You know what they say, “Traffic is the lifeblood of your internet business”.
Actually this is true for any business.
With a bricks and mortar store, the mantra is “Location, location, location!”
In the real world, positioning your store in a location
with heavy human traffic is one of the best ways of boosting sales.
Online, however, you can’t do that.
You will actively need to drive people to your site.
They will not come automatically.
There are two ways of driving traffic to your site
or blog or whatever online product you’re promoting.
There is the free option and the paid option.
Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
Initially, when most affiliate marketers are starting out they will go the free route.
This is due to their limited budget and financial restraints.
Don’t let that discourage you.
Free methods are highly effective too and will grow in time to drive massive traffic.
You will need some knowledge of search engine optimization.
You will target long tail keywords with not too much competition.
These will usually have a lesser number of searches
but by targeting many different long tail keywords,
you can build up a greater volume of searches.
Blog posting and joining forums
and then commenting and offering advice
are all highly effective methods of driving free traffic.
You will have to spend some time joining forums related to your niche.
Then by sharing quality and helpful information,
you will build trust with many other members.
You can add a link back to your site in your signature on the forum.
People who read your post will be curious about you
and click on your link and end up on your site.
The process may seem convoluted and strange.
Yet, it works very well.
Many marketers focus exclusively on forum marketing and do very well from it.
The downside with free traffic methods
is that they will require time and effort…
and it will take time to show results.
What really matters is that you keep plugging away
and not stop just because the results are not coming fast enough.
Paid traffic like the name implies, requires you to pay for it.
If done well, it can be highly profitable
and will drive lots of traffic to your pages and offers.
If you do it wrong, you will lose money.
The hard truth is that most marketers fail miserably with paid traffic.
They assume that all they need to do is pay and the traffic will convert on its own.
The reality is that you will need to track your spending,
improve your conversions, carry out split testing, work out your ROI
and keep a close eye on the entire process.
There are a lot of details and technical moving parts.
Most beginners become fazed when they read about tracking and analysis.
They try to skip it because it seems complicated.
It’s not. You just need to get the hang of it.
Before even starting on paid advertising,
you must learn all you can about it.
Even that is no guarantee that you won’t lose money…
but at least you won’t be struggling without knowing what your options are.
Paid traffic is highly lucrative and delivers results much faster than free traffic.
Once you have some funds to spare,
you should learn about pay per click traffic and give it a try.
Facebook traffic is another great source of very targeted paid traffic
There is quite a bit to know about it but it pays off.
You may make some mistakes but by correcting them and moving forward,
you will soon master these traffic methods.
The best advice any starting affiliate marketer can follow
as far as traffic generation goes is to start with free techniques first.
Once you are making commissions and sales with your free methods,
you can put some money aside to experiment with paid strategies.
Over time, you will have more experience and knowledge to scale up
and you’ll become highly efficient at driving traffic with both methods.
