I am sure people’s mailboxes are full of emails with various people promoting these two communities, which are going head-to-head with their launches. Feature wise they are probably only similar in the fact that both provide a backend community for advice and training, but I am not going to compare feature sets.

Comparing The Buzz

For some time I have had reasonable well ranking pages for both Stompernet and Portal Feeder.

I had written about Portal Feeder when it was first launched, in fact probably more than anyone else, back in 2005. Whilst that content was on my old blogspot account, that blog is being redirected here, and all the content is housed on this domain.

I have also written a couple of times about Stompernet, though I have never seen the service from the inside.

Up until a couple of days ago, I hadn’t written anything new about either service, so it is interesting comparing the traffic I have coming in for both.

Portal Feeder vs StomperNet – Which Is Getting Most Traffic?

This isn’t going to be a strict comparrison, because I am not looking directly at the direct traffic to each site, either from the blogs of promotion partners, or from email marketing. That will obviously be the largest amount of traffic, and a lot of people will make purchases based on direct recommendation and the materials provided.

Some people however search for more information, and will use a variety of search terms.

As an example, I currently rank well for “Stomper Net” and not so well for “Stompernet”, and that shows in the search results.
I also wasn’t ranking well for many direct Portal Feeder references, it was mainly long tail searches, and I also gained a fair amount of traffic from people following links from old forum posts in various places.

Portal Feeder will effectively be closed by the time Stomper Net opens, though there is a lot of overlap in the promotions.

Anyway here is some interesting data FWIW

Portal Feeder Visitors April 1st 2007 – Present

StomperNet Visitors April 1st 2007 – Present

(note I mainly rank highly for Stomper Net)

Portal Feeder vs StomperNet Traffic Analysis

If I had tried to rank for these products / services / training I would be getting a lot more traffic, it was interesting monitoring traffic on older content that hadn’t really been linked to internally.
I did post a Portal Feeder update a few days ago which did give traffic a boost. One of the most interesting things were the long tail keywords some people were using.

Where is the SERPs Competition?

Both of these services promote having great SEO training.

Whilst most of the members are probably not making sites in the Internet Marketing niche, I am sure a few of them are, and would have done something for the free SEO traffic. These numbers above are absolutely nothing compared to a 1st position result for the primary keywords.
I know that the most sales will come from the big list owning bonus waving gurus (in the case of many that is used as a compliment)

What are the real traffic numbers being driven to these sites by affiliates using email?

At time of writing Stompernet is hovering around 1K on Alexa, though I think that will keep raising for a few days, or at least maintain that level.

Portal Feeder is later in the promotion cycle, and has had a few peaks under 2K, in fact the week average is around 1800 on Alexa.

There is a lot of interest for both services.

I would say that people taking a look at Portal Feeder should take a look at StomperNet, and people looking at StomperNet should look at Portal Feeder.

Stomper Net 2.0 has just launched, boasting a lot of new faculty members including 2 of my favourite experts, Sherman Hu and Leslie Rohde.

Supreme Joint Venture

I have noticed something significant with the relaunch and whilst the following is speculation, I can’t see a reason that that isn’t at least close to how the joint venture works.

The most important observations are

1. The relaunch was not emailed continuously to previous signups
2. The relaunch was not emailed by previous launch partners and faculty members
3. The launch is being heavily promoted just by the new faculty members

How this JV Works

The experts selected seem to have been chosen for a number of compelling reasons

1. They are acknowledged experts in their field
2. Lots of SEO talent to take some of the workload from Brad and Andy
3. The new faculty members in the main do not have their own existing high ticket items or services

Lets take Sherman for instance

Say he has 1000 members of WordPress Tutorials currently active and makes on average $90 per member per year. That is $90K per year. Not bad income, but I don’t think he has that many members yet.

With Stompernet 2.0 the money pot is much more significant

1000 new members x $900 per month x 12 months = $10,800,000

Now that money is likely to be shared between the new faculty members as an ongoing fee for the training and support they provide, various other support costs and outsourcing, affiliate fees again to the new faculty members, and a fair sized chunk to Brad and Andy.

There are also costs associated with holding 4 seminars per year, but I think that is easily covered. The element of risk is totally removed, and I am sure good deals can be struck with a supporting hotel for such a conference with 2000 guests.

Realistically speaking, each new faculty member can expect to clear $300,000 per year, much more if they were able to sign up a significant amount of new members themselves.
I am sure at least one of the new faculty members will clear $1M from his involvement.

Old Faculty Members

I don’t think they gain anything from the new memberships. Whilst there will be additional members, the work is being shared between more experts. They didn’t get to promote the doors being re-opened, at least not yet, but expect them to have a bite of the cake if the expected number of slots are not filled this cycle.

Comparing income

It is hard to find reliable figures for service companies online, or at least it was until Rand Fishkin revealed the SEOMoz earnings for 2005 and 2006.

Total income $600,000 with 9 full time employees
Rand only cleared $26K for himself in 2006

Rand is building a business and a brand, so those figures are bound to increase for 2007, but it is easy to see that Stomper Net is a very attractive proposition for anyone involved.

Can’t Afford Stomper Net 2.0?

Don’t worry, you are not alone. I can’t actually justify the expense this time round either.

Here are some alternatives

1. Get Michael Campbells ebooks for free, including Revenge of the Mininet
2. Bonus – Leslie Rohde’s Dynamic Linking comes as a free bonus to the above

3. Join WordPress Tutorials – Sherman’s WordPress Training is superb and I haven’t seen any notification that he will be closing shop. He still answers questions on his WordPress support forum daily and there is a good chance that some of the material prepared for Stomper Net will be reworked for his own site.

I would honestly love to be on the faculty for Stomper Net 3.0