguably more relevant traffic too.
It brings no where near your bodycount but Twitter is still my 4th biggest referral.
Which web service did you use to get such a clean Referral Stats?? Thx
Hey Jo,
If you are using Google Analytics for your website, you can get such detailed stats about you website visitors.
I get Twitter, but have yet to full understand how to get alot of referrals from it. I am improving, more followers, more clicks to my site from Twitter, slowly but surely, lol.
I just wonder how to increase traffic from twitter. Maybe I’m not doing so good, when I get no traffic from there.
Well I have a twitter account and I also get people that I have no clue who they are following me, Twitter is getting crazy.
Yes twitter is our number one source of traffic as well. Any business who wants to maximize their potential income, and traffic must join twitter. Thats the BOTTOM Line.
After a Twitter user has about 10-15,000 followers, the traffic starts rolling in.
Now that Twitter is nothing but who has the biggest followers account, that number is going to raise.
-Mike
Indeed…I can’t wait…
Yeah, I guess I need to learn what Twitter is all about…
That’s a lot of traffic from Twitter. People wait there whole lives to get this kind of attention. Using twitter its possible although I haven’t received too much just yet.
Now I understand what is twitter. Thank you.
Three months ago I did a search on the internet trying to find something to make money online. I fell upon 7FiguresWithBrian.com . It was a great success for me. That is my wonderful experience with 7FiguresWithBrian.com
it seems like if you build it, they will come….
i believe that i’ll put time into twitter and see what becomes of it!
FREE…what do i have to lose?
Don’t just focus on one social network…use all there is out there that is right for your business…
Very nice.
I regret sometime that why I have not joined Twitter earlier. Right now I have 1.5K twitter followers and for me twitter gives me 3% of my total traffic.
I’m looking forward to grow my Twitter profile and use it as high traffic resource.
Twitter is a great refferal source, the audience is very targeted than most social networks as people who follow you are within the same niche.
No FB account except a fan page?
…or did I miss it?
Woah, Its a fantastic article
TWITTER IS TAKING MARKETING TO THE NEXT LEVEL…..WATCH FOR SKINS FOOTWEAR INTERCHANGEABLE SHOES ON TWITTER……
http://www.skinsfootwear.com
I think somebody likes Twitter here
I have very little marketing experience and have been a twitterer for only a few weeks – still not sure how to monetize – but I am meeting lots of people interested in the same things I Am – and I can “feel the luv”
Hi Jeremy. I’ve been reading your blog for some time now but haven’t really commented yet. But this article seemed like the perfect one for me.
I’ve been blogging for a couple years now and online for awhile before that. I must admit I underestimated Twitter.
When it first came out I thought for sure it wasn’t going anywhere. To me it’s just another version of chat/instant messaging software.
But you know what? I finally broke down and joined Twitter last night.
It’s tough to admit sometimes, but I think I might have been wrong.
Anyway, thanks for sharing your insights – and I love you newsletter (it’s what brought me to this article today, by the way).
Certainly Twitter is expanding their wings and there is no doubt about that. More and more people are engaging to this and trying to get the benefit from this.
My worry is that it will become all consuming. How much time do you spend daily in order to get these numbers.
From last few months i am hearing these that twitter is great source of links and traffic but i didnt joined that yet. after reading this info with comments, I think, i should go first to twitter and test it for my niche.
Wow.. never know the effect of Twitter. I have only 100+ followers and I think should try to get more now.
Thanks!
No doubt lots of traffic coming on to my way too from there.
But don’t think it would persist for long. Anyways who knows about tomorrow.
well i was not using blogger since now but surely will subscribe for it right now after watching your screen shot .. it really help increasing traffic on our blogs… but your superb so you have a great number of followers on twitter i will also try my best to get followers like you
I just started using twitter so I havent seen any results as of yet but it will come Im sure.
I didn’t used twitter yet but at the time of surfing i saw Many famous sites showing there twitter (follow us on twitter) on home page.It show what twitter can do.
I just take a look on twitter its too simple, I expected something different lol. Is there any article or tips on how to market on twitter ?
Today in the morning I was discussing with my colleague about how raise amount of traffic with help of twitter)
And your article appears in front of my eyes. It’s a miracle!
But you don’t unvail the secret of your success. Where can we find the prescription?
Wow, you are getting a good traffic through. Twitter can be used as a referral to get relevant traffic to the website. Thanks for sharing this information.
And the truth twittosphere it was surprisingly useful.
Movement can be received and it reading to the truth
I also don’t take seriously twitter and understand the sense of updates. But now making there links i really found out a good way to spread my site.. Really not bad. Now i can also say that only stuuuupid don’t have twitter!)))))))
I think twitter is great thing! I didn’t notice the use og it until i began to use twitter! Powerful social thing)))
not only for twitter, all other popular networking sites such as facebook, orkut, myspace etc.. also given good traffic for us. Twitter is my favorite one..
Never used twitter, but the more I hear about it the more I want to start using it. Just don’t get how this small thing can bring so much traffic. Guess I need to look into this and start making something off of it. Thanks for another proof!
twitter not yet work well for me but hope in future it will work.
i am using twitter from last few weeks but i saw it takes lot of time consuming to fallow people profiles.i hope it will be good if you build good fallowing .
Hi,
Yes, you are right but 2 years back it is not possible as you have tell us but now anyone can find great traffice by his/her great post.
I just visit your site and find it very interesting and informative. I’m going to bookmark your page. Looking forward to read some more of your articles soon. Thanks!
then how do they find over the web you? Is it by via twitter search?
i think that Twitter is very good for getting traffic.
Twitter is really doing the business for our blog. Our twitter following is increasingly steadily as we tweet more and more and we’re our twitter refferrals are on the rise.
twitter is really great from social community, Twitter has got two much popularity now a days
for business that is great opportunity to use
Thnak You Admin Nice Post…
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Wow 25000+ hits? I have to get on that twittosphere