Its the ultimate forum showdown! BlackHatWorld vs TrafficPlanet vs WarriorForum!
Since I launched the site I have engaged my audience directly by posting on these 3 forums.
They have sent me a bunch of traffic this year so I wanted to see which one was best!
The results of the previous JohnChow.com vs SearchEngineJournal.com battle were pretty interesting.
But which is the best internet marketing & blackhat forum for traffic & conversions?
What Will I Learn?
To find out which is the best internet marketing forum I’m going to run them through a series of tests to determine which one offers the most bang for buck in terms of traffic and conversion.
All 3 internet marketing forums operate in similar but slightly different niches, so it will be interesting to see how each audience responds to the site.
Let’s start with traffic & engagement.
A simple test, which internet marketing forum offers the best pages/visit, average visit duration and bounce rate?
| Site | Visits | Pages/visit | Visit Duration | % New Visits | Bounce Rate |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BlackHatworld | 6,875 | 2.69 | 05:26 | 43.52% | 48.32% |
| TrafficPlanet | 3,693 | 2.74 | 06:14 | 29.65% | 45.95% |
| WarriorForum | 3,965 | 2.84 | 06:40 | 48.93% | 46.61% |
This makes for some interesting observations!
First of all it is clear that traffic from WarriorForum is more engaged than anywhere else. They visit more pages and stick around for longer!
While people from BlackHatWorld tend to stick around for over a minute less visiting the least amount of pages.
TrafficPlanet sits in the happy medium but only sends 29.65% new visitors.
This is because it’s a smaller tightly knit community I’m deeply engaged in – nice to know they still want to hear what I have to say though =D
So now we know how engaged the traffic is with the blog, but what about conversion?
Things like email subscriptions, affiliate clicks or resource downloads which require a social share.
Well luckily I have all the data for that ready to rock!
| Site | Goal Conversion | Email Subscription | Affilaite Click | Resource Download |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BlackHatworld | 15.07% | 0.76% | 8.10% | 1.99% |
| TrafficPlanet | 13.24% | 0.95% | 6.77% | 1.44% |
| WarriorForum | 14.55% | 1.34% | 8.17% | 1.11% |
Percentages are all well & good but let’s take a look at how they actually translates into numbers-
| Site | Goal Conversions | Email Subscriptions | Affilaite Clicks | Resource Downloads |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BlackHatworld | 746 | 52 | 557 | 137 |
| TrafficPlanet | 338 | 35 | 250 | 53 |
| WarriorForum | 421 | 53 | 324 | 44 |
What is worth noting is they all offer similar overall goal conversion rates of 13.24%-15.07%.
But how this breaks down is interesting.
People coming from BlackHatWorld (which is truly the best blackhat forum) tend to click on a lot of affiliate links & love getting the free resources which require a social share, but don’t tend to opt in.
Whilst people coming from WarriorForum also like to click affiliate links but are more likely to subscribe via email than download the free resources.
There is a key difference in behaviour here.
I believe this is due to people coming from WarriorForum are pre-conditioned to ‘opt in’ to things to get freebies via the WSO forum.
Whereas people coming from BlackHatWorld are used to getting direct links to free things with no opt-in, they have a dedicated forum for it!
So naturally WarriorForum traffic is looking for the opt in and BlackHatWorld traffic is looking for the download link.
TrafficPlanet cruises at a happy medium where it is much more laid back without the incentive to opt in to get things or grab freebies.
The last thing I want to take a look at is how much time was invested to generate the traffic & conversions from each internet marketing forum.
To do that I’m going to look at the total number of posts made on each forum over the same time period-
| Site | # Of Posts | Visits Per Post | Email Subs Per Post | Aff Clicks Per Post | Resource D/Ls Per Post |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BlackHatworld | 398 | 17 | 0.13 | 1.40 | 0.34 |
| TrafficPlanet | 406 | 9 | 0.09 | 0.62 | 0.34 |
| WarriorForum | 189 | 21 | 0.28 | 1.71 | 0.23 |
When we look at the number of posts made compared to what they actually generated things get pretty awkward.
I’ve made my thoughts clear about how the admins run the WarriorForum, so having them provide the best performing traffic isn’t ideal 😛
It is by far the best ‘value’ traffic though offering more visits, subscribers & affiliate clicks per post than any other – by quite a margin!
BlackHatWorld slides into second delivering slightly less traffic and affiliate clicks but a huge drop off in email subscriptions per post.
I actually have dedicated threads for my tutorials on BlackHatWorld that have had around 50,000 views in total compared to WarriorForum where they delete my threads and I just use a signature.
Even with those chips down – WarriorForum still seems to offer the best bang for buck!
TrafficPlanet is the worst performing all round but on the whole is a much much smaller forum with a tightly knitted community where everyone knows each other.
A local place for local people type thing ^^
There are a few key observations here specifically between how BlackHatWorld & WarriorForum traffic behaves once it hits the site.
First of all there is what I mentioned earlier about BlackHatWorld users used to getting things free via direct links whereas WarriorFourm traffic is preconditioned to the opt in first then get freebie nature of the WSO forum.
The other big observation is that WarriorForum offered more visitors and conversions per post than any other forum.
This is specifically interesting because on WarriorForum I just use signature links whereas on BlackHatWorld I have dedicated posts for my tutorials with ~50k views.
You would expect BlackHatWorld to at least send more visits per post on that basis, but that isn’t the case.
I think there are 2 reasons behind this-
So when a WarriorForum user hits my site they not only want to learn but are probably amazed at the value that is getting delivered to them upfront with no bullshit.
They are preconditioned to low quality products/flakey information due to the sheer volume of spammy WSO’s made by inexperienced pretenders.
Whereas the BlackHatWorld user has broken free of that and is well on their way to making money – a slightly more experienced user.
TrafficPlanet users tend to be more experienced/knowledgeable and it’s a much smaller community.
These guys are switched onto all of the tricks of the trade which and have become conditioned to ignore signature links & signing up for things due to past experiences on other forums.
What do you think? Have I jumped to the wrong conclusions?
Screenshots of the data in analytics are available here & here.
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Yes you r correct.
I felt Blackhatworld is nice one. i agree with mixerdj.
BHW > WF ^^
No worrys!
Thanks for this information…….
I had no idea of either of 3 just before reading this article i had joined warriors forum while other now i will try. Thanks alot for this information!.one question for you where the signature link appears in warrior forum i didn’t find any?
You have to pay to be part of the war room to get signatures on WarriorForum. But thats the worst forum, stick with BlackHatWorld & TrafficPlanet
My point of view on those forums, doesn’t matter their names and doesn’t matter what they really offer.WF: A place you end up because you heard that someone is really giving away a secret formula to become a millionnaire in 60 days and just asking $27 for it… indeed 100 000 fall into this, he can be millionnaire in 60 daysEven on rent a warrior, 7 times I asked some of them is they were free to work as I had things to do, no answer whatsoever, seems that you even have to pay to get an answer.BHW: been there, registered, posted a few topics about general stuff just to introduce myself and posted a topic about how to make money, legally, white hat, nothing to buy or rent or whatsoever, proven by myself and not even promising thousands in no time… got banned for scamming, don’t even thing I received an answer at the topic last about 2 hoursTP: don’t know nothing about it, so can’t really sayDP: The funniest bunch of people who though they could make something big but did a complete reverse of what you can call a success story. First discrimate millions by telling them that they are third world type of traffic and kicking true investors and business people out because they don’t agree with their point of view as a result, a drop of 50% of thei traffic in 6 month. DP tried to kick scammers out of their forum and end up with junk traffic and low quality posters.At the end of the day, it’s a bit like competing against the big boys on google adwords, there is no point trying to work your ass off on these forum thinking you will try to get something out of it and I d rather go along smallest forum where people are getting fed up with those big boys and really seeks something on internet, just getting fed up of all these lies.
Wise words – thats why I like TrafficPlanet 🙂
I think more than anything else, its the no-nonsense attitude of guys at BHW that attracts the burnt WSO buyers!I mean the WF is so much more censored than the other two.
WF is censored beyond recognition – its amazing how many genuine negative reviews get deleted on WSO’s
I find blackhatworld to be more diverse in topics…. it’s waaaay more interesting
Certainly a broader range of conversation going on!
Matt, why’d you get banned?
More details @ https://searchlogistics.com/blogging/income-reports/june-2013/
I am loving BHW. While I have been a member of Warrior forum from many years, and it was one of the first forums (besides DigitalPoint) which I used to frequent when I was a total newbie, I am beginning to love BHW as there are lot of people over there and many of them seem to be making good amount of money and have better knowledge than at other forums. Another forum whose members I find to be knowledgeable and smart is Wickedfire members. I feel that on Warriorforum, the so-called gurus who keep launching WSO after WSO are making money at newbie’s expense. This is very bad, a thing which I have come to hate about the forum though I have learned a lot too specially during my initial years in IM.
Awww im banned from wickedfire 🙁
Marketing 101 😛
I like that term. haha ^^
Hey Matthew,Nice write up. Very detailed and thank you for sharing this article with all of us.Reginald
Cheers Regi!!!
Great comparison and a very accurate account of these Forums! I love TP too because of its targeted nature – those who are truly interested in driving traffic and SEO will not miss a single post. Personally, I find Matthew’s(may I call you Matt) wonderful tutorials and posts that add so much value, the best on TP.WF – Well you use WF only if you would like to higher quality opt-ins and/or you want to sell WSOs. I know of people who have several accounts on WF and make a great living selling WSOs from each account!BHW – Some good threads there and genuine follow-ons with no fluff. If you follow those threads you can really use them to your benefit by learning from their mistakes, asking questions and gaining so much insight into journeys of fellow members. 2 other Forums I visit are Wickedfire and Digitalpoint but my visits are now far and few. It’s difficult to participate in Wickedfire because it gets pulled off-topic easily and the mods do not seem to be interested in bringing back threads that get derailed by perverted young boys who are wasting their time and parents’ money by throwing in hundreds of ridiculous posts into a community filled with like-minded boys instead of studying for school or doing their homework. You can tell who they are by their style and language. A few serious members whose good inputs outshine everything else mind their own business and stay neutral in the mayhem. DP has gone downhill mainly due to lethargic mods who watched it go down the drain a couple years back. If they had pulled it together at that time it would have still been amongst the top few IM forums. But alas, even though they revamped the site’s design the content remains the same. Their Buy/Sell section is a garbage dump. If I was the admin there I would have shut down the Buy/Sell section at least because that is one of the reasons that breeds the “spam”.Lastly if you’re into CPA don’t forget CPA Fix which is full of threads that pertain to paid traffic and how you can make money form PPC, PPV and Media Buying.
Hi,Thanks for your kind words.I’m banned from wickedfire and digital point though :PWhat is interesting is if you bash each forum in alexa or compete! Never heard of CPA fix though, might get involved there want to explore some things like that soon 😛
Ooooh I see – I can’t say I’m a fan of digital point 😛
I thought Manuel was talking about Digital Point forums.
I have no idea what you said 🙂
Hi,Actually its called ODBD – obssesive dream buying disorder.People buy dreams ^^
BHW is the best! I also found your site from BHW through your link building guides 🙂
Thanks Aster =D
I have a theory on this and that is that it’s easier to market to newbies in your niche which is largely what WF is filled with. Newbies are just hungry for information (that’s also why they are opt’ing in).The more senior/seasoned/established a person is the less likely they are to need your expertise.Ex – newbie to weight loss – buy diet pills, buy ab belts, ebooks, real books, gym memberships etc… Ex – newbies to IM – need hosting, auto responders, wordpress plugins, SEO software, affiliate trainingNow what can you really market to someone who is super fit or doing well in IM? Sure – there are things you can sell but those guys are not always as hungry for information.Take me for example – love your content – and sure I’d buy something from you but I already have a blog network, VPS, link building software…..Imagine how much $$ you would have made off me if I didn’t have that stuff (and I came from Traffic Planet 🙂 – and yeah I opted in).
Hi Vikram,Very interesting point of view – however I do believe that no one ever becomes an expert and can’t learn something off someone else. But your right, it is harder to reach these types of people.Thats why it is important to produce content that caters to those different ‘types’ of audience :)Plus its not all about the money, your on my list, you create user generated content and you’ve probably made a couple of social shares. I’m more than happy with that!
These are my favourite posts on your site, Matthew.Keep the ‘showdown’ posts coming!
Any showdowns you would like to see?
Obviously i am in a completely different niche to yourself, but i think it shows the depth you go to and maybe i should go to. I have a website that is giving me three or four times the hits of any other sites, yet the conversion for that site is awful compared to some of the others. So i need to focus more on the higher conversion one’s whilst allowing the other one just to simmer off slowly. However surely there becomes a point of saturation? Where on the better converting one’s you have reached nearly everyone you can?Maybe not for your niche, but for mine definately!
Hi,Well every niche has a ceiling limit but you also have to consider there are always more people coming into most niches, whether thats internet marketing or gardening there will always be people following a newly found interest in life.I believe your focus should be getting people on a list because you know anyone that plays that game, will probably play the next one. You can also assume other things about them that transcend niches, eg I guarantee they all play fifa as well 😉
Hello Matthew! Your ‘Advanced Article Spinning Techniques With The Best Spinner ‘ Youtube video brought me here! Thank you for the awesome tutorial!
Cheers Steve good to know 🙂
I have spent time on warrior forum but was wary of blackhat cause it appeared underground to is impressive.
Yeah it does have a bit of a bad rep with that ^^
I found your site through BHW a few months ago. (and I opted in I might add 😉
Then your in the 1% 😛
Good observation Matt. In my early days learning SEO, I didn’t know which direction to go and ended up spent some bucks buying some “not very useful” stuffs on WF. Now they sat on my “museum” folder.Now, I stick with BHW (plus reading your newsletter and reviews, of course!). GSA forum is also very useful and we also tend to know each other (are you still looking to make SER tutorial?).I looked at TP sometimes but feel like their contents are not very rich. I maybe wrong though.My best.
Hi,Hahaha even I buy the odd WSO now and then still, but mostly if its a plugin that does something sweet rather than an ebook type job.Not been over to the GSA forum, whats the URL?TP have some very knowledgeable guys, the lead admin (_richard) is an absolute legend for the effort he puts in there!
I liked your article BUT you left off a VERY important gauge.Honesty. TONS of dishonest people in the world but I think they congregate at WF and BHW.In particular BHW. So when my source code package gets posted on their site in retaliation for an axe to grind with the software company I have to draw the line. That one act had a direct impact on my income and I wasn’t even in the fight.So I only want to be a part of honest sites. So far,I have not seen any vultures or wolves around the TrafficPlanet. They are probably there but I have not seen them nor do I want any interaction with them.Sorry, did not mean to deviate. TP is my goto forum now!Buddy
Hi,Well there is that side of it. I don’t quite follow your issue with the axe to grind example thoguh sorry lolRich does a good job of maintaining TP’s integrity!
darn, you guys… i may have been one of those who spent $$$$.. =( Thanks matt for this review!
Hahaha don’t worry your not in the minority 😛
what the hell Matt?? i wrote all that and you deleted my post?
Nah they need manually approving 😛
BHW was my first choice, but a lot of bad things going on in there right now. 80% of new posts are in The Lounge, , too many low quality services and so on. Hope they fix these issues otherwise they will turn in a place far worse than WF.
Hi,I just stick to the blackhat forum ^^
Wickedfire trounces all newb forums.
Hi,Probably but I wouldn’t know – my account is perma banned 🙂
The warrior forum is so full of misinformation from newbies its almost dangerous to go there.
Yeah I do see a lot of ‘wrong’ advice given but thats not unique to warriorforum, there are some very knowledgeable guys over there though.
This analysis is great and very encouraging to participate in forum for huge traffic
Cheers Ade!
Nice little analysis. I’m only frequent on BlackHatWorld. Barely give the other two a glance aside from the odd search query.From my own built knowledge I do agree and think your conclusions are correct. Maybe I’ll look to involve myself with the other two a little more and study comparitively myself.
Thanks for your thoughts Chris!
LOL….So true.1. WarriorForumEnded up here as a green eyed noob 4 years ago, was amazed at the info on offer and especially taken in by the info given by the cross dresser alexa smith(Tim Nagley). 1 year later, realised that free speech is routinely suppressed, real reviews on WSO’s are deleted and scammers continue to thrive, protected by the idiots they call MODs. This is all to protect the cash cow that is the WSO section.My advice, stay away from this place………seriously!2. Blackhatworldgraduated here, after realising what a shit hole the WF is and that most of the so called resident GURUS haven’t a clue about making money. Most people here are making money, though you do still get the odd noob asking silly questions. 3.TPDon’t go here much but on Terry’s list.But yeah, generally the WF is a place of 2 halves consisting of the fresh face noobs just starting out and looking to learn and the scammers that reside in the WSO section who make money online by peddling shitty products on how to make money online, ironic hey?!There are some good ethical guys on the WF, but to be honest I can count them on one hand. Also, stay away from that delusional fool that goes by the name Alexa Smith. She is really a He. This person has some serious gender issues, posting everyday on the WF up to 20 times a day but yet claims to be a affiliate marketer as well as a FX trader. You can read more about he/she on the antiwarrior or the warriorforumsucks.
Hi,Thanks for your detailed feedback – good to see my observations are shared 🙂
No Not at all, How about your forums 😛 matt!!What do you think, which level you will brought him up?
Hahaha hadn’t thought about mine, mine are just to help readers easily really rather than build a massive community
LOL….S
^^
nice post Matt.I think that once people graduate past the newbie stage they tend to find the high value lower user communities which are more focused like on here :)My very first IM forum experience yrs back was digitalpoint.Is it as popular as a few yrs back, is it a place that any of you guys frequent, or is it still a noisy place full of contradictory inflammatory crap?
Hi Nev,Do you consider my blog a community?Haha I’m banned from digitalpoint 😛
Take blackhatworld teachings and apply them in a whitehat way :)Blackhat has quality content, but more importantly; they don’t delete negative reviews. I’ll take the dirty truth over the “clean” lies of Warrior Forum *any day*
A very good point and that is the main issue, removing genuine negative reviews.Granted there are still fake positive reviews but they quickly become irrelevant once a few users share the same feedback.
Nice write up Matthew! I can recall those days when I purchased countless shit stuffs from WF 🙁 I also tried to put up a thread on WSO Test. They removed it immediately and never got back to my follow up queries! My suggestion to the newbies ..Stay MILES AWAY FROM WF ..
Hi,Sounds about right to me ^^
I wasted 3 months of my life reading warrior forum. Absolute rubbish forum. Blackhatworld is where its at.
There is some good stuff to learn there, if you can catch it before they delete it anyway lol
Interesting! Though not surprising that WarriorForum sends more visitors, I believe (correct me if I’m wrong) it is by far the most visited forum of the three!Sad to see TrafficPlanet ranking low, since in my opinion it’s the highest quality of the three, but as you pointed out, it makes sense that they are less likely to click affiliate links and signup forms.If people tend to “Graduate” to BHW after WF, then I would say people Graduate to TrafficPlanet after BHW. I find people, on average, much more knowledgeable (and gravitating to less BS, and more white hat) on TrafficPlanet.
Hi,Yes it is the biggest IM forum although they are walking a tight rope at the moment I think.TP is not even comparable in size to WF really, its minute in comparison.
Nice! I like the way you show the date.And I Just started using traffic planet as a source of traffic. But I find that blackhatworld drive the must long term traffic. even though I got banned recently I am still get 69 vist per from blackhatworld post and threads!
Hahaha how did you get banned?
I’m a BlackHatWorld person myself.
I’m a trafficplanet / BHW whore ^^
Nice battle royale you have here. I think basically if you want to sell something go to Warrior Forum and if you want to learn something go to BlackHat World. Ahhh but what about Wickedfire? If you can get past the surly trolls over there there are some good resources, just not a friendly crowd. Excellent as always, great post!
Hahah thats a nice break down of it.I’m perma banned from wickedfire unfortunately 😛
I like Traffic Planet better than the Warrior Forum because as a service buyer, I think I can complain about bad service easily with Terry Kyle than Allen Says or to any moderator members at WF. BlackhatWorld? I am a member of a better forum than BHW, but I’m not telling where that is. Thanks for the tutorial on Tiered linkbuilding, I was able to refresh myself on tiered SEO. I’ve been away from practicing SEO for quite sometime.
Hi,Yes that is very true, seen a lot of services die because of feedback on TP.Is that forum http://bhseos.com/forum.php by any chance?
humm I hope you weren’t talking abt that DP forums either ? beside whats the point to make a secret for with alike people ?
This is awesome, Matt! You track a lot of stuff, sometimes confusing to me. Lol I think you’re spot on with your observations, though.
Hahaha hopefully I break it down in a way that makes sense though 🙂
Love this post. I recently launched a product and submitted a WSO on warrior forum for this product and after two days, it still was not live so I messaged their support and it took them three days to respond to that ticket and just told me that they decided to not allow the WSO. I then replied back asking them the reason and their only response was “Just accept our decision” lolI think after paying almost $40 for access to the WSO I have a right to know why a legitimate product is nopt allowed, but nope! No reply.BHW, on the other hand, embraced my posts just as you mention they do with yours. But I think your take is right on.
Hi,Did you get a refund?
WarriorForum is good if you have thousand of $$$$ you can spend all of them for shitty fake scam methods.
Haha very true ^^
WarriorForum is good if you want to make thousands of $$$$ by scamming innocent newbies and people with a “OBSD” problem (Obsessing Buying Sh*t Disorder)LONG LIVE to BlackHatWorld and TrafficPlanet and Matthew Woodward’s forums!!!
Blackhatworld is the best for me 🙂
One of my favourites as well 🙂
🙁 I respect the freedom, I do not respect the disrespect…BHW is great in concept, but in reality there are a lot of screwed up thugs just looking for what they despise and do not want to work for… moneyI’d much rather gather with Anonymous… Come on BH…. you once stood for something that matteredNow it has come down to economics? bahhh!You are better than that….
Selling blackhatworld Jr vip accounts for 30 dollars worth of bitcoins. skype joel.g89