Getting traffic to your website is the first step in making money online. Without traffic, you won’t be able to make money. It’s as simple as that. Of course there are some random exceptions, but in the world of the internet marketer, traffic is potential currency and without it, there isn’t any money. Monetizing the traffic is probably the topic of a different article. Either way, getting traffic to your site is important. You can get traffic by buying it, or by working for it, or sometimes, just by luck. Even then, I believe luck is where preparation meets opportunity.
Pay per click is probably the easiest and perhaps the fastest way to get traffic. Once your site is setup and ready to get visitors, an account with Google or Yahoo can buy you traffic and get it started within a very short period of time. There are options to bid on specific keyword phrases that you feel would be a good match for what you have to offer. You can also choose to display your advertisement on websites that seem to match what it is you have to offer. Probably the best thing about PPC is that you have virtually instant feedback. If you have some solid tracking in place, perhaps a combination of both Adwords and Google Analytics, you’ll be able to see what keywords you are bidding on produce sales and which do not. You’ll also be able to see which advertisements produce the most clicks and sales as well.
SEO is search engine optimization which is the idea that you design your site around providing solid valuable content for the user, then create supporting content and build a base of sites or links that support your site and help sustain it as an “authority” site. There are some tricks to getting this right, but the overall concept revolves a bit around SEO being a “popularity contest” with backlinks being the votes that determine how popular your site is. Targeting keywords that are less competitive will give you a chance to practice this before you go for the most popular keyword phrases in your niche.
social media – Targeting social groups with your marketing message may be like tight-rope walking. It also may require some nice social engineering where you have an opportunity to talk about your product or service without it coming across as an advertisement or a “pitch”. Of course the social media side of things doesn’t always have to revolve around your peers or social group you know personally. Social media can be anything that leverages the ability of potential customers to interact, discuss, compare, and then purchase. Reviews are huge in this category as well because the majority of your customers, no matter what they’re purchasing are looking for “social proof” that what they’re going to be buying from you is worth buying according to their peers.
If you’re after some serious traffic, you may consider media buys. This is the concept that you are purchasing traffic from websites that have literally millions of visitors per month. This requires that you do have a budget that can go towards a good amount of traffic. This is different than payperclick as you don’t have the chance to ramp up your budget a little at a time. This doesn’t necessarily mean it’s risky, but it does require some diligence, testing, and agreement that you can back out of a media buy if, within 24-48 hours, you aren’t seeing the conversions you would expect. This may save you a significant amount of money and hassle if you’re trying to revamp your landing pages for conversions all the while you’re being bombarded with traffic. If done correctly, media buys can be one of the single largest revenue generators for you.
There are other types of traffic sources you can leverage including “web 2.0″ style sites that allow for a more integrated interaction with potential users of your site. Not only social media as discussed already in this article, but through video, audio and other media. Use this to your advantage for some unique opportunities the most amount of traffic for the least amount of your time while providing the greatest amount of value.
{ 0 comments }