The Secrets To Paid Traffic Revealed!
As promised, today is the second part of the secrets of traffic revealed post.
Yesterday we spoke about all the free traffic options available to you.
If you haven't checked it out yet, you can do so by clicking here.
So let's get right to it, you've expended all efforts with the free traffic methods and have either reached the peak of what you can achive through them, or they haven't been working too well for you.
A word of caution though, if you're looking to use paid traffic because you haven't had the desired success with free traffic, I'm going to have to stop you right here before you make a huge mistake that could break your bank.
You need to re-evaluate your content and the product you are trying to sell.
If you have been driving free traffic and not making any sales then perhaps either your product is not so desireable to the niche you are targetting or the way you are marketing it is not effective in making the traffic you bring in buy.
If that is the case, most likely buying paid traffic will only be wasting your money.
I have a personal rule that I live by in online business, if you can't sell to free traffic then sending paid traffic will not solve your problem.
It's common sense in my opinon, what sells to free traffic will sell more to paid traffic.
Paying for traffic shouldn't be the solution to your sales problem it should be a means to grow and ramp up your income by increasing the footfall on your site, and in turn growing the number of sales, provided that you are already selling.
But I digress, let's assume you are all in the former scenario and just looking to scale your business, what are your options?
Before we get on with it let's get some terminology out of the way to make understanding this article as we move further easier.
Types Of Paid Advertising
Here are some of the most common types of ads that you may come accross when buying traffic:
- Cost Per Mille (CPM): Mille is the Latin word for 1000. CPMs are calculated in impressions. An impression is a single view of the ad you are paying to get it viewed by an audience. CPM is where they charge you for every 1000 impressions of views of your ad.
These are usually the cheapest and are best used for what we as marketers call awareness campaigns, think of it like a machine gun shooting a 1000 rounds per minute.
The bullets don't necessarily hit a target with every shot but make a lot of noise and spread much further in less time.
To put it in business terms, it gives you exposure and lets more people know of you regardless of whether they are your specific target or not.
I know many will disagree with me on this, but you are not paying for the viewer to take any form of action to demonstrate serious interest in what you have to offer. - Cost Per Click (CPC): This is where the ad network charges you everytime someone clicks on your ad. No matter how many people see the ad you only pay when someone clicks on the ad and goes to wherever the ad directs them.
Some consider this a sniper approach, I disagree.
Clicking through means the ad did a great job and creating curiousity and intrigue that people clicked through, it doesn't necessarily mean that once that curiousity is fed that they would move further in the buying process.
I consider this more of a pistol approach where you have a higher chance of hitting your target and are at a closer range, doesn't necessarily mean that the shot will finish the job.
In a perfect world CPC would cost as much as CPM, unfortunately this is neither a perfect world nor do they cost the same.
CPC is more expensive than CPM, and ad networks work with averages, their algorithms calculate based on historical data, etc. how many views it would take for your ad to get clicked and that is part of how they price the CPC.
It still remains the better option for acquisition campaigns over CPM since at least you are paying for people clicking on your ad rather than just because they glimpsed it on a page or feed as they scrolled through! - Cost Per Lead (CPL): This is where you are charged everytime someone fills in their details in a form whether these details come in the form of an email or a phone number or otherwise.
This is more of a sniper approach, because for someone to hand over their contact details that in its own right is an investment. They are not only interested, they are also ready to invest time to read more through your emails to them or on a phone call with you.
However, just like with a real sniper where you can miss or hit a wrong target on accident, the same applies here, this form of advertising just helps you have a higher chance of a sale.
A click could happen on accident, many of us have accidently clicked on ads, especially on a phone while trying to scroll or tap somewhere near it, but a click is a click.
On the other hand how many times did you manually input your number or email to get more details by accident?
These obviously cost more because a lead is further up in the purchasing process than the previous methods. - Cost Per Action (CPA): This is the kind of advertising where you are charged whenever someone performs a specific action.
Both CPC and CPL fall under this kind of ad, but there are others.
Actions could include calls, messages sent, download (for apps), got to a certain page on your site (like payment page).
Cost per call is usually displayed to people using their phones and once they click the call now button/link you are charged as one call, some are more elaborate and calculated based on them actually making the call, but these are rare in my experience.
Cost Per Messages are charged when someone sends you a message on facebook for example.
The scenario where you are charged. when someone reaches the "cart" or "payment" page requires you to place a small code on that page, once the person views that page the ad network is notified and they charge you.
These ones are very rare and usually it's solo ads providers who offer this service to charge you for leads who actually signed up and saw the welcome page after they've signed up. - Cost Per Sale (CPS): To this date I have not seen ad networks that offer this kind of advertisement but I put it here because this is a term you will see if you are signed up to an affiliate network.
Basically it is where a company or person is charged whenever a sale is made by someone coming through a particular ad.
This is how affiiate marketing works and payment is usually in the form of a percentage of the sale's value.
Now that the basic jargon is out of the way let's get to the juicy part
Option 1: Social Ads
Social ads is where you promote your business through social media and that comes in many forms.
Social ads offer a plethora of options, for example on facebook offers CPM, CPC, CPA (Messages, Calls, Page Likes, Engagements, etc.), and CPL (in the form of lead form ads).
The best thing about social ads is that on many platforms you can start from as little as $5 per day.
You need to understand a couple of things about Social ads though.
Social media platforms prefer ads that keep the audience on their platform. So if you have a facebook business page or youtube channel, an ad directing to them will get a higher preference in terms of placement, display and cost than say one leading to your blog.
That means you are better off having a page, channel, profile, etc. on the platform you intend to advertise on, and from there send people to wherever else you desire.
Another thing to pay attention to is retargetting is cheaper, so having a facebook and google pixel on your page will allow you to retarget your "custom audience" at cheaper rates.
Finally, and especially for facebook, these networks use sophisticated algorithms to track the behaviour of people viewing your ad.
This tracking helps them place and position your ads better for higher results and in turn more money for them per CPM if you choose another method.
The algorithim on facebook takes 3 days in "learning" before your ads can reach their peak performance.
Other social media channels will have similar learning phases too and each one will usually tell you if your campaign duration is too short and will negatively impact your ad's overall performance.
Option 2: Ezines
Ezines as explained in yesterday's blog are electronic magazines.
Just like a regular magazine they offer you multiple advertising options and locations using the CPM advertising model.
Just like physical magazines, some ezines will offer you the opportunity to sponsor a section of the magazine for a higher price.
Sponsorships ensure that everyone who enters this section sees your ad.
Other options you may commonly find in ezines are CPC options.
Mostly ezines will operate with banner ads in different sizes, locations on each page, and the different pages on the site.
Option 3: Banners
Before I talk about this, it's worthy to note that the previous two options work with banners.
The only reason I have this as a separate section is because banners are not exclusively on social media and Ezines.
There are plenty of sites online offering advertising banners and even sponsorship options.
So what does an advertising banner look like?
Here's what they look like on facebook for example:
And here's what they would look like in full color:
Now to be honest, these photos do not belong to me, I got them from google images, so full credits to their owners, whoever they are.
Banners work mostly with CPM, CPC, and on sponsorship basis.
If you are selling a sports team's merchandize like jerseys for example you can place a banner on ESPN or FOX Sports pages. This is exactly why I felt it necessary to place banners as an option on their own.
Option 4: Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
In the free section we spoke about Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
SEM is not very different to SEO, the only major difference is that you are paying to rank for keywords instead of just targetting them with your content.
The process is very similar in the sense that the higher the competition for a keyword the harder, and therefor more expensive, it will be to rank for it.
CPC and CPA here act in a bidding system.
That means the higher you bid or are willing to pay per click, call, etc. the higher you will rank when people search for your desired keyword.
To get the best value for money with SEM I highly recommend you follow the "long tail keyword" strategy that Kyle describes in this SEO tutorial while applying the alphabet soup technique.
I think I'll need to create more posts about this in the future since it's so detailed and branched out that it would be impossible to cover it within the scope of a combined article as this one.
Option 5: SoloAds
If you haven't delved into email marketing, you've potentially never heard of this term before.
I highly advise against using this method if you are not sending the traffic from it to an optin form where you collect leads.
This form of advertising is quite expensive, and as the quality of the clicks improve the price goes up.
You maybe wondering what I mean by click quality.
Solo ad clicks come in different tiers.
Tier 1, which is the highest tier, is clicks from the wealthy countries that speak English as their first language and sometimes include France and Germany.
You could expect to pay per click from a solo ad provider anywhere from $0.3 to $5.
I would be very weary of anyone offering clicks for less than $1 on tier 1 clicks though.
So how does it work?
Someone has a list of tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of subscribers that they have compiled over the years.
These are people who joined that marketer's email list by choice either because they were interested in the information they had to offer or in exchange for a bonus free gift they wanted.
Either way, the soloads provider is usually a good email marketer who knows how to get the majority of his/her subscribers to open and read his emails, as well as click the links contained within them.
Which brings me to the term "Buyer Leads".
These are usually subscribers in a special list in this marketer's auto responder (mass mailing client/tool).
They made it into this list only after they have bought products either through the email marketer themselves, or through one of their clients that passed on this information to them.
Some "expert" marketers will even have multiple buyer lead lists categorised by how much they have been known to spend on products.
The theory is that a buyer lead has proven that they are ready to pull out their credit card and buy similar products online, so there is nothing that would prevent them from buying your product online again as long as it's of good quality and you know how to get them on the page to make the purchase.
Such clicks are more expensive compared to their usual click prices, and depend once again on the quality of the buyer lead, and the more credible a provider is the more expensive they will be.
You need to be weary when buying soloads though and thoroughly check the credibility of the provider...
Last thing you want is to buy clicks and optins from dead leads who don't open or read your emails and just clicked and signed up for some incentive offered to them from the solo ads provider.
It's worthy to note that some providers, though very few, are willing to sell you leads as opposed to just clicks.
Most such lead providers, if you find them, will usually charge a large fee per lead and will insist that in order to guarantee your leads that they create your optin page for you.
The cheapest reputable provider I found charged $30 per lead and some go over and above $100 per guaranteed lead.
I won't name any in this post but feel free to reach out to me and I could share with you some that I am affiliated with.
But it's not cheap!
Option 6: Bulk Traffic Providers
So we've reached our final option for this post, and remember this is not supposed to be an all inclusive post.
The intention here is to cover as many of the most common forms of paid advertising as possible without going way overboard with the amount of words and information that you need to process.
Before I go to explain about this form of traffic, a word of caution is in order here!
Bulk traffic providers provide extremely low quality traffic, in fact the quality of the traffic is usually so low that if you are signed up with google adsense and show their banners on your site, they will often ban you for sending such traffic.
Bulk traffic providers provide extremely cheap traffic, to the extent that you can get tens of thousands of clicks in a day for a $100 in some of them in a matter of a few hours.
Unfortunately many of these bulk traffic providers use bots and fake clicks, others use incentive clicks where if they charge you 1 cent per click they pay someone a fraction of that to someone and the more links they click the more money they make.
In essance the traffic coming from these sites will never buy anything from your site, click links, or even read your content.
So why do I mention it here then if its so useless?
Because in order to be able to tell you all this about them, I too, at some point tried their services and got warned by adsense a few years back.
If I was naieve enough to get tempted by their offer, and they are very clever at tempting you, I suspect many others could fall prey to their scheme.
So I am trying to protect you from making a huge mistake in your efforts to achieve the dream of endless traffic to your pages.
I caught on early and got away with a warning from AdSense, a short ban on my account, which I was able to appeal and get my account back up.
I was also fortunate enough that I paid them via PayPal and they had promised me real clicks so I took screenshots from their promises and the link address where they admitted to sending clicks to.
I then took a screenshot of google adsense's warning that clearly stated the clicks were from bots and sent a complaint to PayPal who thankfully refunded me.
So if I am too late and you have already fallen prey to such providers and were fortunate enough to pay them via PayPal, now you know how you could potentially get your money back.
Summary Of The Paid Traffic Channels
There you have it...
5 common options that people use to get traffic to their sites and landing pages.
We've covered in this post social ads, ezines, banners, search engine marketing, solo ads, and bulk traffic.
We've also mentioned some important warnings and things to pay attention to when buying your traffic.
I hope it's been helpful to you and has shed light on some things to help you make better traffic buying decisions in your efforts.
So tell me which one did you choose?
Also, and as always if you have questions, ideas, or suggestions drop them in the comments and I'll be happy to answer them as best I can.
In fact I am looking forward to hearing your thoughts.
Until the next time... Good Luck!
Evolve Your Wealth,
Tareq Helmi
Recent Comments
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Hi Andy! Thanks! If you have any suggestions, questions, or ideas, I'd love to hear them!
I hope you found it useful and helpful :)
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Very helpful post, thanks for sharing with us, Tareq.
Best Wishes,
Bushra