I want to focus on the good ones and point you in the right direction from jump, but I’ll also tell you which traffic sources you should avoid like the plague. 

If you are an affiliate marketer like myself, then you should already know that to make money with affiliate marketing you need traffic and a lot of it.

If you are promoting an affiliate product but don’t yet have a strategy to follow then I recommend that you read the following resources to guide you:

• 10 Step Blueprint For A Profitable Affiliate Marketing Campaign
• Clickbank Affiliate Marketing Strategy

If you landed on this page with not a clue of what affiliate marketing is, then here’s a quick tutorial.

Affiliate marketing is basically recommending a third party’s product or service to potential buyers, promoting the purchase of the product or service and in return receiving a commission as the referrer of that buyer.

The process involves four main parties – the affiliate, the affiliate network, the advertiser, and the buyer.

The affiliate is in charge of the basic running and maintenance of a website. He/she is the one who receives the commission once a purchase of the affiliate product is made.

The advertiser pays to post advertisements on the affiliate website. In this way, the advertiser can be the owner of the affiliate product.

The affiliate network hosts the affiliate product and the buyer makes a purchase through a link on the affiliate website generating a commission for the affiliate.

I hope that does not confuse you, but as a beginner, I would strongly recommend that you read this post for a more in depth understanding of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is an ideal way of promoting a business owner’s product or service because it allows them to gain access to a targeted audience without doing all the hard work.

The affiliate is the one who has to think about the traffic source to promote the product on and find creative ways of advertising the product or service. It therefore becomes cost efficient to the business owner since he/she only pays the affiliate after someone has visited their website and converted into a sale or lead.

Crash course in affiliate marketing over . Let’s move on to the traffic sources that I would highly recommend you use, to promote your affiliate products.

Paid Traffic Sources for Affiliates

There is a long way to generate affiliate sales and conversions and then there is a short way.

Although the short (and fastest) way to generate affiliate conversions is through paid traffic sources, I strongly recommend that you start implementing sustainable affiliate marketing strategies with long term objectives in mind.

Such strategies include starting an affiliate blog or website or building an email list which are two fundamental assets in any online business.

When you start an affiliate blog or website, your focus will be on optimising that blog for the search engines which can take time. This however can help you leverage free and organic traffic which means that you have the potential to earn money from affiliate sales, without exhausting any advertising dollars. 

If however, you prefer to skip the SEO optimisation phase, you can buy traffic from an outside source or traffic network to increase the number of visitors to your website.

As an advertiser, a traffic network can help you market your content on numerous target sites at the same time. The following list of paid traffic networks will help you get started.

Google/Bing Pay-Per-Click (PPC)

Google and Bing are among the top search engines, used by the online audience. Whenever someone is searching for a product, service or general information about a topic, they usually go to Google or Bing as their starting point.

As an affiliate you can tap into the power of these search engines by purchasing leading placements that will give you access to immediate targeted traffic.

For example, if you are promoting a singing course as an affiliate, you can use Google or Bing PPC to target people who are searching for keywords that are relevant to acquiring knowledge through a singing course.

Therefore when you place an advertisement on Google or Bing, and you pay (bid) for your keyword ‘best singing course’, your ad may show up as the top search result on either search engine for someone who is searching for “best singing course”.

When the user clicks on your ad and provided you have set up your campaign correctly, the user will be redirected to the affiliate product’s website. If a purchase is made, you will earn the commission.

When using PPC campaigns, there are a number of factors that you must consider as the affiliate.

• Whether your ad is visible to your target audience is dependent on how much you are willing to pay for your keyword to win the advertiser’s auction. Google and Bing use bids to determine how high your ads appear in the search results, so if your keyword bid is lower amongst other bidders, your ad will not achieve a favourable position in the search results.
• When you use PPC campaigns you only pay if someone clicks on your ad. Therefore pay attention to the ad copy you use in your ad. Make sure that it is relevant to the product or offer to avoid generating wasted clicks that do not lead to purchases. A great hack to qualify a click is to include the price of the product in the ad. This qualifies the user because it means that they have already considered the price before the click and so have a higher intent to purchase the product at the stated price. Below is an example of an affiliate’s ad where he places the price in the ad.

• To ensure that your ad is relevant to your affiliate product and to help you put your ad in front of people who are ready to buy, use buyer-intent keywords. Buyer-intent keywords are keywords that show that the user has a higher probability of buying the product because they are specifically searching for the exact product. For example buyer-intent keywords are “Canon MG3022 Printer” or “JBL Flip 4 Portable Bluetooth Speaker”. Therefore to improve your click-through rates, include as many buyer-intent keywords in your campaigns.

Before you set up your Google or Bing PPC campaign, conduct some market research to identify how other affiliates are designing their landing pages, the type of ad copy they’re using in their ads, the potential keywords that they are including in their campaigns to display their ads.

An important point to remember is that Google and Bing will charge you less and reward you if you come up with smart targeted advertising. Don’t waste time trying to figure it out on your own. Do your research properly to see how the best performing ads are crafted and do not be afraid to model after them.

Watch the video below to see how to do competitor research for your affiliate campaigns.

Facebook/Instagram Ads

Since Facebook and Instagram are two of the most popular social networks, using the ad platform can lead to increased traffic due to more website clicks, conversions, mobile application installations, and video views.

To get these type of results however, you must know how to use the advertising platform properly. Check out my post for more tips and strategies on how I was able to use this traffic source to generate over $10k in affiliate commissions.  

Facebook and Instagram Ads are complimentary products. Even if you don’t have an Instagram account, you can still create an Instagram Ad using your Facebook account – the option is available in the settings.

Furthermore, the platforms allow you to minimise your marketing costs by targeting your ads to the right people.

For example, if you are promoting a popular Woodworking affiliate product from Clickbank using Facebook and Instagram ads, you can target your ads to people who love woodworking, DIY, carpentry.

The targeting options are so defined that any peculiar niche that you’d like to promote a product in, you can find it. 

Keep in mind that Facebook and Instagram are social network sites where people go to hang out and socialise. As an affiliate it is important to understand how to interrupt your audience so that they pay attention to your ad.

As a result, Facebook and Instagram Ads will ensure that your ads reach only those people who are likely to be interested in what you have to offer and take the action that you desire.

They also allow businesses to reach the targeted traffic through innovative methods such as placing the ad in the news feed or on Instagram stories. The advantage of using this strategy is that the ads don’t look like they are out of place. Users are therefore likely to be more receptive and click on the link to your site.

Before I move on, here are a few tips to accelerate your conversions with Facebook and Instagram ads:

• You probably have heard of the $5/day method. This method only works well, when you create multiple adsets at $5/day. It is very important that when using the Facebook/Instagram ad platform that you split test different interests, ad copy, ad creatives and you can only do that with more than one adset. So do not be fooled by marketers who tell you, you only need “$5 per day” for Facebook/Instagram ads. After spending thousands of dollars on the platform I can tell you that this is not true. What they forget to mention is that you should set up multiple adsets, each at $5/day and test the adsets against each other to see which one performs better.
  
• Think outside the box. Sometimes you may target a specific audience, such as women interested in weight loss and drive the traffic to a weight loss product. When running ads I have learnt that sometimes a niche audience may not work and you may have to look outside of that niche audience to find your target audience. For example, instead of targeting weight loss interests, try targeting interests that women in general have an interest in.
  
• Don’t let your opinion influence your decision. Let the data do the talking. It would be helpful if you understood how to analyse your Facebook/Instagram ads so you can optimise them for better conversions. If you do not yet know how to do this then I recommend taking the Social Traffic Blueprint course which teaches you how to leverage this powerful platform to create revenue in your business.
  
  Don’t be discouraged by the price of the course guys! I took that course and immediately implemented the instructions and within a few months I was able to see a 10x return on my investment.

YouTube Ads

Video marketing ads perform better than other forms of marketing, because they generate more emotional cues and help to engage your audience better. Therefore, consider including video as part of your affiliate marketing strategy to generate an increase of traffic to your affiliate campaign.

As the most popular video sharing platform in the internet marketing space, YouTube offers the best marketing option for your business.

YouTube Ads gives you the opportunity to market your business through video searches or viewership. It doesn’t matter whether the person was looking for your video, if you put your item on YouTube ads, it automatically appears before the viewer’s selected video plays. Interestingly, you only pay for the advert after the person shows genuine interest in your video by clicking it.

When creating a YouTube video, remember that it’s about the quality of the visitors and not the number. Traffic advertising works best when you attract those people that are interested in your product and what your business does.

You can include a call-to-action in the video as a way to drive traffic to your site – always tell the viewer what you do and why they need your services. You can also add a sentence or two in the description box to tell the audience more about you. Don’t forget to include your website’s URL so that interested viewers can immediately visit your website after watching the video.

Solo Ads

Do marketers still use solo ads? Actually yes they do . So no, solo ads are not dead.

The great thing about solo ads is that it gives you the opportunity to immediately tap into a warm target market using email.

Solo ads are email-based promotions that you purchase from other email list owners. Once you buy it, you can send dedicated messages about your products and services as emails to your target market.

Solo ads networks like Udimi or MLM Leads may not be available for every niche but there are ways that you can connect with list owners to see if they would give you the opportunity of sending an email offer to their audience.

Here are the steps you can take to find a list owner and send a solo ad. Now whilst this is a long process and may result in very little feedback, those who follow the steps consistently and are willing to dig through the dirt can end up finding the gems.

• Step one. Find an email list owner. These persons are usually blog or website owners who have a lead opt in form for capturing emails for persons who are interested in receiving their content. Before you contact the owner, check to see that content is frequently updated just in case the blog is an abandoned blog. Obviously, choose a blog or website that is closely related to your area of specialisation since the email list subscribers are more likely to understand what you are selling and hopefully buy it.

To find niche blogs use this hack – from Google type “url:blog “keyword”” where “keyword” represents the niche that you want Google to search for.

What this does is ask Google to return all blogs that have the keyword in it. So if I want to find travel blogs to start making a list of blog owners then I would type “url:blog “travel”” and my results would look something like this.

• Step two. Create a list of all the blog owners that you want to connect with. List their email address to contact them or find the way that they prefer to be contacted. Usually the blog will have a Contact Me link. Then call or email the owner of that list to ask for permission to email their subscribers. If you do not get a response, move on to the next. If you do get a response, then great.
  
• Step three. Since solo ad lists are for sale, remember to agree on a purchase method – you can either buy according to the number of people that will receive the email or pay depending on the number of clicks the advertisement receives. In some cases the list owner may already have a price list for email submissions which makes it easier for you to decide whether it is within your budget or not.
  
• Step four. After agreeing on the price and payment method, design an email that describes what your business does in a way that appeals to the receiver of the message. Don’t forget to include a link to your affiliate website. Make sure that you instruct the list owner to send the email as constructed to their list. In some cases, some list owners prefer to write the email so that the tone of the message is similar to what their list is accustomed to. It is a good idea to request to see the email before it is sent.
  
• Step five. I would recommend that before the email is sent that you insert a tracking link to track the performance of the email list. That way if there is any disagreement as to whether the list is engaged, you can always show proof using the tracking software. For tracking I recommend Clickmagick.

Watch the video below to learn how to use Clickmagick and how you can use it, to optimise your affiliate marketing campaigns to save you money.

Solo ad providers create their lists by offering free gifts to those people that are interested in exchanging it for their emails.

You can find a reliable solo ad provider by searching the internet or joining an online solo ad community. My favourite solo ad providers are Udimi and MLM Leads. Both offer solo ad services from various vendors all under one roof.

If you’d like to read a review of the solo ad provider you can read more about Udimi here, and MLM Leads here.

Native Ads

Native ads mimic and resemble the advertising platform that they are on. They feel and operate like the host media platform.

A good example of native advertising is news feeds on social media sites. Others include search and promoted listings that appear on top of your search items and content recommendations, which appear at the end of articles – they start with words like “recommended for you”, “suggested post” or “sponsored content”.

Native ads are created by various meta data elements, for example, a thumbnail image, URL content, headlines, and many more. Therefore, ensure that you create quality content if you want your native ad to be ranked first.

It is strongly recommended that before you pay the publisher to host the ad, do your homework on the specific publisher. You want a publisher with high reader statistics and one that focuses on your target market.

Another thing that you should concentrate on is your relationship with the publisher. Establish a good connection with your publisher so that they can tell you when the content is not working, and how you can improve it.

The response rate for native ads is high because people are more likely to open them since they resemble the content on the website that they are visiting. Many of them are well aware that the content is a native advertisement, but they are not bothered because they feel that it is less intrusive. Others click on it because they see it as part of the editorial content.

Bonus: Snap Chat Ads

Although I have not used this platform before for advertising, I am seeing a lot of noise in the marketplace about the effectiveness of this new advertising space.

Especially for low cost ads, an advertising network like Snapchat can be a winner for you, because not many people have directed their attention to it and it is an untapped traffic source.

In today’s marketing arena, most people focus their attention on Facebook and Instagram because of its super powerful ability to drive massive conversions for marketers. If you find that you are not making a dent with Facebook or Instagram Ads or you’ve exhausted it and want to see what else is out there for you, then have a look at SnapChat ads or Snap Ads as they are referred to, and see how it can help your marketing.

According to Adage, Snap Ads have gone from ungodly to very cheap. It says that compared to Facebook and Instagram, Snap Ads had the lowest ad prices, from $2.95 per thousand impressions whereas Facebook cost $5.12 and Instagram cost $4.20.

At the end of the day, to see whether Snap Ads are worth your investment, test the platform with a low budget and compare it to your marketing efforts used on other platforms.

Snap Ads are worth mentioning because a lot of your audience can be found on SnapChat especially if you are promoting an affiliate offer that is targeted to millennials.

To learn more about SnapChat Ads you can visit their website here.

Conclusion

Affiliate marketing and paid traffic compliment each other.

I seriously would not recommend using free traffic methods if you want to see quick success with affiliate marketing.

Free traffic methods like revenue-sharing traffic sites, Facebook groups and even forum commenting can take up much of your time and produce very little results.

If you have decided to fit paid traffic into your affiliate marketing arsenal, then using one of the above traffic sources would be immensely useful to you but only if you know how to use it properly.

Therefore take the time to invest in some valuable courses before spending your money.

A few courses that I’d like to mention include:

Social Traffic Blueprint for Facebook and Instagram Ads

Sean Bhageri’s YouTube Traffic Master’s Course for YouTube Ads

Brennan Zimmer’s Bing Ads Beginner’s Guide To PPC Course 

If I’ve missed any traffic source that you are using and you’re getting great results, tell me in the comments.

Cheers

The post The Top 5 Paid Traffic Sources For Your Affiliate Marketing Campaigns appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

Hellooooooo! No one is looking for you!

Unless you have a large audience and are well known no one knows who you are.

So what you have to do is tell people that you exist and you can do that by following simple strategies to get you noticed.

In this post I am going to share with you four proven ways to increase traffic to your online store. If you have any type of online business, you will see that these strategies can also work if you want to attract customers to your business.

The key to being successful with any business online, is to have a lot of traffic every day.

You always need to have those eyeballs on your offer.

If you do not then your business is dead. Try and not promote your business and you will see what I mean.

So once the hard work of setting up your online store is over, there is more hard work to do. Sorry to burst your bubble kiddo.

You’re not quite at the end just yet.

But stick with me, because by the end of this post you will learn some completely new ways of driving traffic to your online store. So pull up your chair and let’s get right to it.

How To Increase Traffic To Your Online Store

1. Social Media

Ahhh! The good ole social media.

It is the best place to start because these days that is where everyone hangs out.

There are many platforms on social media that you can use to increase traffic to your online store. You want to pay particular attention to the ones that are more visual.

Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook are ideal since they are all visual based social media outlets. They are incredible assets if you want to up your visual content marketing strategy.

To attract more customers be prepared to create some amazing, beautiful images that will literally cause your audience to have eyegasms!! *gasps* LOL!

Some great online design tools that I use for my images include:

• Canva
• PicMonkey
• beFunky
• Snappa

You can use these tools and go in a million directions as to what you can create. They’re really awesome.

Pictures – check!

Let’s talk social media.

Pinterest

Pinterest was never a thought when I launched my online store last year but the benefits of using it to drive traffic to your store is huge.

To put things in perspective, there are over 170 million active users on Pinterest which means that you can potentially target over 170 million customers.

According to Pinterest 87% of people bought something because of what they saw on Pinterest. 93% of people use Pinterest to plan purchases.

Therefore it makes sense to get your brand in front of this audience.

To get started with Pinterest:

• Make sure and start by creating a business account. This is where you will have access to analytics, so you know what is working and what is not.
  
• You then will create boards which are relevant to your niche. Ensure that your boards are SEO friendly by using keywords for those boards. You want to name your board a keyword or phrase that people will look for. Create several different boards with different combinations of names that you think people will look for so that your boards can be found. As Pinterest is all about aesthetic, the images on your board should be of a high quality and ones that grab the most attention. Therefore focus on bright colourful images. Vertical images also work best. I use PicMonkey to design my board images and found images from Shutterstock and Unsplash.
  
• Once you have created your own boards, join a few group boards related to your niche that you can pin your images to. Group boards comprise other Pinterest marketers and help to increase exposure to your business. To identify group boards look out for the group symbol.

To continue increasing traffic to your online store, pin on a regular basis to each group board that you use. You can even automate your pinning using the Tailwind pin scheduler which helps you to pin tons of pins everyday automatically.  

I never thought about Pinterest as a traffic source but because it is a visual search engine and people use it to find ideas for the things they want, it’s a great way to get more people to your eCommerce store.

There is a lot more to understand how to get traffic to your eCommerce store using Pinterest and I am grateful to it everyday as it helps drive traffic to this blog. Here is a look at my progress so far using Pinterest. What if all those daily viewers were going to your own store?

If you are serious about using Pinterest to increase your online store sales then I would strongly recommend the Pinterest Traffic Avalanche course by Alex Nerney and Lauren MacManus.

It was through this course that I was able to grow my traffic steadily and I am certain it can do the same for your online store.

Instagram

Instagram is a slightly different kettle of fish.

There are no groups to join and you get found by using hashtags.

Check out the hashtags that your competitors are using. Do not use the exact hashtags but seek them as inspiration and come up with you own. Five to ten relevant hashtags should be sufficient as anything more will come across as spammy.

If you are selling wall art then some of the hashtags you might consider are:

#artoftheday

#homedecor

#streetart

#artwork

#artdesign

#paintingonthewall

Always use hashtags in every post you make.

To avoid coming across as salesy and attract more people to your brand you can create images that focus on story telling. Instead of posting merely product images, you can tell a story by sharing customer’s images that feature your products.

A great example of this is from a company called Natursutten. An image with only the bag would not be as engaging as an image with a cute baby in a bag. Do you see what I mean?

Check out as well Alice + Ames and how they captivated little girls dresses in another customer photo of a mother with her two beautiful girls.

By being a little bit more relatable, posting images in this way helps you to connect with your audience.

When you are connected with your audience people are more inspired to take action resulting in increased traffic to your online store.

Facebook

An online store and Facebook ads go perfectly.

This is exactly how I was able to generate over $7k in sales in one month with my Shopify store.

I used the power of Facebook to sell and once you know how to use this platform properly, it is a gold mine.

What I love about Facebook Ads is the specific targeting that you can include in your ad criteria.

If you are selling Athletic wear you can specifically target women who are in a certain age bracket and who follow a particular interest.

You can also target fans of your competitors.

Just like Instagram it is a good idea to tell a story, firstly to assist with brand awareness. Do not be too hasty to create a sales ad campaign.

Yes we all want sales, but if someone does not know your brand, you want to warm them up to who you are first.

A good way to warm them up is by telling a story using sequenced ads.

So in week one you may introduce your audience to your brand by talking about how you got started or how the product you are selling was made.

Video marketing would be best for this strategy at this point.

In week two, you can use any data that you captured from week one and retarget people who watched the video and then ask for the sale.

Fabletics UK does a good job at this.

Notice how in their first ad they use only video and there is no sales call to action.

However in the follow up post they have introduced a call to action “Shop the latest Fabletics collection”.

There are many strategies that you can use to drive traffic to your eCommerce store using Facebook Ads.

The strategies outlined here are only a handful but make sure and check out the Social Traffic Blueprint free webinar and course which gives you a low down on other ways that you can use Facebook to increase traffic to your online store.

2. Blogging

Most people want sales quickly and that’s all well and good.

But… hold on a minute. Think outside of the box! Don’t you want to dominate your niche and stand out?!

This is why you need to use methods that not everyone will think about. It might take some time to get going but the results can be worth it. So let’s talk about blogging shall we?!

Blogging is all about content marketing.

To ensure that your online store gets visibility in the marketplace, it is important that you write content that will help your audience solve a problem.

For example, if you are selling survival equipment I made a search of the Google Keywords Planner tool and searched “outdoor equipment”.

Google provided some keyword ideas and I noticed that one of them was “basic camping checklist”  with 1k to 10k average monthly searches and “camping essentials checklist” with 100 to 1k average monthly searches. Both were low competition keywords.

I would therefore write a blog post using these two keywords and my article may be titled like this “The Ultimate Camping Essentials Checklist “.

I would also include a review of some of the top products in my online store and provide a link to where the reader can purchase the product if they want to.

Keep in mind that when using blogging to increase traffic to your online store, it will take some time for Google to index your pages and SEO to kick in.

The best way to succeed with blogging and eCommerce is to ensure that you are consistent and write articles that help your audience solve their problems. How-To and List articles have great buyer intent.

Doing so will ensure that your efforts pay off in a big way after a few months. If you haven’t started a blog yet, well now is a good time.

3. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Following on from blogging, if you want to increase organic traffic to your online store then optimising your website for SEO is your best bet.

For many people, SEO might be a confusing topic but it is actually easier than you think.

If you are using Woocommerce for WordPress then the Yoast SEO WordPress plugin, makes optimising your store for SEO simple.

If not, here are a few guidelines that you can follow to help your site rank in Google:

• Use descriptive product titles. These are the titles that show up in Google search. So if you are selling cat socks you can describe the item as “Black Cat Socks”
• Use meta descriptions and include important keywords in them. The meta description appears below the product title in Google search and tells your audience what your website is about.
• When uploading your product images, ensure that they use the title of your product. So instead of saying 1.jpg, rename the image as black_cat_socks.jpg
• When using heading titles (H1) in your description use the keyword Black Cat Socks
• Any URL to the product should include the keyword in it.

These tips will help Google understand what your page is about and make it more likely to appear in the search results.

When it appears in the search results, especially if it ranks on page 1 of Google, be prepared for an insane amount of traffic to your online store.

4. Influencer Marketing

You can leverage the power of influence someone has over their audience by asking them to review your product.

I have always seen this in action on YouTube and Instagram where eCommerce owners, send samples to YouTubers or Instagrammers with a high following and engagement and ask them to mention or review their product.

So let’s say you have just launched a hair line product. You can reach out to popular Youtube and Instagram accounts and ask if they would mention or review the product you intend to sell.

This will create brand awareness for you and your product and potentially drive traffic to your online store.

How do you find these influencers?

You can start by using a niche keyword in the search field of Instagram or YouTube.

In this example we searched for “hair care” and YouTube suggested “hair care routine 2017”. There were over 7 million search results.

Although you will get many videos where people have a high following you want to pay attention to those YouTubers who have their contact details in their portfolio or description box.

This tells me that they are open to accepting sponsorships or requests for reviews.

Once you have their contact details it is time to send out an email to find out if they will consider mentioning your product.

You may use the following template as an example,

Hi [name of influencer],

My name is [your name]. You may be interested to know about the launch of my new online store which has products which I think you may like.

I am wondering whether you will accept a free sample of the product and if you like it, just as much as we do you might consider mentioning it to your audience.

I wait to hear from you.

Cheers!
[your name]

Final Thoughts

The launch of an online store is an exciting time but no one will know about it unless you take action and promote it as best as you can.

Whilst there are other ways that you can get the word out about your online store such as with Google Ads or Bing Ads, these are current and effective ways that will help you establish your brand in the marketplace quickly.

Before we part, if you are brand new to eCommerce or are looking for some additional help in getting started with eCommerce, getting your online store set up and getting your first online store sale then I would highly recommend The Four Percent Ecom Entrepreneur course by Vick Strizheus and Shubham Singh.

You will learn all of this and more in a free step by step video series to help you master eCommerce in any niche that you choose. Some of the students have been getting awesome results in one month or less and it was how I grew my Shopify store to $7k in sales in less than a month.

Check out the Ecom Entrepreneur course here and look out for my free bonus wholesaler’s checklist when you join the course :-). (check your junk mail just in case) 

The post 4 Proven Ways To Increase Traffic To Your Online Store appeared first on I Am Dawn-Marie.

Traffic is the life blood of your business.

Bet your bottom dollar, that if you have a business and no one sees it, that you will make zero dollars!

That is it! Plain and simple and to the point.

So What Exactly Is Traffic? 

Traffic is, simply put, people.

They are your prospects, people who you want to show your offer to.

When you have a lot of the right traffic you can make a lot of sales in your business which equals moo-lah.

There are two types of traffic, paid and unpaid traffic.

As the word says, paid traffic is when you pay a company to find people to see your offer. Basically it means that you are advertising your business.

Unpaid traffic is organic traffic. So they are an audience that you have driven to your content for free.

Disclaimer!

The quickest way to drive traffic to your business is through paid means. However for the purposes of this post, I will focus on unpaid traffic.

Can you grow a sustainable business with unpaid traffic? Absolutely!

But it will take time to build that audience and plenty of it.

And the one piece of advice – YOU MUST BE CONSISTENT.

Here Are 5 Ways To Get Free Traffic For Your Website Or Offer  

#1 Show Up

Social media has become one of the greatest networking platforms that allows users to participate and share content. If used correctly, it is the number one source for free traffic.

So when using this method you need to find out where your audience is hanging out.

The good thing about social media is that each interface understands what its users want.

Therefore they create applications that make engaging with your audience easy.

So for example,

• YouTube engages its audience with videos.
• Instagram engages its audience with photo content.
• Facebook has a combined way of engaging its audience by using video, photo and written material.

Facebook is considered the largest social media network with over a billion and a half monthly active users. If you think about it, that is over a billion potential prospects who may be interested in your offer.

Pinterest, Instagram and YouTube also rank very highly in terms of usability.

One of the ways you can leverage social media to drive traffic is by creating relevant posts about your niche.

Now I am not talking about spamming and adding your affiliate link on every post that you make.

Instead what you can do is provide content that people want to read that may inspire or encourage them to do something.

So for example, if you are in the make money online niche then a post about inspiration encourage people to have big dreams or goals.

You can also provide educational content which teaches something.

If you are in the weight loss niche a post about your weight loss journey can be insightful.

New to social media? Then check out my article, Social Media Marketing: 5 Things You Can Do To Get Noticed 

#2 Networking

If you are great at networking, then this is another way that you can build an audience over social media. With this method however you are doing it strategically so you are ethically “stealing” your competitors’ followers.

The way you would do this is to consider a top performer in your niche and follow them.

Then carefully comment on their posts in a way that contributes to what they are saying. You do not want to make the mistake of putting your link on their comments because that is unethical.

What you do want to do is show up on their posts, educate others, mention your success or an achievement and provide positive guidance.

The point here is to try and get your competitor’s followers’ attention by providing value, engagement and what you will notice is that some of your competitor’s followers’ may gravitate to you.

Now you may think that your competitor’s audience is a loyal crowd and why would they listen to you.

There is so much content on the internet that those followers may value your content more.

They may also resonate with you more.

My point is do not underestimate your potential merely because you have a smaller influence.

#3 How-To’s

YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world. Use it to your advantage by creating a YouTube channel that delivers content that people want to know.

You can easily find out how popular your niche is and what people are searching for most by using the Google Keyword Tool. Once you have that data you can answer to their pain points by creating a video.

The strategy for using YouTube again is not to create a video that sells. You want to come across as genuine and offering real advice to people who are looking for answers.

So for example if you are in the weight loss niche, the most asked question may be – “how to lose weight”.

Well answer the question by creating a video about your own journey, reviewing a particular product, why you like that product, how it has helped you and why you would recommend it.

If you are in the make money online niche, the most asked question may be “how to make money online”. Most people want to earn an income online so they can quit their job or have enough to pay the bills.

Create a video which provides a review about a program that you are using that has allowed you to earn an income online.

Create videos that offer encouragement or inspiration.

The key to being successful with YouTube is to give enough value that people see you as an authority on your subject and will always go to your channel for advice.

#4 Guest Blogging

If you like to write then this is a perfect way for you to target an already established and highly targeted audience.

In this case what you would do is pick a blog in your niche which you know has a lot of daily or monthly visitors and offer to write a guest post on a subject that matters.

The great thing about this method is that you are allowed to use your links here and you can drive instant traffic to a landing page resulting in subscribers and even buyers.

If you follow a blog, commenting on a blog post will also do.

Just as with social media commenting, you want to provide expertise in your field.

Try not to be spammy but provide information that assists the readers and so may allow them to connect with you.

#5 Search Engine Optimisation

Whilst search engine optimisation will take some time to help you build an audience for your website, it is a great way to start generating traffic.

You want to create a website which provides education or commentary to its readers.

The only difficulty with this method is that there are many things that you will have to take into account in order for your website to rank highly in search engines.

Whilst there are tricks that you can use and strategies that you can implement, you want to remember that like other free methods, this will take some time to master and produce results.

The following are some things that you must remember in order to get the best out of producing a website:

Keywords matter

When search engines search your page, they check your meta description to determine what your website is about.

By having adequate key words in your website, which a user is searching for, your website is more likely to appear in the search results.

Links

Search engines like to see outgoing and incoming links to your website. They want to know that your website is an informative resource and that you are not afraid to share content from other website owners.

They also like to know that you have an authority in the internet space and other websites are happy to refer you.

Security

Google wants its users to be happy so the security of your website plays an important part in how well your site ranks.

Ensure that your SSL certificates and servers are up to date and your website is free from infection.

There are many ways that you can get unpaid traffic that has not been covered in this post.

If you are ready to get serious about growing your online business make sure to sign up for my FREE E-book on Internet Marketing Success for budding online entrepreneurs.

I discuss other traffic methods that I have used to boost my sales conversions and reveal the top things that you should be doing in your own business to be successful too.

Click here to sign up for my free Ebook. 

Thanks for reading,

P.S Are there any other free traffic methods that you used that has been helpful? Leave them in the comments below. 

P.P.S Have you subscribed to my YouTube channel for more free online marketing tips? How come?! Click here to subscribe

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