I remember when I got my first website online. It was a crappy one page clickbank review website I got when I signed up for a money making program. I was super pumped about having my own website and was even more excited thinking about making that first sale. Well, like most newbies I just sat there and waited for that magical influx of traffic to my website but sadly it didn’t come. Hell, I didn’t know any better and I just figured that my site would start bringing in visitors from all over the internet. Boy was I wrong!

Like most newbies I got duped into paying for traffic from those “Get 100,000 visitors overnight” programs and then I joined those paid to surf programs and that didn’t work and finally I almost gave up!

The funny thing about that little story is that 90% of the newbies coming online to make money with their websites fall into this same trap. They get a website, they buy the junk robot generated traffic and join the paid to surf programs and still they make no sales and then they ask “why isn’t it working?”. First of all, if you are newbie and you are using these types of programs stop wasting your time because they WILL NOT bring you any money. I don’t know what someone told you but it’s garbage. Think about it for a minute…

If you have 10,000 people just like you, meaning they are a newbie that doesn’t know what they are doing and they are all a member at the same paid to surf program and they all want to make a sale on their website, why would any one of you buy someone elses product there? It’s like advertising to your competitor! I don’t mean to be harsh but someone needs to tell you the truth. If you are paying a paid to surf website for traffic then you are getting screwed because you will never make a sale there.

Now what about the “Get 100,000 hits overnight” programs?

These programs are even worse! These are those sites that advertise different traffic packages ranging from 25,000 visitors to 1,000,000 visitors for a set price. Did you know that these visitors are generated from a software program and not real people? Yep that’s right, you are getting screwed and again you will never make a sale with this traffic.

Ok, now that you know that you will never make a sale from these services it’s time to wise up and devise a marketing plan that really works. The first thing you need to figure out is who your audience is. If you don’t who you’re marketing to then how will you know where your market is and how to reach them? Different products and affiliate offers are marketed in different ways. Some offers are better marketed on Yahoo as opposed to Google and vice versa. Sometimes you want to use pay per click advertising and other times banner advertising. Maybe you will need a landing page or pre-sale page and maybe you are better off sending your visitors straight to the sales page of an offer.

The key to making sales online is targeting the buying and researching audience of your market. You don’t want to waste your time with people who are just out to kick a few tires. For example, if you are promoting a money making program and its called Nick’s Money Making Program you want to find the people typing keywords into the search engine like the following:

• nicks money making program review
• nicks money making program scam
• buy nicks money making program

These are called ‘buyer’ keywords as in these people are ready to buy but need a little push from you. There are thousands of products being sold online and there are millions of people ready to buy something at any given time. You just need to get yourself in front of them and reassure them it’s ok to make the purchase. So how do you get these people to your website?

Here is where you need to decide if you are going to pay for laser targeted visitors or if you are going to take the free approach. If you want to pay for high quality visitors targeted to what you are selling you need to use Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing or Microsft Adcenter. If you want to use free methods of promoting your website you will need to write articles, create blogs and join forums.

The lesson to be learned here is there is no effortless way to get good quality visitors to your site without spending money on PPC advertising or putting in the elbow grease with free advertising strategies. Paid to surf farms DO NOT work and neither do the “buy 100,000 visitors” programs.  Stay tuned for my next post on free website promotion techniques.