A question of free/paid advertising...

[ladyflguru]

I wanted to ask really quickly everyone who is a bit more seasoned at this. Which way of advertising, free vs. paid, brings you more traffic and potiential customers? I have one affilate program thats doing really well for me, and the incentives are helping too. I needed to hop on one because posting blogs and in article directories can take someone like me more than 8 hours to get a decent size list going to get some kind of traffic. I was just wondering what brought more success to your site, posting free or joining a affilate program that can run itself?

 

[FDC]

Well the best solution is both free and paid traffic. Just one is harder to accomplish that the other.

 

[Peter Bordes]

traffic

I agree i would use both. Some work better than others on one or the other. its important to test all the channels and then optimize them... there is never one right way.

 

[CharlieEssmeier]

There are many free methods for bringing traffic to your site that work well. None of them work as quickly as buying pay per click traffic, however.

If you are either poor or patient, free works well. If you are in a hurry or have a lot of money to spend, buy some pay per click ads. You can see traffic in minutes.

Charlie

 

[Joseph Ratliff]

I wanted to ask really quickly everyone who is a bit more seasoned at this. Which way of advertising, free vs. paid, brings you more traffic and potiential customers? I have one affilate program thats doing really well for me, and the incentives are helping too. I needed to hop on one because posting blogs and in article directories can take someone like me more than 8 hours to get a decent size list going to get some kind of traffic. I was just wondering what brought more success to your site, posting free or joining a affilate program that can run itself?

Personally...I am a BIG fan of paid traffic...but PPC can kill you faster than heck if you don't know how to target searches and markets. Once you do master PPC, then free traffic becomes much easier (like learning how to drive a manual transmission car, then driving an automatic).

Free traffic is great (SEO, articles, viral, etc...) ... but its main drawback is it can be slower to profit in the beginning.

Once free traffic is tested, tweaked, and flowing...you're in business for the long haul though...because I have some articles and viral material that I wrote 3 years ago that still bring in the dough for some of my affiliate marketing efforts.

Article marketing tip: Think "evergreen" when writing your topics. Use topics that people will be searching for years after you write the articles...so you'll get a longer life out of each article (leverage anyone?).