Paying for Traffic : Is it Worth the Expense?

I admit it… There have been times that I have [tag]paid for traffic[/tag] to my website.  I’m not proud of it, and I’m also happy that I didn’t get hooked on it.  Call me “old fashioned” but I would much prefer to generate traffic using free and low-cost tools.   

Regardless of my personal preferences, there are certainly times that paying for traffic is a much better choice for getting visitors and prospects, than waiting for the [tag]free traffic[/tag] to arrive.  Let me try to lay my personal bias aside long enough to share some thoughts on the topic of [tag-ice]traffic generation[/tag-ice] by paying for it.

There are so many success stories that you’ll hear about businesses becoming extremely successful on the internet.  In fact, there are a lot of [tag]Network Marketing companies[/tag] that have succeeded in a major way because they have harnessed the power of the internet.  They have utilized many [tag]online tools and systems[/tag] to build their empire.

Unfortunately, studies show that the vast majority of start-up businesses will fail within the first couple of years of operations.  Many enthusiastic [tag-tec]online entrepreneurs[/tag-tec] launch their business enterprise on the internet with grand hopes of success, but only a handful will succeed.

I will not go into all the factors that contribute to failure with internet based businesses, because there are certainly varied reasons.  We will, however, discuss one important factor that is important to the success of an online business.  Traffic.

Like Neo, traffic is “The One” – the important factor online that everything revolves around.  Without traffic, all your efforts in promoting your online enterprise will just go to waste.  Every business needs customers to survive, so getting customers in your front door is essential.  Without customers visiting your site, you simply won’t have anyone to sell your products to.

In the internet world traffic is the walk-in customer.  The more traffic you have visiting your site, the more people you have to sell your products to.  That’s an obvious statement, yet, many online businesses spend more in design of their site than [tag]generating traffic[/tag] to their site.

Like any business that is in every corner building or in the mall, not everyone that visits your store will buy.  There are many factors that will determine the “conversion” of a visitor, into a paying customer.   The obvious strategy for any online business is to get as many people as possible to browse your site.  Thus, the more traffic, the greater number of people that will buy your products.

I’ve shared many tips on [tag]building traffic[/tag] in this blog.  I also outline several Easy Traffic systems and strategies in my [tag]Easy Traffic 101 course[/tag].  The goal is to build a [tag]massive traffic funnel[/tag] that sends a continuous flow of targeted traffic to your online business site.

But, how do you get traffic, traffic large enough that could make a small percentage of eventual buyers enough to make a good profit.  Many big companies generate traffic of tens of thousands a day and a measly ten to fifteen percent actually buys, but that small percentage is enough to provide them with good business.

 

Many of these success stories get their traffic from paying others.   It’s certainly not a new idea that you have to spend money in order to make money.  It’s simply advertising your site.  The more people that become aware of your site – the more people that may actually visit your site. 

As I’ve shared many ways that can advertise your site for free, many of them take time and effort to build, and may not generate the same high volume as methods that you pay for.   I’ve used paid advertising systems through Google, MSN, and Yahoo to get traffic, and have spent a LOT of money in the process.  The quality of visitor was generally good, but generally on my low budget – the cost was more than I wanted to spend.  

Anytime I’ve used [tag]Search Engine advertising[/tag], I really felt that I had to have a product that was an easy purchase.  In other words, I was convinced when someone visited my site they would find the product very valuable and would want to buy it immediately.  If I didn’t feel that I had a product that was going to be a popular item, I never wanted to spend a lot of money on traffic.  I would always test the free traffic, before I started buying traffic to my site.

While search engine optimization is a far cheaper and low cost way to get your site a high rank, paying for advertisements can guarantee that you will be on the top ranks when someone searches for your keyword term.  Of course, you may have to pay a high price for that special ranking.  You can spend a LOT of money, and not get the return you want.

When you pay for your advertisements, you are essentially paying for your traffic. This may not sound like a very good idea, but the payoff is that you can guarantee yourself a consistent traffic flow to your site almost immediately.  If you are releasing a top quality product, you can get sales very quickly by purchasing traffic to your site.  Building a free traffic funnel, may take you several days, weeks, or even months. 

Using the pay systems provided by the Search Engines, you can pay for every visitor you get from your ad.  Basically, you are charged for the number of hits a link gets when your ads is clicked.  This is called pay per click, or [tag]PPC[/tag].  For some search engines, you will be charged with the number of times your ad shows up when a certain keyword or keyword phrase is searched. It is imperative that you have good keyword content in your ad.  The Search Engines usually provide some excellent tools that will aid you in using the right keyword for your campaign.

All the money you spend in paying for your [tag]traffic[/tag] will not be for naught. You will get an impressive boost in traffic which will also result to a great boost in your sales figures. Paying for your traffic would be a really good idea and you will get all the benefits it has to offer.