Five Ideas Vic Strizheus Says Are Worth More Than Any New Traffic Tool

Somewhere out there is a marketer whose entire business runs on one traffic source. Maybe it’s Google. Maybe it’s Facebook. Everything is working, the leads are coming in, and there’s no reason to think about it any further until the day that source changes the rules without asking permission. Vic Strizheus opens the final module of Traffic Mastery by naming that exact scenario, then walks through what he calls his million dollar ideas, the handful of decisions that separate a business built on rented ground from one built on its own.

What happens to your business the day one platform changes the rules?

He points to what happened when Google rolled out major algorithm and account penalties that wiped out marketers overnight, people who’d built their entire traffic strategy around one channel and had nothing to fall back on. The same risk sits under any business that equals a single platform today, Facebook included. His argument isn’t that these platforms are bad. It’s that depending on any single one of them for all your traffic means your business’s survival is a decision someone else gets to make, not you.

The fix he teaches isn’t a specific tool, it’s a standing rule: never depend on anybody or anything for traffic. Spread across multiple sources on purpose, so that losing any one of them is a setback instead of an ending. It’s a harder discipline than it sounds, because the source that’s working best right now is always the one that’s tempting to lean on entirely, and that’s exactly the moment to be adding a second and third source instead.

Why does Vic Strizheus say school is never out for the pro?

school is never out for the pro

This is the second idea, and he’s blunt that it applies no matter how long you’ve been doing this or how much you’ve already made. He describes his own routine as constant: buying courses, attending events, staying in masterminds, staying current on whatever’s actually converting right now rather than what worked two years ago. The moment someone decides they’ve arrived is, in his telling, the exact moment their results start to slide.

The next two ideas build directly on that one. Dig your own well means building your own audience and your own systems instead of relying on someone else’s list or someone else’s traffic. Build your own tribe takes it further: he points out that plenty of people with huge reach, the ones doing infomercials and mass media appearances, still don’t have an actual following, a list of people who trust them and come back. Sales without a list is a transaction. A list is a business.

Why does McDonald’s beat every healthier restaurant in town?

The last idea is the one he treats as the whole foundation underneath the other four: traffic is the single most important element of your business. He makes the case with a question. “Why is McDonald’s the most popular restaurant in the world?” It isn’t the food, by his own admission, and it isn’t Starbucks having the best coffee either. As Vic Strizheus puts it, “traffic is the single most important element of your business”, and the companies dominating any category usually aren’t winning on product quality, they’re winning on sheer advertising reach.

A few concrete ways he suggests to start finding new traffic outlets on your own:

• Scroll to the bottom of any relevant site you visit and look for the advertise link most people never notice.
• Search directly for how other marketers are getting traffic in your niche, the information is already public.
• Build an affiliate base around your own product so others generate traffic and get paid only when they bring a sale.

None of these five ideas require a bigger budget or a new gadget. They require a decision about how you’re going to run things going forward: spread your dependence, keep learning past the point where it feels necessary, and take traffic as seriously as the product itself.

What ties all five together is ownership. Someone else’s platform, someone else’s list, someone else’s traffic can all be taken away by a decision you never get a vote on. Your own list, your own habits, your own advertising reach can’t be. That’s the actual million dollar idea underneath the other five: build the parts of the business nobody else can switch off.

Twelve modules in, that’s the last big mindset shift before the course turns to the software side of finding traffic nobody else has thought to look for yet.

The full session goes further into the specific software Vic Strizheus uses to uncover brand new traffic sources. Watch it in full, free, when you Create your free account.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

what up what up what up my friend mr vague here hope you are ready for some traffic intelligence right here right now in this module uh welcome back this is the um i believe this is the last module in the traffic uh mastery part of the course so congratulations for making it this far congratulations for sticking all the way through 12 modules you did an awesome job now the only thing what you need to do is if you haven't started doing that already is start applying this kind of stuff in your business go out there start applying this stuff prosper greatly build your list build your business take your business to the stratosphere because you can and i'm here to help you all right so uh let's talk about some traffic intelligence stuff you know i want to show you some pretty sneaky um very very awesome awesome awesome awesome stuff here uh in this module this is going to be a short module okay i'm not going to take you know a lot of time on this but i'm still going to dance in this for you guys okay let's head right flat okay so now i'm gonna get into graphics first let's get right spot start mark check picture we don't need to you know I you know as you as you know as you probably already know you know you've been here with me here for the last 12 modules you know I don't like to over complicate things I like to keep it I like to keep things very simple right very easy to understand very easy to follow hopefully you know hopefully I was able to pull that off that was my intention anyways you know and I and I and I tried to do my best to to not confuse you unlike you know a lot of the other courses out there they try to make things very look very complicated you know they they typically take a very simple thing and they try you know they put all different layers of complications on it I don't know why people do that though you know my staff hopefully has been you know easy to follow for you thus far okay so what we're gonna do here is I'm gonna show you how I you know how I uncover new traffic sources for myself okay I'll introduce you to some of the other ideas and principles and this will really really help you i believe okay this this allowed me to to really take my business to a whole new level when I discovered some of these strategies when i really you know some of this stuff is going to be common sense some of this stuff I'm going to show you here in module is going to be and i was gonna make you go wow that is absolutely mind-blowing you know but at any rate I hope you get a ton of value from it you know i hope that you apply some of this stuff what I would like to do okay since this is our you know last module in the traffic mastery you know section of this of this course I'd like to give you some ideas okay let's call a million dollar ideas how about that I believe I'm gonna give you three or four million dollar ideas so literally I kid you not you know this may seem simple on the surface but if you really think about this stuff I'm gonna be talking about right you know here over the next couple minutes if you really take this serious okay if you really apply this stuff to your business if you really just take an idea and ponder it over and over and over in your head and see how you can apply it see how you can you know internalize it see how you can systematize the idea in your business your business not my business your business okay I promise you I promise you these can be your million dollar ideas let's start with the first one and then we're gonna go through the rest of the idea number one is this never depend on anybody or anything for traffic okay how many times you know have you have you kind of depended on somebody to send you traffic how many times have you you know have you given your business or kind of put your business in the mercy of somebody else right you know if you depended on Google and that's that your traffic source is Google and you have no idea how to do anything else well if Google slapped you like they did out you know thousands and tens of thousands of marketers you know not that long ago it seems like they do it you know they do that kind of crap all the time you know there goes your business right and I witnessed man I cannot tell you how many people I spoke with after Google started to do their famous Google slaps you know and this is not you know a rant about Google or anything like that you know Google is an awesome company but some of the things that they've been doing you know it has been uncool to marketers like myself and a lot of people right maybe you experienced that yourself but man they put so many people out of business just because of that you're the people they're talking to right now.

overnight just like that because it's not google's fault you know obviously they're they're the company they can do whatever they want to do but people who depended entirely on google for their traffic generation um they suffered okay uh big big time uh how many times well a lot of people put all their trust and their business building um entirely on facebook right now right at the time i'm filming this and who knows what facebook is going to do down the road right if your business is if your business equals facebook does that make sense you can almost count on it that there is going to be a day to when you're going to wake up and you will have no business because facebook decided facebook decided to do something different okay they decided to slap you they decided to change their rules or whatever the thing is okay so never ever ever depend on anybody or anything for traffic in your business you want to depend on you okay idea number one million dollar idea number one million dollar idea number two is this school is never out for the pro listen i don't care who you are i don't care how much money you make and i don't care you know how long you've been in the industry i don't really care about any of that stuff okay if you want to be the pro if you want to be you know if you want to be the guy or the gal in the industry if you want to be the one if you want to you know to be able to take a business to the levels to where you want to you know to you want your business to go if you want to be the professional uh that you know if you want to have a professional business if you want the professional in this industry, right?

If you want to do things on a bigger scale, right? Listen, you have to be a student of the game all the time. You have to be in the game. You have to constantly learn and never think of yourself as somebody who has arrived.

Does that make sense? I don't care how much money I'm going to make. I don't care how much money I've made. It doesn't matter.

I never, ever stop learning, okay? Every single day I learn. Every single day I buy courses. I buy new traffic, you know, trainings.

I get into the masterminds. I get into the workshops. I go to events. I am always out there.

I want to be on a cutting edge of technology. I want to be on a cutting edge of what's working now. Does that make sense? And it's just a decision that you have to make about your business, you know?

School is never out for the pro. The minute that you think to yourself that you know it all, it's the minute you're going to start to decline, right? And your results are going to follow, okay? So just remember that this is a million-dollar idea.

I kid you not. Million-dollar idea number three, dig your own well, all right? What do I mean by digging your own well? Well, you don't have to, you know, you don't want to go to my well to drink my water.

Does that make sense? You don't want to go to somebody's well to drink their water. You want to have your own well of clean water that you can drink out of. Does that make sense?

When it comes to business, you have to depend on yourself, okay? We're going to talk about how do you do this and, you know, hopefully the stuff we've been talking about thus far in this course has been beneficial to you, okay? And so, you know, it is my sincere hope that, you know, you learned enough, you know, to at least get you going in the right direction, okay? When it comes to traffic generation and, of course, there are still conversion master, we're going to be talking about some of the things that we're going to be talking about in the next couple of weeks.

So, some ideas how to convert to traffic, all that stuff. So, there's still, you know, a lot of cool stuff coming up. But dig your own well is most definitely a million-dollar idea for you, okay? Million-dollar idea number four, that's like $4 million I'm practically just giving you right now, you know?

Build your own tribe, okay? I cannot tell you how many people, you know, that are, you know, celebrities in other people's eyes, people that go on TV and do infomercials, people that sell into tens of millions of products being sold every single month and every single year, okay? By just going in front of mass media, but they don't have a tribe, you know? They can make sales, but that's as far as their business goes, okay?

They don't have a following. They don't have a loyal fan base. Does that make sense? They don't have a following.

They don't have a people that they can, they don't have a list. They don't have a customer list. They don't have prospects list. They don't have, you know, people who, you know, who are following them.

Does that make sense? So, you want to build your own tribe. And some of the stuff we're going to be talking about in conversion mastery, obviously, but this is definitely a million-dollar idea, okay? So, you don't have to depend on anybody for traffic.

And you also don't, you know, you don't have to depend on anybody for, you know, to tap into their, you know, their, you know, their, you know, their customer base or to tap into their database. You want to have your own database, okay? Very, very, very important thing, okay? Starts with a list building.

Now, I, oh man, look at that. That's five million-dollar ideas for you right here, okay? Million-dollar idea number five is traffic is the single most important element of your business. I don't care what anybody else tells you.

I don't care what you think, okay? I don't care what, you know, the other guru is going to tell you. Here is a proof for you. Here is an undeniable proof that this statement is 1,000% true.

And unless you embrace it, okay, you're probably going to be struggling in your business. Now, let me ask you this. Do you think McDonald's is the healthiest place in town? Well, some people might argue it is, right?

I'm not here to argue. I'll tell you my perspective on it. I don't think it's the healthiest, you know, meal place in town at all by a long shot. Okay.

Why is McDonald's the most popular restaurant in the world? Why? Is it because they have the most, you know, the coolest burgers? Is it because they, you know, they have the healthiest stuff?

Is it because their stuff is really, really that good, better than anybody else's? Heck no. It's because they have the most traffic. How do they get the most traffic is because they advertise the most, okay?

Look at Starbucks, okay? Is Starbucks, you know, does Starbucks has the best coffee in the world? Some people might argue they do. I would say not even close, okay?

Not even close. But how come can Starbucks charge three, five, six times more for their cup of coffee, okay, than anybody else and still have people lining up at six o'clock in the morning and stay in line for like 15 minutes to get their cup of coffee? Why? Right?

Because Starbucks, Starbucks is in the business of advertising. Does that make sense? Your business, you can have the, you know, your product, you know, can be, you know, a so-so product. You know, obviously, I'm just going to assume that whatever you're selling is the top of the line.

It's for the better. You know, it's, you know, it's making a difference for somebody else, right? But at the end of the day, you can have the most awesome product. And if you don't know how to out-advertise or how to, you know, how to, you know, beat your customers, you can have the most awesome product.

Competition, really how to get tons and tons and tons of traffic to your product, right? You, your business is not going to be at the level to where it can be, right? If you mastered this thing called traffic generation. And yes, there is other, there are other elements that come into play like conversions and you need to understand how the, but everything being equal, traffic is the single most important element of your business.

And so that's why when I got started in this industry, I decided consciously, I made a conscious decision to be, not just know a little bit about traffic, not just understand so-so about traffic. I literally wanted to be the best at generating traffic on the internet, period, okay? And this is my, this is my area of expertise. This is what I study day in, day out.

This is what I learned. This is what I, you know, that's my, that's my business right here, all right? It's traffic generation. Everything else is a bonus, okay?

So there you go, my friend. That's your $5 million ideas for you right there. I can send you an invoice later. Oh man, this is good stuff.

No, but seriously, this is, you know, hopefully this stuff is making sense to you, okay? But as you're building your business, you need to understand and most importantly, just be conscious of this stuff, you know, as you're building your business because your competition does not understand this, okay? And that's a good thing because you can out, you can out cool your competition with the right kind of knowledge, okay? Let's move on here.

Let's talk about how to find new traffic outlets, okay? Just give you a couple ideas here and then in the next video, I'm going to show you my secret sauce, okay? There's different ways, you know, just think about how to, you know, as a marketer, you always want to, you know, going back to the digging your own well, right? Never depending on anybody for traffic.

Well, how do you find new traffic outlets? And you know what? Most people overcomplicate a very, very simple thing. Let me give you a couple ideas here, okay?

Idea number one is, hey, if you visit in a website, okay, most of the time, if you scroll down on the very bottom of the website that you're visiting, okay? MSN.com, you know, Yahoo.com, you know, you're going to find a lot of people. Yahoo.com, you name it, you know, YouTube.com, I mean, any, you know, maybe you're visiting any kind of blog, okay? You're reading something, you're researching something, and if that site is relevant to what you're promoting, okay?

Almost all the time, I'd say like probably 95% of the time, just scroll all the way down on that web, on that website, okay? And a lot of times, you will see a little link, it's going to say advertise, okay? And when you click on that link, it's going to take you to their advertising program. It's going to take you to their, to the place to where you can purchase advertisements on that particular site, okay?

Idea number one, okay? Very, very basic. Most people don't even pay attention to this kind of stuff, okay? Idea number two is just go to Google, just type how to get traffic to my site.

Is that a rocket science? Oh, man, it's not a rocket science, you know what I mean? Search engines, go to Yahoo and just type in how to get free traffic. How do we get traffic with, how do I get PPC traffic?

There is a wealth of information, my friend. People right now in our industry, we're not suffering from lack of information. We're suffering from being lazy, right? And not utilizing the information that's in front of our noses.

Make sense? So just, you know, a little bit of common sense and you can get yourself, you know, you can uncover new traffic sources every single day, okay? More than you can chew. Now, you can also go to different networks.

And again, we talked about that stuff in, in preceding modules. So I'm not going to spend too much time on this, but there was other, you know, there was networks you can go to, to tap into other, you know, to tap into multiple traffic outlets from one particular network, okay? So just go back, you know, to any one of the previous modules to where I talked about different networks. You know, you can find a lot of information there.

If you are, you know, if you have your own product that you're promoting, you can certainly build an affiliate base around your product and you can utilize, you can train affiliates, right, to promote your product. And so you have an army of affiliates that, people that kind of work for you, you know, and, and they get paid on, you know, every time they make a sale, which is a really cool model because, you know, A, you're not paying them for generating traffic. They're generating traffic by paying their own money, right?

And then you only pay them when they bring in a sale, okay? Well, that sale, you wouldn't have that anyways if that wasn't for that affiliate. So, you know, you can build a network, you can build a network, you can build a network, why not pay your affiliates, right? And just let them go out there and generate traffic.

But then you can train them on how to get traffic by, you know, obviously you understanding how to get traffic by going through a program like this and constantly being on the cutting edge of traffic generation. Make sense? So that's an idea. And then lastly is, you know, something I call TIS, which is Traffic Intelligence Software.

And, you know, if you haven't heard that before, it's because I invented it, you know, at this particular term. But, you know, I just, I just thought it just sounded fancy, you know, Traffic Intelligence Software. And, you know, if you don't know Traffic Intelligence Software, there's different types of software and technology. I actually, I should, I should just probably said, you know, TIT or something like that, Traffic Intelligence Technology.

Same thing, right? But there is different, different types of intelligence and, you know, yeah, platforms and technologies that's out there that's available to us, like from quantcast.com, you know, to other, you know, compete.com, you know, which is something I'm going to show you in the next video, that you can utilize to not only, you know, like spy on your competition, but to uncover, literally uncover, you know, new fresh traffic sources that's working right now. Not stuff that was working like two years ago, even though that, you know, you can find that as well.

Okay. But that is really, really the next level type stuff. And if you're into that stuff, if you want to spend a little bit of money and just take your business, traffic intelligence side of your business to a whole new level, watch next video, because I'm going to show you exactly what I use. And, and that's going to be really, really, really beneficial for you.

I was actually thinking about whether to share this or not. And then I decided, you know what, I'm just going to share it with you, because I don't talk about this hardly ever. Okay. And I would, I would encourage you to keep it to yourself.

Because this is just, it's dangerous, you know, in a good way. And it can give you, man, it's just, it's just so good. You know, the stuff I'm going to show you in the next video, it's going to allow you to, it's going to give you a, an edge, a huge edge over, I mean, most like 99% of other marketers. So let me show that to you in the next video.