The Truth About Traffic Generation


Today I want to share with you a great post that Steven Wagenheim put up, talking about different typesof traffic generation and their effectivness.Read this and learn from it, so you have more ofand understanding about what it takes to drive more trafficto your websiteHere is is:
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The Truth About Traffic Generation

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I'll be rating each method on a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being best) for speedand for effectiveness.

Article Marketing
Thanks to Travis Sago's Bum Marketing, this has become very popular among those who don't have a lot of money to spend. I'd been doing article marketing long before Bum Marketing ever became a household word. I'm glad I did, or I'd be having a very hard time today. Article marketing is cheap, no question about it. Hell, it's free. But it's also a slow process. You can't write one article and expect to get thousandsof people to your web site UNLESS you're in a niche that is virtually unknown. But then, if you ARE, how much traffic do you REALLY think you're going to get? If there is that little competition, then more likely than not, there isn't a lot of traffic to begin with. Article marketing requires you to write constantly. Naturally, if you're in a niche that isn't too saturated, your articles will get indexed higher in the search engines. If you're in a competitive niche, not so high. The only views you'll probably get are the ones from people going directly to the article directories themselves. I'll touch on search engines last so don't worry, we'll get there. Article marketing can be very effective in any niche, provided you write good articles and submit to places that get a lot of traffic, like EzineArticles. All my niches, regardless of what they are, get good amounts of traffic from submitting there. So from my experience, it's safe to say that you'll get a good amount of traffic just by doing this. However, you have to write a ton. There is no way around that unless you outsource all your articles. Then, it's no longer cheap.

Effectiveness Rating - 10
Speed Rating - 5

Pay Per Click
This can be the best or the worst form of advertising in the world. The problem with pay per click is two fold.
1. The cost factor, depending on your keywords.
2. The skill factor, depending on how well you can write a 3 line ad.

I'm not going to spend a ton of time on this because there are a zillionbooks written on this subject, but I will briefly touch on the two points above so you understand why pay per click can be such a bitch.
1. The cost factor - Some niches are dirt cheap. You can get a 3rdposition listing for 5 cents with no problem. Have a good landing page, as per Google's "definition" and you can clean up. My friend Juan Walker makes a fortune on his acne product using Adwords because he has the most relevant product for those keywords and has been around a longtime. Look up acne cure and you'll find his product number 1. However, some niches are a fortune. I don't use Adwords for my IM products because the CPC is about a buck. Let's do some math. Let's say your product converts at 2%. That means, in order to make 1 sale, you need 50 clicks. That's $50 at a buck a click. If you're selling a$19 ebook, you better have one hell of a backend that converts like crazy, or you're going to go broke. That is just simple math. There is no way around the law of mathematics. So the cost factor of pay per click can make it so that it's just not feasible to use for your business model.
2. The Skill Factor - In the few niches I am in that are not IM where the CPC isn't so bad, there is still another problem...how well your ads are worded. I split test all my ad groups and you'll be surprised how just ONE word can make the difference between a CTR of 1% and a CTR of 5%. I am no expert on 3 line ads. I have to work very hard at it. Somebody just starting out with no copywriting skills at all is going to get buried by a low CTR. Why? The lower your CTR, the higher your CPC. Is pay per click highly targeted? Yes and no. Yes, it is if your ad exactly matches the page that the prospect is landing on. But if it doesn't, you run a great risk of having that prospect close up your page because it doesn't match what he's looking for. Pay per click is NOT for the feint of heart, regardless of what anybody tells you. There is a ton to making it work just right, which is why there are so many books on the subject. I know very few people who have figured this beast out themselves. My ratings below are based on the AVERAGE PPC user, NOT an expert.

Effectiveness Rating - 5
Speed Rating - 10

Forum Participation
So many people say, "Participate in forums" to promote your product. Well, guess what? This doesn't work in every niche. Some niches don't even have forums. Other niches are so strict that they don't allow signatures at all and even a hint of self promotion and your butt will be thrown out of the place. So forum participation is a very select method of promotion. And even at places where they do allow signatures, you still have to follow the rules. I'm not going to get into rules and etiquette here. I want to focus strictly on the effectiveness and speed of forum marketing. It isn't the magic bullet people think it is, even at forums that allow promotion. When you first arrive at a forum, unless you already have a big name in your field, you're a nobody there. You are unknown. So the first thing you have to do is introduce yourself. Now, don't think that once you've done that, people are going to come flocking to your sig file. They won't. You have to establish a presence there. You have to build trust. This takes time...LOTS OF TIME. You have to constantly add to the community while at the same time, not step on any toes of the long time members. Some may take offense to you coming in and offering your 2 cents on every subject in discussion. So you have to tread lightly and carefully. This is one hell of a balancing act and trust me, I am speaking from painful experience, it is NOT an easy one to do. Point is, while forum participation can eventually make a name for yourself, provided you REALLY have something to offer, it is not an overnight thing. It can take months before you're "accepted" by the community, if you're ever accepted. Sometimes, people just don't like you and there's not a blessed thing you can do about it.

Effectiveness Rating - 10
Speed Rating - 3

Safelists & Traffic Exchanges
Now we run into forms of traffic generation that ONLY work in the make money niche. Forget about trying to get somebody to buy your get out of debt product through safelists. This form as well as the others that follow is just not targeted to anything other than opportunity seekers. But why? The reason is simple. The people who join safelists and traffic exchanges are interested in just one thing...promoting their business. They are NOT your prospective customers in any manner, shape or form UNLESS you have a way for them to improve THEIR business. Otherwise, don't even waste your time. So, if you are in the "make money" niche, the way you reach these people is by giving them free info on how to get more traffic to their site and make more money. Don't try to sell them anything. You're wasting your time. Then, once you have them on your list and have gained their trust, then you can try to sell them. The following ratings apply ONLY if you are in the "make money" niche. I have built some decent sized lists using these methods. The good thing about them is that they are free and used correctly, they do work fairlywell.

Effectiveness Rating - 6
Speed Rating - 10

Video Marketing
This is a relatively new gimmick. Truth is, it can be very effective or it can be a total waste of time depending on your niche and what you have to offer. There is no question that in the right niche and with the right keyword tags for your videos, you'll get indexed at Google damn fast and as you've seen, some videos have hundreds of thousands if not MILLIONS of views. But...in order to have this happen, your video better be something that people are going to talk about and pass around. If your video doesn't get somebody's attention right away, you're dead. Nobody has any patience anymore. They want instant entertainment and excitement and that's what your video has to bring them, otherwise, they won't watch. It's that simple. There are a few good books out there on how to create videos that will make people want to watch. And don't go by my videos. I'm just a tell it like it is guy and my videos are far from entertainment and don't get many views. I do mine strictly for a very select groups of people. Now, there is another problem with video. Even if you get a lot of traffic, you will find, depending on your niche, that a lot of this traffic is worthless. Why? They're just surfers. They're not really looking for any great solution to a problem OR they're looking for a free one. You will find many reports from people saying that their video traffic doesn't convert well, if at all. Bottom line: Video is a crap shoot, even WITH a great video. Depends on your product and what you're offering.

Effectiveness Rating - 2
Speed Rating - 10

Social Bookmarking
I'm not going to go into a long spiel on this because my experience tells me that this is not a quick fix. In order to get any significant results from social bookmarking sites like DIGG, you have to constantly bookmark the articles on your blog, site, whatever, and write constantly. Over time, you'll see some results. But again, just like video marketing, which at least is fast, the traffic is pretty crappy unless you're bookmarking something that is really so incredible that people have to have what you're selling in relation to it.

Effectiveness Rating - 2
Speed Rating - 4

Search Engines
Ultimately, this is what it all comes down to. Bottom Line: Somebody types in "How To Fix My PC" and your site ends up on page X. That's it. That's all that matters. I've been fighting the search engine wars for over 5 years now. With some keywords, you'll find me on page 1. With others, you'll find me nowhere. It all depends on the competition and how much time you want to spend working on: Optimizing your page versus the other guy Getting backlinks Doing link exchanges Off Site SEO And so on. This is the slowest traffic generation method in existence, trying to win the SE wars. Good luck. I don't even bother trying anymore. Instead, I focus on using promotional techniques that get my message in front of my prospect quickly and cheaply. Over time, these methods do build up momentum and do bring me in a nice income. Here is the breakdown, percentage wise, of my monthly income. Article Marketing - 67% Safelists, TEs, FFA Sites, Message Boards - 20% Forum Participation - 13% My monthly advertising expenses - $200 My average monthly income - $10,000 I'm cheap, but my ROI is also ridiculous. Do I work a lot of hours? Yes. If you look at my above analysis of traffic generation methods, you'll see why. Now, I haven't covered everything as far as traffic generation. I've leftout things like buying leads, classified ads, banner exchanges, soloezine ads, and a few others, either because they are insignificant, don't work or are just not cost effective enough. Solo Ezine ads actually can be very good if you know some tricks. I'll cover that in another thread someday because they'll take a whole thread to explain properly. There is an art to solo ezine ads. Anyway, I know this was long (took about an hour to type out) but I hope it was helpful to somebody. As you can see, there is no magic bullet to traffic generation. I doubt that there ever will be.

Hoped you liked this article, Written By Steven Wagenheim This was written by Steven Wagenheim from the Warrior Forum,