Today’s Internet is NOT a “build it and they will come” place for businesses like brick and mortar businesses can sometimes be. You have to proactively go out and get people to come back to your website.
Having an a successful website really isn’t that hard, most people make it hard on themselves by trying to cut corners. Success has already been proven, the recipes are already there. If you’re willing to follow the recipes it’s really pretty hard to truly fail.
The most basic formula for a successful website is…
- Do some research to find out what people are interested in or even better something that they desperately need. For example; cures for ailments, services, how to guides, and software.
- Next you create whatever you found in your research that people are wanting.
- Then you research ways that you can drive the type of people that were looking for what you created back to your website. For example; social media, SEO, classified ads, or paid advertising.
- Finally you track, analyze, and optimize your website for each source of web traffic that you are using. You must do this step so you can monitor and improve the performance of your websites as not every source of traffic will like your website in it’s current state… The trick is to always be optimizing so that you get the most amount of people taking the action you wanted them to take once they arrived.
There is no secret, and if there was a “secret” then the above list would be it. Now of course for different business models there might be another step here or there but everything builds from that platform above.
In this post i’m not going to be talking about how to research what people want. I’ll address methods of research in another blog post but today’s let’s talk about traffic.
Free Traffic Vs. Paid Traffic
You have two choices… You either pay for traffic with your time and energy or you pay for it with your money. I personally just go after every possible traffic source I can get my hands on and then test it for profitability.
With free traffic you are usually going to have to either hire someone or use your own time and energy to go out and get that free traffic. Paid traffic is more of like a light switch, you just turn it on and off at will. The other benefit of paid traffic is there is nearly an infinite amount of it. Where free traffic can be pretty limited.
If you want to read about our free traffic methods and how to use them then I suggest you read an older blog post of ours called “Free Website Traffic Is 100% Possible.” Or keep reading and we’ll talk about 21 different places I’ve found for paid internet advertising.
Almost every single one of these sources will let you start with a very small budget. Which in my opinion is the key to success with paid advertising. I got my start with $60 in hand that I setup as a $2/day budget and turned it into $300 in sales by the end of the month.
I now spend thousands per month on advertising, but I started small, tracked everything, analyzed daily, and split-tested my web pages to optimize them for high performance. If you do the same then I promise you’ll find at least a couple profitable traffic streams below.
Top 21 Paid Internet Advertising Sources
THE KING! http://adwords.google.com
Google’s Adwords program is the ultimate light switch of web traffic for me. There are just so many different ways inside Adwords alone that you can drive traffic with. I can’t get into it all in this post but they have the normal keyword targetted campaigns, placement targetted (put your ads on other sites), the content network, and then extras like radio/newspaper/TV.
http://sem.smallbusiness.yahoo.com/searchenginemarketing
This is Yahoo’s version of Google Adwords, not as good but close and tends to convert better since Yahoo is more “shopping” oriented.
https://adcenter.microsoft.com
I’ll bet you already guessed that this is MSN’s version of Google Adwords. They don’t have nearly the amount of traffic that Google or Yahoo does but they do have an overall higher income bracket of users. So it works quite well for product sales especially to the 45 – 65 demographic.
http://sponsoredlistings.ask.com
Ok I think this is the last time I’ll have to refer to Google Adwords again, but ASK.com is the smallest of “the big 4″ search engines and ofcourse they have a pay-per-click network as well. This is the best network to use for medical/health related offers. Majority of the users are middle class middle aged african-american or hispanic women.
This is a pretty small pay-per-click advertising network. Can get some REALLY cheap clicks though! I like to start out my testing here since it’s usually cheaper and then take my results over to Google, Yahoo, and MSN for scalability.
http://www.stumbleupon.com/ads
Can’t figure out how to go viral on StumbleUpon? Well you can pay your way in with their advertising network. You basically pay per stumbler that see’s your site and force your way into getting lots of views which can possibly lead to more stumblers stumbling it for free. Good for jumpstarting blogs and other content based stuff like Youtube channels.
Now we’re getting into more of the MASS traffic type of things. CPV stands for cost per view, which like StumbleAds means you pay everytime someone views your webpage. Which is technically what pay-per-click is too, but CPV is usually a lot faster and a little more interuptive. SPLIT-TESTING REQUIRED!!! I’ve found it best to use very short lead in pages because you’ve got about 3 seconds, if that, for the viewer to decide if they like you or not.
This one and the next one are also both CPV traffic sources, so if you get one to work you can most likely scale up by adding the others. I only say most likely because every niche and every offer is different. I haven’t used this one yet, just out of not having the time to add it on, but my mastermind partners rave about it.
This is the CPV network I started out with and got over 4,000 visits in under 48 hours. they tend to have a younger audience (teens) so take that for what it’s worth. They get their traffic by trading browsers entertaining content in exchange for downloading their toolbar… Then once you have their toolbar they show you ads (full sized websites).
YES! Youtube has it’s own pay-per-click or should I say “Pay-Per-Play” advertising network now. You can get your video shown in the sponsored video section and pay for people to view that video. Haven’t used it yet, still thinking of a good video idea to use. My plan is to use this one in combination with the next one AdMob.com.
The guys who started this network are ROCKIN’. They are getting all kinds of press coverage from the biggest blogs in the world. Basically, they own advertising on the iPhone right now! You can advertise either a website or a video to the iPhone users via little ads on all the different iPhone apps.
If you’ve visited any major online forum then chances are you’ve seen AdBrite ads. They link targeted keywords in on-site text to a “hover over” advertisement that appears. If the reader clicks on that ad they are sent to the advertisers website. This network is very cheap and converts really low, great for testing because you can test cheap and if you get it profitable then scaling to others will bring HUGE profits.
http://advertising.superpages.com
Haven’t used this one but it’s pretty easy to describe… Pay-per-click just like Adwords but instead of the ads being on Google they are on SuperPages.com – I’ve heard from others that it’s great for people looking for local clients or marketing to local type businesses.
http://be-a-magpie.com/customer
this one is pretty cool and it’s on my list to test this week. You pay them to get their network of twitter users to post tweets that you wrote. Think of being able to pay people to re-tweet your messages! I’ll be using it to market a couple of the more popular blog posts here to get new readers.
http://www.kontera.com/pay-per-click-advertising
this one is just like AdBrite and if I was smarter I would have grouped them together. Same story of cheap in-text ads that you pay-per-click for but tend not to convert the best.
Social networks are all the rage these days and the big ones like Myspace and Facebook have over 200 million users. You’d also be surprised to learn that it’s not just teens using these networks. Facebook’s biggest demographic is 25 – 45 and Myspace is reported to have over a million users between the ages of 35 – 65. Use their pay-per-click network to put banners right in front of a huge wave of users.
http://www.facebook.com/advertising
No doubt you’ve seen the little ads on the right hand side of your Facebook home page… Well this is how you put them there. As with anything thats mass appeal traffic like Myspace and Facebook advertising you should make sure your offer is pretty mass appeal for best results. Targetting is kind of limited with Facebook ads as you really can only narrow it down to a select demographic and then a handful of keywords.
http://www.marchex.com/advertisers
this is another network I haven’t used but I have used other services they provide and I love the company. They are on my list to test, just haven’t gotten around to it yet. They are like a small version of Google Adwords with pay-per-click and pay-per-call options.
This one is kind of like a one stop shop for advertising on social networks. They make it easier then having to have lots of different accounts but in exchange you are paying a middle man fee. It’s pay-per-click and they say you can start with as little as $1 – Haven’t tried them out yet but I think I will next month to consolidate my Myspace and Facebook ads.
http://www.amazon.com/Advertising
Lottsa options here and with one of the worlds MOST TRUSTED websites ever in existence. Everything from selling your products through Amazon to pay-per-click test links. Hmmm… I wonder if you could be a kindle affiliate and advertise on Amazon??? Will have to try that… hahaha
Another small pay-per-click outfit that used to be exclusive to eBay but is now open. Clicks are cheap and conversions ain’t bad. They also have a refer-a-friend program that can get you free clicks!
Well there you have it… Pretty much everything you could ever want to know about where to get web traffic from all in one post (including the linked to post about free traffic). However, just reading about this stuff won’t do anything for you. If you want to have floods of profitable then all it takes is action and action builds confidence!
Go Bigger,
Justin Brooke
P.S. Do you have a traffic source that I missed? I’d love for you to share it with me and everyone else. Or maybe you have a question about traffic/analytics/split-testing… Etiher way you can post it down below in the comments.
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very good article and nice lookng site, i missed your birthday promo as well hope you have some more tools coming out.
Google cash
From someone who has bought a lot of things in life except traffic I like this post. I also liked your post Ray. It reminds me of a line my father used on me when I was having employee problems years ago.
The employee you fire will not cause you near the pain that the employee you should have fired.
Rick
Rick Prepaid Cell’s last blog post..Net 10 Unlimited Calling Plan
Rick
I love this line your father used. I used to run an IT company and ha 50 developers reporting to me but 2 of my team leaders were pretty useless and I couldn’t bring myself to fire them for a long time, too long, and when I FINALLY DID THERE WAS a surge of relief throughout the company. Can’t believe it took me so long. I wont do that again.
Justin, you and Shauna talks such sense it makes me feel all inspired and safe
Thanks for these very usefull info. I need more traffic for my blog, and am only using free exchange traffic to promote my blog, but it sounds like the free exchange traffic visitor is in fact a robot!
benjamin Cip’s last blog post..I’m planning to share my Bidvertiser Referral earning
Useful post
Nice long list of PPC services. One only needs to learn to use one effectively and …pay day!
I tend to focus primarily on search engine traffic for my sites and use PPC for my google cash type campaigns
Niche’s last blog post..Adsense Requires Work, Loads Of Work
Justin it’s a huge list you’ve disclosed all required places to skyrocket traffic but expensive too:D
Justin,
Excellent resource. I was just about to purchase what appears to be the same information through a special offer on a well-known forum.
Thanks!
You should also check out Bidvertiser, Adtoll and Clicksor. I have used all of them and they seem to be pretty good. They all accept Paypal, and you can geo-target your campaigns.
Adtoll is the smallest network, so it takes a while for all the clicks to come through. And I think that Clicksor got me the most conversions (although I can’t be totally sure of that).
Matt Hayden’s last blog post..Advanced operators for keyword selection
Hi,
an interesting list, but I prefer to use free methods like Article marketing Squidoo and social bookmarking,
Best Regards
Mario Pesce
Hi Mario,
Then you might want to visit the link above to my other blog post that talks about only free methods!
Oh man, this really works!!!My first sale since that traffic webinar week ago
I just got this email:
—————————————————————————
Order ID………… xxx
Date……………. 08/13/2009
Item……………. 21 Week Coaching Program (Trial)
Sale Total………. $0.67 USD
Your Commission….. $0.34 USD
The sale will “lock” in 30 days.
—————————————————————————
This is a great list of traffic buying sites. I’ve been meaning to get into PPC lately but haven’t taken the plunge yet so you’ve given me a lot of options to consider.
Nice post Justin, I just picked up a new traffic source from this, I didn’t know you could pay per stumbler, cool stuff. Thanks
.-= Terrance Charles´s last blog ..Top 100 Most Helpful Twitter Tips… =-.
Wow again, I come to your blog and just blown away with information. I think the social network suggestions are very very good. People are always hanging in face book and myspace.
I would love to know more about adwords if there is a good resource
Thank you so much.
Grace
.-= Grace´s last blog ..Interview with Lynn Terry of SSWT =-.
I`ve tried most of these sources, and many of them are good.
One more I am using to drive traffic to my pages, and I did not find it in here, is the Ad Sonar network (quigo.com). They have very good inventory, and convert pretty well for me.
Most of these are good.
I am using one more source to drive traffic to my pages, that I did not find in here – Ad Sonar (quigo.com). They have very good inventory, and traffic converts pretty well for me.
Very nice info..thank you
Nice tips. Thanks for sharing this list
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