1. Traffic is a means, not an end
In the past two years, there has been a very common phenomenon in the cross-border field: many people have entered TikTok and “generated” a lot of traffic, and also claimed that they can “generated traffic”, with millions of views at a time, which sounds very “addictive”. But when it comes to the amount of cash and the sustainability of traffic, they don’t say much. Being able to “generate traffic” is a very strong skill, but “generating traffic” is not the end. Traffic is just a link that needs to be taken before customers pay for it, but we cannot leave our closed loop for traffic, otherwise we will fall into a big pit. While we are “generating traffic”, we must remember that traffic is only a means, not an end. We start from the end, so as not to fall into “traffic anxiety” and a vicious cycle.
Second, it is easy to fall into the trap due to “traffic anxiety”
When I first started TikTok, I also had “traffic anxiety”. There are five pitfalls that I stepped into personally and paid the price with real money. It was only after I fell into the pit that I realized: it turned out to be a pit! It turned out that doing this is a “suicidal” false prosperity. (The first two pitfalls have been mentioned in the previous article, so I will not repeat them here.)
1. [The third pitfall] Deviating from the business model in order to “get traffic”
I mentioned the importance of accurate user tags in Chapter 3. We even have to manually delete inaccurate fans in order to make the tags accurate during the account creation stage. In the past, in order to “get traffic”, I posted whatever content was popular, which inevitably deviated from the original business model and fan portrait, causing us to have a false prosperity. There are a lot of likes and comments, but it is difficult to cash in on orders.
Once an account is separated from the original business model, the labels are confusing, or some “reverse labels” are added, it will take more time and energy to correct it than to add labels to a new account, which is a waste of time, opportunity and money.
You may have heard some people who do domestic Douyin and TikTok say things like “This account is useless, let’s start a new one.” In addition to being punished for violating platform rules, it may also be difficult to correct the fan labels, and the entire account has deviated from the original business model. Even if it has tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of fans, it may be abandoned.
Therefore, when doing traffic, you must stick to the business model and focus on the precise fan group corresponding to the business model. Don’t deviate from the business model for the sake of false prosperity traffic, which will not be worth the loss.
2. [The 4th Pitfall] Not enough content, use paid traffic to make up
After experiencing the “Amazon Black Swan Incident” in 2022, many cross-border sellers began to transform into independent sites and TikTok. However, many traditional cross-border e-commerce sellers are used to the method of quickly producing orders by advertising, so they directly moved this method to TikTok. Before seriously studying the content logic of TikTok, there was no patience to polish the content carefully, and it was impossible to slowly persist in improving the content power to survive the “black hole period”, so they pinned their hopes on paid push advertising. I always thought, “I can’t do free content, so I can just buy traffic directly!”, but the facts prove that this idea is wrong, because it is singing against the TikTok platform.
I said before that what the TikTok platform needs most is to use good content to retain users and increase the length of time users stay on TikTok, so it will continue to push content according to user preferences to retain users and make users addicted to it unknowingly.
But if your content is of poor quality and users don’t want to watch it, but you pay for it to get users to watch it, what does this mean for TikTok? It means that it takes your money but damages the experience of 2,000 users (assuming you spent $10 to buy 2,000 views). Users may quit the TikTok app because they find your content boring and go to Instagram or Facebook, which is a huge loss for TikTok.
This is why the data of some accounts I worked on in the early days became worse the more I invested in traffic. Once I stopped investing in traffic, there were only dozens of views. That’s because the content was poor, which led to a poor user experience. TikTok collected our advertising fees at the cost of damaging the user experience, and it was impossible to achieve a win-win effect. It will definitely not push one more user to watch in addition to paying for traffic, and my account will also be reduced in weight due to poor content.
I realized that paid traffic should be a booster fuel. Only by boosting paid traffic on the basis of good content can we achieve a win-win result. We spend money to buy views, and users like, like, collect, and follow after watching, which prolongs the user stay time and helps TikTok improve the user experience. This is a win-win situation.
Later, practice proved that for works with good content, I often encountered the result that I only bought 2,000 views, but got tens of thousands of more views. This is what I call boosting.
So we can’t just rely on paid traffic. Without good content as a foundation, paid traffic can’t save us. Content power is a hurdle we can never get around.
3. [The 5th Pit] Buy fans and likes
Every platform will have “service providers” to provide various likes and fans services, and many people want to take shortcuts and spend money to buy them. Here I want to tell you from my own experience: This is a very wrong path!
First of all, the fans bought are random fans, which will mess up our user tags all of a sudden, so that TikTok will not know how to recommend traffic to us, and will return to the initial random traffic. This “black hole period” will never pass.
Secondly, TikTok will recommend our newly released video works to some fans. If the fake fans bought see our works but do not really watch or stay, or if these fake fans are all machine accounts, TikTok’s backend will determine that the fans of this work have a very low viewing rate and a short viewing time. The consequence is: either it is determined that the content of this work is very poor and even fans are unwilling to watch it; or your fans have problems and may be faked. No matter which one, you will be demoted or punished.
In short, the method of buying fans is very harmful to the account. It is very likely that the account will be directly abolished, but it will definitely not make the account popular all of a sudden. The accounts I have bought fans on are basically all useless now. Therefore, don’t buy fans and likes just because you want to take shortcuts. This is a huge pitfall.
4. [Pit 6] Follow others crazily to increase fans and get them to follow back
I have seen many “smart” students who want to increase their fans by following each other. I have also done such a “smart thing”. Although this method is better than buying fans directly, it also has big problems.
The first is the fan label problem: fans who follow each other are generally not accurate, which will mess up your own user labels. If you are absolutely sure that all the people you follow are accurately labeled, but you want these people to follow back out of courtesy, it is better to attract the attention of these people through good content.
The second is the problem of the recommendation mechanism: In the background algorithm of TikTok, the weights of “fans” and “friends” are different. Fans refer to the people who follow me one-way, while friends refer to the people we follow each other. The weight of friends watching my videos, finishing and liking is lower than that of fans, because there will be “personal favors” in it; and fans’ finishing and liking can better show that the work itself is good.
So the fans attracted in this way will not help us fundamentally improve the traffic and weight of the account. With this time and energy, it is better to study and polish more, and improve our own content power, which is the core ability.
5. [The 7th Pitfall] Moving other people’s works to your own account
Moving videos that have been popular in China to foreign countries is the practice of the early wave of TikTok people. When I first started TikTok, I also used this method to get a lot of traffic. But soon, I stopped using it.
First, we have violated the rights of the original author. We cannot get a real sense of accomplishment and endorphins from the traffic and profits obtained in such a way of harming others and benefiting ourselves.
Second, copying other people’s works will be limited by the “output” of the original author. For example, if you copy a dog blogger’s videos to sell pet supplies, it seems easy, but after you have copied all the videos of this blogger? You can only hope that this blogger will update quickly. What if he goes out to travel and doesn’t update? You copy other dogs? Won’t your fans suspect that you are plagiarizing other people’s works? Losing the trust of your fans will definitely reduce the conversion rate.
Third, if you copy a work, you may encounter a situation where someone else has copied the video first. If you don’t do a good job of secondary editing, the TikTok platform will “check for duplication” of your work and determine that it is in violation. Not only will the work have zero playback, but if this happens a few more times, your account will definitely be downgraded or blocked, and all this time will be wasted.
Fourth, compensate the original author for infringement. Now more and more creators in China have learned how to play TikTok, hoping to publish their original works on TikTok at the same time to attract the attention of foreign users. When the original author finds out that someone has copied his work to TikTok, he will definitely defend his rights. As long as the platform verifies that it is true, the account will be blocked at the least, and the original author will ask you to compensate for the loss at the worst. Not only do we get nothing, but we also face the risk of compensation.
There is no such thing as a trick that works. Healthy traffic is accumulated bit by bit. These five pits are all covered with candy and tempt us. After I went through them all, I found that all shortcuts come at a price. The cost of taking shortcuts is often higher than the cost of doing your best. Today I will analyze the pitfalls of countless “pioneers” (including myself) here, hoping that you will not be “poisoned” by traffic.
Tips
For “toxic” traffic, we should not only not get it, but also clean it up manually while we are working hard on our accounts.