Many people don’t realize that there is an additional effective way to generate traffic besides using PPC, link exchanges and e-mail.  It can be a strange concept at first - you can pay someone to “deliver” qualified, targeted Web surfers to your site?  Where do these people come from?

Here’s the deal.

There are suppliers who exist in the online business world solely to deliver traffic to other Web sites.  They can do it in a number of ways - most commonly, for example, they own a network of sites that already get a substantial amount of traffic, and using a variety of methods they can send organic traffic to other sites.

Let’s look at expired domains for example.  These are domains, for one reason or another, that were not renewed by the previous owner.  If they are still receiving a small amount of traffic, a supplier may see this and buy up the domain (they’re so cheap nowadays, why not?).  The supplier might then slap a portal-like page on the site (example: www.webtraffic.com), that links off to other sites of similar topics compared to the original site or domain name.  The key for these suppliers is to buy up LOTS of these sites so they can cover virtually any topic possible.  That way when you want to pay them to drive traffic to their site, they can pull up 100 sites of similar topics (e.g. clothing, books, dog bones, etc.) and put your link into the rotation there.  And now you’re receiving traffic.

From my experience, depending on how targeted I wanted the traffic to be, the visitors would flow in at variable rates.  For example, for one of my sites I wanted only UK visitors to see it because I knew that would yield the highest conversions (I was selling a product geared toward people in England).  I used Revisitors for this particular campaign (and subsequent campaigns) because they gave me the most flexibility in terms of how targeted I wanted my traffic.  Plus the campaigns easily paid for themselves because I sold products and services with a fairly high CPA (cost per acquisition).  By targeting specific demographics, traffic came into the site noticeably slower than my other campaigns, but I knew it was worth it because each visitor was coming from a UK address to possibly buy a UK service.  You can verify the traffic sources using a free tool like Google Analytics which will analyze your access logs and tell you exactly what countries the visitors are coming from (among many other useful metrics).

 This is a tricky topic however because there are lots of companies out there who advertise Website Traffic who don’t deliver the high quality traffic they advertise.  You’ll notice this when you run your first campaign and no one converts (read: zero sales).  But really, it’s nearly impossible to know what kind of traffic you’ll get until you actually take a supplier for a test run.  In doing so, here’s what I recommend:

• Start small.  You’ll be offered different packages with different prices and visitor counts.  For example, they might offer 10,000 visitors for $69, 20,000 for $119, etc.  Although you may be tempted to purchase the higher package right off the bat because it gives a discount for buying in bulk, don’t always jump on that unless you don’t mind being a little risky.  Again, many of these suppliers don’t provide quality traffic and thus whether you get 50,000 visitors or 250,000 visitors, it won’t make a difference.
• Look for testimonials.  Some suppliers may forge these, but if testimonials are given you can easily contact these people.  They’ll tell you the real deal.
• Call their phone number.  If the supplier is legit, they’ll have a detailed message and/or a real person on the other side.  There are so many sites out there that you can easily weed out the bad ones simply by calling them.

I like to consider this type of online investment similar to PPC campaigns; some work well, and some won’t do jack.  A lot of affiliate marketing is just repeated, simple experimentation.  And that’s why it’s important to monitor your progress and continue only those campaigns that convert.

 On that note, one way to track your campaigns is to direct visitors to a separate landing page that no one else would likely get to.  For example, instead of sending them to http://yoursite.com, send them to http://yoursite.com/secret_page.html.  Make sure secret_page.html isn’t linked anywhere else, so you know if people are hitting this page that they’re coming from whatever campaign you started.  Then if no one converts by purchasing the product on that page, either tweak your campaign with your supplier or ditch them altogether and move on.  Simple enough, right?

Remember:

• Use a solid traffic supplier like Revisitors, or do your due diligence before selecting a traffic supplier.
• Stop the campaigns that don’t perform, and find the campaigns that work well - then duplicate those.  Tracking and monitoring your progress is a huge part of this business.