Paid vs Free Traffic (8)
It seems the more i read, the more i get confused as to where to start or what to do.
There's this 2 option that i'm always wondering which is a better approach :
1. Use a blog to promote (review style)
2. PPC to landing page to offer
And of course a bunch of offers i saw on a network which I can't seem to wrap my head around. (ie : what on earth is this scammy looking offer? how do i promote it?)
I read around here mainly revolve around the 2nd which is the fastest route. But do you create a blog which can have multiple sub-niche around a bigger niche?
This forum is very paid-traffic centric.
Most people will send paid traffic to a landing page that they have created ad hoc for a campaign.
I wouldn't bother trying to make a blog or large website to contain lots of landing pages. A one-off for most campaigns is fine, and trying to develop some full blog/site is a waste of your time if you are just starting out.
You need to take action and test, and this is stifled by investing too much time in things that don't greatly benefit your campaign.
There are a hundred approaches that are suggested by various branches of the Internet Marketing world, from starting a Software As A Service business to review sites to authority sites to PPC.
Here's the dirty secret: they can all work. The important bit is to pick one approach and stick with learning about it until you become expert enough to make it work.
At STM, we focus on paid traffic, and I think that's probably the best approach currently available in terms of reliability, scalability and speed. But the most important thing is to - in a smart way, and backed up by research, planning and hard thinking - get started and take action toward success.
There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Someone has to pay for it.
Similarly, there is no such thing as "free" traffic.
You may pay for it with time, or you may pay for it with other means ...
But you do pay for it.
Originally Posted by cmdeal
I work only on "free" traffic, that's really not free, that's more "natural" traffic.
It take a lot of work to have it.
The main difference between "free/natural" traffic over "paid traffic" is the dynamic :
- Free/Natural traffic take more time to grow, but usually when you have some of it and don't make mistakes, you can keep it for months and years and make money in autopilot while you are doing something else with your time
- Paid traffic grow as you spend money, it can grow really fast and probably way more high in volume.
In fact, if you wonder where to start their is only a simple question to answer :
Do you have more cash to invest or more free time ?
If you have cash, go for paid traffic.
If you don't have cash but have time, go for natural traffic as you can make a business here starting from pretty nothing.
My blog, where I write about growth hacking (which by the way, is something ALL AM-ers, by default, are doing) gets about 40k unique visitors a year.
how did I get there? I wrote SHIT tons of content.
Each article @ 1000+ words per article takes about an hour.
I about 150 blog posts. That's 150 hours. Plus anther 150 hours marketing the damn content.
That's 300 hrs spent to get 40k visitors.
Suppose my hourly wage is the US median income of $25/hr. That's $7500 spent in content + marketing.
If you do the math, 7500 / 40,000 is about $0.19 CPC. ( i can tell you that even if I were consulting, my rates are significantly higher and hence higher CPC)
Now, imagine if I spent $0.19 CPC isntead on paid traffic, I would've gotten that in one STINKIN' DAY.
Sure, the quality of the traffic is high (I have a couple of VP of marketing type dudes on emailing list, master franchise owners, startup founders, etc... so maybe CPC is more in alignment of $2-4)... but the point is.. cmdeal is right in point:
I PAID for it with my time. Opportunity costs. (Which is why i never do SEO... I don't want to be Google's bitch)
Ain't no such thing as free. (Except hugs from hobos. But you have to take shower after that. And water costs money)
^^ good post!
What if you have already built up a blog? Can you then just do PPC and create landing pages within the blog to convert? Or does a website with many different pages take away conversion from a website with one landing page?
Also, does the websites you guys use have a domain name thats relevant to the offer?
thanks guys
If you already have a blog then treat it as a blog IMO... don't try to mix in landers for affiliate campaigns.
Using a blog system for this is technically also a very bad idea (load speed, performance, etc.).
If your blog is established and you have an audience you want to sell to then that's a different story but you should treat that differently to standalone paid traffic campaigns.
Home > Questions and Answers > Traffic Source Questions