Paid Versus Free Traffic Techniques
November 19th, 2008Some webmasters feel that paid traffic methods are more effective and efficient than free traffic methods, but that’s not always true. Some free methods can be just as powerful as paid traffic. You should combine both paid and free traffic generation if you want to get the most out of your online efforts, but it’s not always necessary to use paid traffic, especially if you’re just starting out.
But each method has its strengths and weaknesses, and neither is necessarily better than the other. Sometimes one method will work better for one person, but not for another. Some common methods of paid traffic generation include pay-per-click advertising, banner advertising, co-registration, buying blog posts, and advertising on sites like Facebook.
Affiliate programs are also a form of paid traffic generation, but they have a lower barrier to entry than some paid methods because you don’t have to pay affiliates until they generate sales for you.
The biggest drawback to paid traffic generation is the fact that the cost can be quite prohibitive for new entrepreneurs. When you’re first starting out, you may not have a lot of cash available. But paid methods have certain benefits over free methods.
For example, paid traffic is often much easier to get in quantity and comes in faster than free traffic. You might be able to get 1,000 hits or more in a single day through a single AdWords campaign, but it might take you several weeks to collect that much traffic via free methods.
Paid traffic can often start pouring in just minutes after you set up a campaign. That’s very difficult to accomplish with free methods. Popular free methods of generating traffic include organic search engine traffic, article marketing, video marketing, social networking, social bookmarking, and forum marketing.
Most of these methods are relatively easy and cost no money to get started (unless you use your own domain and hosting). The main drawback to free traffic is that it often takes a long time to start working effectively.
Most of these methods bring in only a small trickle of traffic initially, and it takes a combination of many of these methods to get substantial traffic. The tradeoff is the fact that you don’t need any money to use these tactics.
You can use time instead of money to get your traffic. You don’t have to stick with free methods forever. You can use them to make enough money to finance paid methods later if you want.
The catch with using free methods is the fact that they still cost you time, which is valuable in its own right.
If you know how much your time is worth, you’ll be able to figure out approximately how much these “free” methods are really costing you, and that will be motivation to add paid methods to your marketing plan as soon as you can afford to do so.
Free traffic techniques are a very good way to get your feet wet and test markets. The seeds of free traffic that you plant will continue providing visitors for you long after they’re posted, whereas paid methods dry up as soon as you stop paying for them.
Many webmasters stop using free methods once they can afford to use paid traffic, but others find their ROI (return on investment) is better with free traffic. You should examine your own business in order to determine which methods work best for you, and continue using those that produce the best results.
