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Wherever that might be we need to be there too

If you're ever looking for a hot button issue to exploit on a local level start a discussion about traffic. I'm not talking about the traffic that we deal in here online, I'm talking about the cars and trucks that go up and down a suburban street. When it comes to that type of traffic suddenly everyone is an expert, everyone has an opinion and everyone wants to have their say.

Trust me on it - we've just learned that lesson since the weekend. So there's my free tip for this month, if you want to get people involved on a local level ... talk traffic.

And now let's talk about that other sort of traffic, the traffic that you and I deal in every day of the week. Usually I'll talk about that sort of traffic on a local level - what you can do to get your share of it, how to use it when you have it and how to turn it into money in your pocket when it leaves your site. But today let's look at traffic in a global context because even there it can have an impact right down at your ‘local' level.

Right from the early days of the Internet the online adult industry has always had a big share of the traffic that goes around. Experts acknowledge that the first industry to really flourish online was the adult industry.

When online gambling arrived they too grabbed a big share of the traffic on the Net. As a result they were another industry that really flourished as people found that they could have some serious fun - and sometimes win - without even leave the house.

By 2005, in many parts of the world, the online adult industry was seeing more traffic than search engines were but now things are beginning to change. Hitwise in the United Kingdom looked at their figures for October 2006 and saw some interesting trends.

The market share of UK traffic for adult websites dropped by 20 per cent, the market share for gambling websites dropped by 11 per cent and even music sites saw a drop in their share of traffic. For the first time UK traffic to search engines rose above the traffic going to adult sites and the trend has continued through to December 2006

Now there are some experts in the industry who suggest that online adult and online gambling have been the indicators for the future and that it was possible to predict where the Net was going by the amount of traffic that flows to these two areas. So if that traffic is declining then where is it going?

Well some wonder if it isn't going over to Second Life where much of the activity is reported to be of an adult nature. Others are suggesting that it's heading to peer to peer networks. Last month I suggested several times that perhaps we should be looking at marketing opportunities in the online worlds so perhaps I wasn't so far off the mark.

And it might also be paying to look at some of those peer to peer networks to see what might be achieved in those. I have to admit that it's something I've never even considered, or looked at, so I have no idea what to suggest there.

Perhaps it's also time that we were looking at other marketing methods too. I won't repeat myself here because I've already talked about that but it really is something that you should not be ignoring.

There might also be some marketing opportunities in some of the other areas that have seen an increase in traffic. At the same time that adult and gambling was dropping behind the search engines for traffic there were other categories where the traffic numbers were growing too.

Some of those categories included Net communities and chat websites, news and media sites and even educational sites. Before you look at that last option and dismiss it out of hand what Hitwise classified as an educational site was Wikipedia and that is a site where you can do some marketing ... as long as you're a little creative about it.

So there's something to think about. Facts and figures at the global level do trickle down to affect us at the ‘local' level and if we want to stay ahead of the game we need to be taking those global figures and adjusting our marketing to handle those global trends right down here at a local level.

You know, there really is no reason why someone starting off at a local level can't become a global player. You just have to work towards the big picture from where you are right now.