Was just wondering if anyone had tried buying targeted traffic and directing it to their game site and if so what was the results of such a effort?

If you're talking about what I think you are, it just seems impractical for XBLIG.

My web host, 1and1, offers a program where for $39 a month they will guarantee 40 visitors to your site (or some figure like that). They do all the work for ads and they target it for your target demographic based on what's on your website.

It sounds like a good idea until you crunch the numbers - that means spending $4 per visitor. Even if they do download a 200 point game and decide to buy it, you end up losing ~$2.70 on that sale, and that's assuming a 100% conversion rate from site->download->purchase. Even with a 400 point game you're losing money, and if you have an 800 point game you might be able to end up with a little profit, but that's still assuming a 100% conversion rate, which I doubt is likely.

Maybe if the prices were drastically lowered it could become feasible...

UberGeekGames:

$39 a month they will guarantee 40 visitors

UberGeekGames:

that means spending $4 per visitor

Wouldn't that be $1 per visitor?

I'm referring to services which offer to direct 5000-250,000 visitors (targeted traffic) delivered to your website within X time period usually 7 or 30 days.

@David: sorry, must have been mixing up different numbers. :-) Even at $1 per visitor it's still pretty steep - I don't see how it could be successful but maybe others have had results.

Centurion Games:

I'm referring to services which offer to direct 5000-250,000 visitors (targeted traffic) delivered to your website within X time period usually 7 or 30 days.

Whoa, haven't seen that before - links?

A google search for targeted traffic will reveal a lot of these services, here is the top link http://www.revisitors.com/?gclid=CMPmhYPrxJsCFQ_xDAodqgvhAA

I know this type of traffic purchasing is used often in web advertising and marketing as well as to generate sells, just not so sure how effective it is for Xbox indie games.

That site does have apparently in option to target console game traffic though so it might be worth looking into.

A quick look with google and I found some info on Scam.com about revisitors.  As you can guess it appears to be bogus...

For any company that offers such services, I would do a search for feedback from past clients, to ensure there aren't an unusual amount of allegations of click fraud. 250,000 redirects is easy to obtain if they contract out to a botnet operator. Associated conversion rate data comparisons could be useful, if you can ensure they're not astroturf.

If only there were a service that guaranteed X amount of trial downloads of your game... A logistical nightmare for a third party, but what if MS did something like that for Dashboard advertising? If priced reasonably, I would do it in a second.

Anyway, 250,000 sounds somewhat unreasonable. Maybe if there was a way to track how many successful trial downloads were made from the Xbox.com site, that came from your site, you could get some data about it. The problem is that there's no way to accurately measure the conversion rate. Hmm...

Those traffic numbers sound too good to be true.

I haven't bought advertising for my game site but I have bought advertising for previous websites I have run. Typically there is a big bump in traffic while the ad runs and then it goes back to what my traffic was before I ran the ad once it stops. I haven't experienced any long term effects from advertising and every time have cursed wasting money on the ads (I haven't bought any for several years now and feel a little dirty selling ad space on my websites because I suspect others are getting the same results I have experienced).