Traffic From “Free” Sources: Is it worth the effort?
As you may be aware, website traffic comes in different forms and flavours. You can generate traffic from many sources: Pay Per Click [(Google Adwords, Yahoo Search (Panama, anyone?), Microsoft Adcenter etc.].
You may decide, however ,that Pay Per Click Advertising is too expensive for you and you decide to go the route of Traffic Exchanges. Traffic Exchanges are largely free, and examples include: “I Love Hits“, “WebbizInsider”, etc. But from my own experience with traffic exchanges, they are hardly effective because the purpose of those browsing your websites (ads) is to accumulate credits so that their own websites will be displayed to others. Typically, it is advisable to rotate only your lead generation pages on Traffic Exchanges, you are typically wasting your time if you attempt to sell anything directly on traffic exchanges. You stand a greater chance of success if you just generate the lead and then offer a one time offer (OTO) after the lead has subscribed. If you really want to achieve maximum success with Traffic exchanges, you should opt for a paid option. This is the case in which you pay (say) $20/month and your webpage is rotated continually throughout the month. This, I believe is a better investment of your time,instead of mindlessly browsing through webpages, you can spend that time more effectively on your business.
Another form of ‘free’ advertising is placing your ads on Classified sites. The most popular free classified site that we all know is Craigslist, and it has [phenomenal success using its business model. People have gotten excellent results using Craigslist, and this has brought up a number of competitors like AdlandPro, Ablewise, etc. These ones also offer free classified ads, but in addition, give you the opportunity to make your adds more prominent by paying a premium ranging from $1 and upwards. On other sites apart from Craigslist, I have had more success when I opt for the Premium ads, than when I stick to just free classifieds. The reason is simply that the premium ads stand out from the thousands of free ads.
How can we forget the ultimate form of free advertisement; Search Engine Optimization (SEO). A 1st page placement in google (especially positions 1-5) is worth its price in Gold, and you cannot buy it (at least not directly!) with money. Many experts have argued, however, that SEO is not really ‘free’. You pay for it in the time you devote to it. They say that you can actually ‘buy’ a Google 1st page placement by hiring an SEO expert to optimize your site for the search engines. The debate rages on……..