The best way to get targeted website traffic is to use Pay-per-Click (PPC) services such as Google AdWords, or Yahoo or a host of other pay services. You also need to know what you’re doing or you could find yourself spending lots of money, getting poor results and losing money very quickly. Also, when you’re first starting out, you have a limited budget, and starting with PPC campaigns may not even be an option for you at this point in time.

That’s where free traffic exchanges come in. Free traffic exchanges can be a great way to get traffic to your website. You should also know there’s really no such thing as free because you must spend your time surfing through other websites to earn credits. Free traffic exchanges are a great way to get lots of visitors to your site however, so spending an hour a day surfing, is not a lot to ask if you’re making sales from your efforts. And isn’t this why your in this business to begin with?

Free traffic exchanges are a great marketing tool for a many reasons. The best reason is that you get lots of people looking, and hopefully clicking on your website or promotional pages. But there are hidden benefits to free traffic exchanges you may not have even considered.

Search engines love free traffic exchanges because of all the incoming and outgoing links they generate. Plus the rapidly changing content is another reason the search engines love traffic exchanges. Exchanges that have more content also generate a higher page rank, and therefore more traffic, and increased memberships. The key is to find exchanges that are very active and have lots of members. The more members they have, the more potential customers you get looking at your offer and your chances for sales conversions are that much better. But bigger isn’t always better.

Some free traffic exchanges may do very well for one marketer, and be a complete waste of time for another. If everyone were promoting the same website or affiliate program in the same traffic exchange for example, then chances are you would not make many sales. Even if you were promoting the best product or service on the internet, if everyone promoted the same thing, your chances of someone purchasing through your website or links, are slim to none. Also, when people see the same ad over and over again, they get desensitized to it. Don’t fall into this trap. It’s one thing to try and sell a very popular product/service/ebook etc, but it’s another thing when a million other people are trying to do it too. Competition is a good thing, because it validates your market, but too much competition is tough and it’s time to move on to something else.

We all know clicking on ads in a free traffic exchange can be very boring, monotonous and can take a lot of time. That’s why you need to make the best of your opportunity or you will just be wasting a lot of your time and effort on something that just isn’t working. If you have your own niche website, then you already differentiated yourself from the pack. If you are an affiliate marketer, then you need to find products/services that everyone else isn’t promoting, especially within that particular traffic exchange.

One way to use free traffic exchanges to your advantage is to join a few at first, and see if your sales pick up. If your sales aren’t doing well, then test out a few more. When you do find a few traffic exchanges that appear to be generating sales for you, then narrow those down until you find the one, or two that are working. Now concentrate your efforts on those because they’re the ones you want. At least for now anyway. Things may change, so keep an eye on your campaigns and if sales seem to be falling off, then it might be time to change your offer or find another traffic exchange that could pick your profits up again.

As I mentioned, your individual promotion is everything. If you’re trying to promote something everyone else is, I don’t care what traffic exchange service you’re using, your sales conversions are going to be very low, or nothing at all. You cannot always blame the exchange. Sometimes you have to look at yourself and think if you’re doing all you can to make sales.

If you’re going to use multiple free traffic exchanges, and I recommend that you do, you should get yourself a multi-tab web browser. Many of these browsers are free and run on PCs and MACs. The tabs feature allows you to have one web browser open with multiple tabs each going to a separate website. You could easily put 5 or 6 of your free exchange sites in these tabs, and earn credits for all of them at the same time. So instead of surfing for 1/2 an hour or an hour earning 200 hits for one exchange, you could earn 200 hits for 5 exchanges in the same amount of time. This is a huge time saver and multiplies your earned hits by 5X or 6X.

Getting free traffic to your website can be a lot of work. If you don’t have the money to spend on full blown PPC (pay-per-click) campaigns like Google AdWords or Yahoo, free traffic exchanges are a great way to get the traffic you need, for Free!

Copyright 2005 East Tech LLC

Andrew Daigle is owner and creator of TrumpTraffic.com, a Free Traffic Exchange http://www.trumptraffic.com , DXInOne Free Training Site and Forum http://www.dxout.com and Google AdWords Training http://www.adwording.com.

Let’s face facts we are in this for the money. Altruism is not the primary motivation to put a website on the Internet to provide information for the world. Albeit there are some that provide information for the sake of providing free information to others. I have just started to provide free information sites on a variety of topics that are near and dear to me, just for the sake of providing information to others. There is no monetary gain. For the most part though the majority of my websites are commercial in nature and are profitable. The majority of sites though are out there to turn a profit. I don’t think that profit is a dirty word either.

It is common knowledge that without traffic we have no business. Like any business, without any customers you will not have any sales. No sales, no money and no site. Traffic represents all the people that get a chance to see what you have to offer. The more people who see your products the more people there are to buy them.

No one puts up an E-commerce site and doesn’t expect a profit. We have startup capital that needs to be recouped. With consistent traffic, we at least have a fighting chance to achieve that probability. Monetizing your traffic would optimize your chances of making the best out of it.

Traffic Types

The internet has proven to be a very reliable source in finding what was deemed to be non-existent. The internet has made the world a smaller place; you can advertise a product from Asia and find a buyer from North America in an instant. This has made the Internet the most desirable place to do business, in my opinion.

Generating traffic however is not an easy task on the Internet. You have to contend with a great number of sites to generate decent traffic flow. However, if done successfully this opens up a plethora of possibilities. Of course one of those benefits is monetizing your traffic flow.

Therefore, to get to the core of it the creating more traffic you need to understand the types of traffic available.

I break down traffic into two basic categories: Organic and Paid.

Organic traffic is homegrown so to speak. It’s the traffic that comes from non-paid sources. This is search engine traffic or link traffic from sites of which you have reciprocal links. Search engine traffic, although free, is a time consuming process for the patient and assiduous. Link traffic is an arduous task as well, but quite rewarding.

The best method of obtaining a good and constant flow of traffic is the organic method. The only issue is that it does take time to accomplish, but the rewards are great and of course inexpensive. The traffic itself is free, however the time and energy expended and perhaps software used may cost something. There are many different sources of organic traffic:

• Search engine listings

• Reciprocal links
• Writing and submitting articles
• Free classified ads.

• Self promotion

All of these sources take time but can be implemented for free.
Paid traffic comes in many forms. Pay per click being the most popular today, due to its instant results. Advertising takes on many forms and probably the best and most widely used is banner advertising. There are many that argue that banner advertising is a waste of time and money, as you will either pay for impressions( the number of times the banner is shown) or for clicks (the number of times someone clicks on your banner.)

Honestly, unless you have a good bankroll, don’t jump into advertising as a first method of getting traffic to your site and product.

The argument for pay per click advertising is you will find out quickly if your product has a market, and if it does, pay per click can be very rewarding. Do the math ahead of time by estimating your cost and the number of clicks on your ad and how many convert to sales. This is very important, as you may have a very decent click through rate but a poor conversion to sales rate. This equates to losing money over the long run.

The argument for organic traffic is strong but not instantly rewarding. It’s your call as how you will proceed.

Rick Carbone is the owner/webmaster of Home Business Research a web site devoted to starting and running a home based business. In adition to hundreds of articles and information on start up, management and business opportunities Home Business Research offers digital products for home businesses. Visit our site for tons of free information.

So what if you were to set up a webcam outside your store that looks onto the road in front? Then you announce to people that they can get a bird’s eye view of the vehicular traffic on said road. Wouldn’t you go to such a website if the road in question was on your way home? And while you’re there, something else on the site might catch your attention. Out of the thousands of people who visit your site just to see what the vehicular traffic is like, you’re sure to get a few new customers.

It is said that the first step in sales is to catch the person’s attention. In this example, you’d definitely be catching the attention of people, who at the very least, have to pass by your store and therefore form part of your geographic market.

So you don’t want to set up a webcam, although you can get it quite affordably at Amazon. No problem, maybe you can post some photo/text traffic updates on your website; or maybe just e-mail your clients weather alerts each time there’s a new development.

Hey, and if you’re the first to do any of the above in your sector, you can even tell the media and get national publicity mileage out of it. Some of the reporters may have to pass by your store on their way home and would definitely check it out.

OK, maybe you’re like Breaking News and your office isn’t located on a high-traffic road that interests people. No need to throw out this issue just yet. We’ve got more traffic-building tips.

The international marathon is happening on Sunday. Do you see the opportunity? What is a good eye-catcher? What would make an interesting picture that photojournalists covering the race would want to take? Maybe you can create such a photo opportunity while ensuring that your website address is plastered in there. How about printing a t-shirt with your website address and giving it to someone who is likely to catch the eye of the lensmen? And if that someone is you, why not take part yourself? Not only would you get some good exercise but you might also win some great publicity for your website.

Don’t want to go to all this trouble? How about dressing up your dog in a t-shirt bearing your website and taking him to watch the race? It was reported internationally not too long ago that a British cell phone company dressed up bulldogs with phone packages and had people walk them throughout London. That’s how far your message can get when you use creative marketing: worldwide. The Virgin Group’s Sir Richard Branson mastered this technique. If you pay close attention to Health Minister John Rahael, you will observe that he, too, has mastered the art of free publicity using creative tactics.

Our bottom line is that the old adage, “If you build it, they will come,” does not apply to the Internet. People will only come to your website when you attract them to it. Look around you and think about how you can do some creative promotion of your website today!

Aleem Khan, a senior partner at Breaking News, is one of the few people in the world with a four letter domain name bn.gs. He is an accredited Agent of the International Internet Authority who speaks Spanish, French and English.

Let me illustrate this using an example:

You sell a £50 product, and convert 1% of your visitors to sales. 100 visitors would earn you £50 and if it costs you £40 to get these visitors, you’re making a profit of just £10. Therefore, if you wanted to make £1000 a month profit you would need 10,000 visitors/month

Now, if you raise your conversion rate from 1% to 2% for every 100 visitors you would get two sales, so now your sales are £100, but the cost of your traffic remains constant at £40. Your profit is now £60. So without spending any more money you have increased your profits by 500%. Continuing, if you raise your conversion rate from 1% to 3% means your profits have risen by 1000%.

So now if you want $1000/month in profits, you only need 910 visitors, instead of 10,000 which is slightly easier to obtain as you can imagine.

Raising your conversion rate has to be a focus for any web site and the only way to achieve an increase in conversion rate is to offer your customers exactly (or as near to it as possible) what they are looking for when they arrive at your web site. The majority of the work is done for you because these targeted visitors are already interested in the subject of your web site you just have to lcok them into your site using your layout, sales copy, prices etc.

It is hard to say ‘do this and do that’ and offer a definitive guide to raising your conversion rate because different products offer different opportunities to lock customers in but one of the key factors is to make sure your site is easy to navigate and has good search function support so that your visitors can easily find what they are looking for. The easier customers can find the product, and complimentary products, the greater the chance that they are likely to buy.

Don’t put barriers in place to prevent your customers from buying, the easiest way to do this is to conduct usability analysis by communicating directly with your site users and use the feedback to optimise your site for ease of use. This also has the added advantage because it not only allows you to learn about how the users view your site but it can also build loyalty and awareness from customers because you are seen to be caring for the customer.

The best approach to converting visitors into customers is to provide them with all the information they need to make an informed decision which in turn will encourage them to act (ie. buy), with this in mind think about where you are going to send your visitors when they click on a specific link to your web site. It has to be structured so as to maintain the conversion process, for example, when you are ‘touting for traffic’ you may be advertising a specific discount that is available via your site and when the visitor clicks on the relevant link they should be taken to a specific page that will educate them about the discount and entice them to sign up for your service. If the link takes people to a page without the information they need odds are you’ll lose the customer.

Mike – webmaster at Online Auction Trader

Visit Business Resources at Online Auction Trader for comprehensive information on developing a sustainable online income stream.