Table of contents
When it comes to traffic there are three main ways to send traffic to your turnkey sites. Of course, these three methods could be split up into dozens more, but from an overview perspective, I’ll give you what works.
- Paid Traffic
- Organic/Seo Traffic
- Referral Traffic
These three methods all have their pro’s and con’s… so the best way to build traffic would be to utilize all three. However, I realize that this may not be practical in all situations. So, we’ll discuss the three in further detail.
Paid Traffic
Paid traffic can be anything from PPC (pay-per-click), to banner advertisements. This is just what it sounds like… traffic that you are paying for. The most effective way to generate low-cost traffic BY FAR is Google Adwords. I can get clicks for non-competitive keywords at around $.05 each. Since these are non-competitive keywords, it takes hundreds of them to do any damage usually, but at 5 cents a click, it’s an affordable method.
I like to call paid traffic, “band-aid traffic”. I think that any good web publisher should be using this to build a small following, while using the other two methods for free. Of course, building Organic or Referral traffic takes much more time, so it’s great as a temporary solution. The reason I call it band-aid traffic is because it’s not something that you should have to do forever. If you are working on the SEO aspects of your turnkey site, or blog, you shouldn’t have to do this for long. SEO is such an easy concept that you’ll start to see results by accident sooner, rather than later. However, you should be working on the non-accidental keywords that you’d like to rank for as well. We’ll jump into SEO in a bit more detail at a later date… but as I said in the opening… organic traffic sells sites! So, get out there and work on it.
Organic/Seo Traffic
95% of SEO revolves around your ability to build links. You can make this as hard as you want, or try to repeat every SEO tip you’ve ever received from so-called “experts” in the field, but it all comes down to links. This is one of the few things that Google is fairly straightforward about, and unless your a moron, you can’t really dispute it. Linkage data is what it’s all about.
Organic traffic is the best way to generate large amounts of income on a semi-passive method. This traffic obviously is looking for what you are talking about. If not, they wouldn’t have found your site in the search engines, and they wouldn’t have clicked your link after seeing the brief description. Leverage this traffic at all costs, and make sure to do all you can to generate more organic hits.
Referral Traffic
I’m a firm believer in social bookmarking. Before you start booing me off of my self-generated stage, let me explain. The non-believers criticize this as a traffic method because generally the traffic converts very poorly. I can’t dispute that fact, it’s 100% correct. Social bookmarking traffic is NOT converting traffic. They generally don’t buy, and rarely do they do more than give your site a quick peek before taking off for the next shiny object in their browser window. However, it’s not WORTHLESS traffic. It does have some benefits.
Social bookmarking traffic
One of the benefits of social bookmarking traffic is the fact that it’s virtually idiot-proof and anyone should be able to bring this form of traffic to their site. To start generating traffic to a new site, it’s as easy as clicking the “I like it” button on StumbleUpon. I recommend working Digg, Del.icio.us, and Reddit as well, but StumbleUpon is an easy start. The reason I like StumbleUpon as a starting point is because all it takes is a few clicks to send hundreds, if not thousands of new viewers to your site. Granted, most of them won’t stay long, and won’t buy anything… but if you can get them there, you are still taking steps in the right direction. This is especially true when selling websites. It’s much easier to sell a website with 500 hits a day, even if it’s 90% social bookmarking traffic, than it is to sell that same site with 50 hits a day, of organic traffic. Why? Not sure… but people seem to like sites with more traffic… no matter where it comes from.
And the best part?
Remember, the reason you are in the web publishing (site flipping, blogging, etc) industry is to make money. And one of the only tips that make money online experts aren’t arguing over, is the need to increase your RSS subscribers. Now, we know that social bookmarking traffic is poor converting traffic, but what if you could get 2% of new visitors that you see from social sites, to subscribe to your RSS feed? They haven’t bought anything, but they just became a subscriber… which could mean more when you go to sell the site.
One more BIG reason I’m a firm believer in social bookmarking traffic is simple. Submitting stories to these sites means more backlinks for your site. And the best part? These are generally very trusted sites, so the link obviously becomes worth more than a blogroll link on your cousin Joe’s blog about BBQ.
I could go on for days about these three traffic methods, but I’ll finish up by saying this… if you aren’t working these three traffic methods, you are definitely behind the curve. Whether you want to make money with your websites, or just sell them off… you can’t get the full value out of them without building traffic, backlinks, and rss subscribers.
