Free Traffic + CPA offer = $$$$ surely? (10)
Hey Stackers
Still suffering a little analysis paralysis before I get started, in part due to the fact I am just about to become a father in the next 2 weeks, so my original testing budget got ring-fenced for nappies... 
Which got me thinking.. is it possible to drive free traffic to CPA offers? For example, building little optimised sites that rank for keywords which then drive visitors to CPA offers. This way you wouldn't need to pay for traffic YAY! Question is, how do you do it lol. Have only seen SEO tips in the SEO forum, rather than how you would go about this strategy, and search didn't reveal what I was looking for.
The main idea being not losing your shirt and also all profits are just that, pure profit. No spending $100 a day to make $10.. not that my cc would take that lol..
So is anyone using free traffic? If so how do you do it? Or am I talking crap?
Or should I stop thinking about strategies and just pick an offer and set up some ads (you can prob see my paralysis by now haha)?
Cheers all
And why is this not showing in the latest posts list?
Originally Posted by stumc
I drive a lot of free traffic from my network of sites and make about 10-12k a month.
I have about 45 sites right now.
I ask visitors to check out an offer if they are trying to close my site in browser (via roll-over).
Thanks Customs, and congrats on your success, good work man 
I am at zero atm and would just love to get off the ground, but don't wanna burn thru any cash due to the baby etc. So was looking at free traffic and wondering how to go about it. Love the roll-over idea, not seen that before. Is that a plugin/snippet of some kind? One strategy I saw was based around ranking for a particular keyword then incentivizing the offer by offering locked content that can only be viewed on completion of an offer. So was thinking this could be one way to generate some income without paying for traffic.
If you don't mind me asking, what sort of sites do you run? Are they like I mentioned in the OP, ie. little 1-2 page optimised sites that rank fast for certain keywords, or more developed?
Originally Posted by stumc
I am at zero atm and would just love to get off the ground, but don't wanna burn thru any cash due to the baby etc. So was looking at free traffic and wondering how to go about it. Love the roll-over idea, not seen that before. Is that a plugin/snippet of some kind? One strategy I saw was based around ranking for a particular keyword then incentivizing the offer by offering locked content that can only be viewed on completion of an offer. So was thinking this could be one way to generate some income without paying for traffic.If you don't mind me asking, what sort of sites do you run? Are they like I mentioned in the OP, ie. little 1-2 page optimised sites that rank fast for certain keywords, or more developed?
I run various popular topics sites, fully and constantly developed. 50-150 pages of content.
Spending about 2k/month on content, backlinks and maintenance right now.
Actually free traffic is not so free. You have to invest a nice chunk of cash first. To see some positive outcome half an year later.
Originally Posted by customs
The point is that whatever path you decide to take, you'll have to invest one of two things: Time or money.
Ranking sites through SEO is not easy. It is either time consuming or expensive, and often both. Furthermore, it is seldom guaranteed; you might spent a few hundred dollars or a few dozen hours to rank for a keyword, only to never rank. Or, worse: Spend to rank, rank successfully, and then fall victim to an algorithm change and see your income wiped out overnight.
On the other hand, paid traffic is just about always instant results. Tweak your ad copy, drop some cash to buy traffic, and, bam! Feedback within hours -- you're either profitable or you aren't. Not profitable? Make changes and re-run. Profitable? Tweak to boost your ROI.
Here's my point. If you agree with the old adage that time is money -- which you should, since your time is worth something -- and you're planning on spending time to write your own content and do your own linkbuilding, then SEO and paid traffic are essentially equivalent in terms of the required investment.
Here's another thing to consider: With paid traffic, you're building real skills. Writing sales copy, ad copy, learning how to market... Good god man, do you know how few people actually have those skills these days? With SEO, you're mostly building links and writing content. Yawnsville. The marketing takes a back seat to the monotony.
The truth is that all the big players in this game are buying traffic. Buying traffic is an investment -- you're not throwing money down the toilet. The sooner you begin viewing buying traffic as an investment towards your education, the faster you'll find yourself on the road to riches.
Not ready to invest in your education? If you truly cannot afford to buy traffic, I personally would recommend getting a job and saving up, especially with a child on the way. Do SEO only if it's in relation to a topic you truly love -- otherwise, you'll soon be pulling your hair out.
And congrats on the little one.
Originally Posted by spdg
Not ready to invest in your education? If you truly cannot afford to buy traffic, I personally would recommend getting a job and saving up, especially with a child on the way. Do SEO only if it's in relation to a topic you truly love -- otherwise, you'll soon be pulling your hair out.
And congrats on the little one.
It's not that I can't afford it I just will find it difficult justifying my ad spend to the gf when we have "more important things to spend it on" haha. Burnt thru a couple g last year without making much so reluctant to do it again, however having said that I wasn't a member of STM. I hear you on the SEO, yawnsville indeed.. where I was coming from was building a simple one page wp site around a keyword, for example, zwinky, a popular toolbar dl that cartoons your picture. That gets around 80k searches a month with little competition. By optimising the page simply it should rank fast, then on that site you incentivize the offer.
So instead of paying for traffic you get organic, and if the site ranks well it should pay out over the longer term too, with minimal maintenance.
However I think I should probably just take the advice here, and get cracking.
ps- getting a job is seriously the last resort!!
Originally Posted by customs
Yeah I'm with spdg, I tried the whole SEO deal and you find out pretty quickly that if you want to get somewhere fast you need to invest a lot, and if you don't have money to spend you're unlikely to see any real results for a long time. There's certainly big money in it, and passive income is appealing (although passive may still require lots of regular work to keep it bringing in that rev!) but if you want to invest in something you can immediately take action on then paid traffic is the way.
My recommendation would be to pick a niche/vertical you are most comfortable with or know well (e.g. i do gaming because I like games and can connect with my audience well), read all of STM (O_O), pick a traffic source and start a follow along. Make all your mistakes early on with small budgets and take in the ample advice you'll be given, hustle away and you'll be seeing positive ROIs in no time
SEO takes time, HELL LOTSA time, i know bro coz SEO was my main traffic source for a couple years and i now have a team who does it all, providing SEO services to major companies and stuff.. but i totally crushed my last year revenue within 2 months using paid ads... you don't have to wait for your sites to rank yada yada *yawnzz* (like stumc said) lol..
No offence bro but this is totally what i'm feeling.. paid ads ftw. big players are using it, even small players like us which have relatively smaller budgets can definitely go with it.
The key here is to TRACK everything you spend on. Not just advertising blindly.. Get an initial investment on CPVlab or Prosper202 it's all worth it..
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