This has to be the number one question asked by newbie online marketers. And for good reason, to be fair. After all, without getting traffic to your site you can't sell anything!
The problem is that not only do most people go about it the wrong way, trying 40 different methods and not sticking with just one until they've mastered it; They're also looking at the whole traffic issue from the completely wrong angle.
One thing that needs to be pointed out here is that contrary to the popular idea that you need a "flood" of traffic to your site and that this is what you should be aiming for, what you should initially be gunning for is targetted traffic.
Yes, that's right. You've heard it before, eh?
So why do you keep putting up Adwords ads on the broadest set of generic keywords that apply to your niche? Or think that putting a link in your sig on some totally unrelated forum is going to lead to qualified visitors?
You only need to pull a steady flow of targetted traffc to get off the ground. Now, notice I didn't say "make money". That depends on a raft of other factors that I don't want to get into right now. But you have a significantly better chance of turning a profit (or even just making sales—without any profit) at first if you focus on getting people to your site who are already interested in what it is you have to offer.
Don't just send a whole heap of traffic to your site and cross your fingers that they're going to love it enough to whip out their credit card.
That's like dressing up as road construction dude and flagging people off the highway onto a detour where they come to a dead end and find someone selling detour signs!
And as if that analogy isn't ridiculous enough, imagine paying someone (the council, a crooked highway patrol cop, whoever!) to allow you to stand there and flag traffic down that narrow country side-road. Paying!
Well, that's what people do who think it's about getting the greatest number of eyeballs in front of their offer. "It's a numbers game" they'll tell you.
These people also often go by the names of Candy, Alicia, and giu4e8xxx. They're often terribly concerned about helping you enlarge various parts of your anatomy.
At the most fundamental level, the following are the core methods for producing steady, targetted streams of traffic to your site:
organic search engine results (the ones on the left of the search results)
Pay-Per-Click advertising (Adwords, etc. The ones on the right)
banner advertising
Forums
Social Networking sites
There are of course plenty more to choose from. But these are the most obvious, tried-and-true methods for generating traffic.
One old method used to be link-exchanges, but the search engines have gotten wiser to this and this one no longer carries very much weight, it seems. Also, paid links are a bit of a minefield. Google even has a form on their site where you can report people who pay for links from high PR sites! Eeek!
And then you get to the heavy-hitters...
your existing mailing list (...maybe... more on this another time)
your JV (joint-venture) partners
your team of affiliates
"But wait!" you shout... "These last three involve already having already gotten a bunch of traffic to your site! And the first one, 'organic results' takes a lot more time than I've got...What do I do when I'm starting out?"
Well, this is a fair-ish comment.
But I would like to point out that achieving organic results is actually not the long, drawn out, sit around for a few months and see how we go affair that it used to be. Not by a long shot! When you do it the smart way, you can get ranked in hours. Yes, that's right.
"But you still haven't answered my question!"
Okay, okay... calm down. ;-P
This article was not intended to be about the million ways you can get traffic to your site. This article is all about getting to realise that one or two methods (and absolutely no more!) for driving targetted traffic to your site are going to pay off much better than trying to get that much-touted "flood of visitors"—who may or may not be interested in what you have to say. Or sell.
So the main problem you have to overcome and accept is that gargantuan streams of traffic do not necessarily equate to overflowing merchant accounts.
Until this really sinks in, you're going to be jumping from one brightly lit carnival ride to the next, but mostly just going round and round on the spot.
You've no doubt heard the expression "When all you've got's a hammer, everything looks like a nail". This expression is applicable to many mistakes people make in life (not just in relation to online marketing), but the point I'd like to use it to illustrate here is that when you think you need to be that guy standing by the freeway with the fake detour sign, then you just wind up screwing up every legitimate traffic strategy—of which there are many—and then throwing your hands in the air and declaring that none of them work!
Whereas, if you'd just choose one method and focus on that until you get pretty good (ideally, really good) at it and then move on to the next one, you'll start getting exponential traction. First, you'll start increasing the number of people who are interested in what you have to offer before they visit. If you're paying for traffic (say, via PPC), then that will start to see your ad-spend decrease as you start focusing your keywords more closely to (yep, I'll say it again) targetted surfers.
It will also mean that you'll start making sales. So the combined decrease in ad-spend and increase in cashflow will start to look pretty good, even if you're not into the black just yet.
With more nurturing of whatever traffic method you've elected to focus on (you did decide to do that, right?), you'll then start to see an increase in the amount of traffic.
That is, an increase in the amount of targetted traffic.
And then you're away!
Slowly, slowly, Grasshopper.
Not brain surgery. But, hey, come to think of it, you ever see a brain surgeon getting halfway through an operation and saying "Um, look, this doesn't really seem to be working, y'know... um, I think I'll go to the other operating theatre and have a stab at that one over there, eh? I might be back sometime soon..." ?
And don't forget...
This is most likely your final chance to grab the unfair advantages of...
...knew about controlling the hearts and minds of men and which enabled them not only to win World War II, but to then basically carve up the world and divide it as they saw fit!
