Traffic is the key to running any online business and most
important is getting targeted traffic. Today, I will outline some of the
disadvantages of Paid traffic for your blog. Though, at times for some
businesses Paid traffic works great but as I mentioned above, targeted paid
traffic can only worth your money.
Disadvantages Of Paid Traffic
Every offline business is working on their online presence
in the form of Websites, Blogs, Social media profiles and what not. Though, the
problem with most of them is being a part of offline business, they can’t
really work online much and that’s why they go to the route of buying Traffic
from many traffic selling websites. This way, their business is viewed by many
people and in this process some of the traffic converts into customers. Sounds,
so simple and people actually fall for it. Though, they forget to see the fact behind
this traffic is, you might be getting bots, might be people who are getting
paid to surf are viewing your sites or may be some random visitors bump on your
online business site.
Paid Traffic Disadvantages
Un-targeted Traffic
So, what’s your mistake as business owner? Honestly, nothing
apart from the fact you are spending money on untargeted traffic. When you buy traffic, instead of using those
pay to buy traffic site, there are many useful paid traffic sources like
advertising on Facebook ads, Google adwords, use Stumble upon advertising, many
CPV sites like DirectCPV, Tribal Fusion,
are useful to get more targeted visitors.
Anyways, here we are not going to discus best paid traffic sites, but first lets clear
your myth behind paid traffic. Getting traffic is something which any one can
do when you have a pocket full of money, but the real output comes in the form
of conversions
For your convenience we can divide Such paid traffic in two
form:
Un-targeted Paid traffic:
This is when, you are getting promised no. of visits on your
Website from different location. This could be bots, paid to surf people,
random demographics. In simple words, you are selling “Baby-kits”, what a
school or collage kid will do by landing on your site?
Targeted Paid Traffic:
This is what every business owner should look forward to.
When we say targeted traffic, we talk about getting visitors from your target
demographic. For example, I give “Social media consultancy for Businesses”,
what will I do by getting visitors from age below 25. Simlarly if my business
geo boundaries are set to Australia only, my target is to get more traffic from
Australia, instead of any other country. Like Targeted advertising, paid
traffic gives targeted real-visitors, according to your business need.
Now from the Bloggers, point of view, you can always work on
traffic and if you are running a contest or some kind of promotion, or going viral, paid traffic are useful at
times. Paid Traffic are not bad, but some are pretty much useless other than to
inflate your Stats. Here are certain things, which you can avoid when buying
traffic for your Website or blog.
Common Disadvantages of Un-targeted Paid Traffic:
Well, there are many pros and cons and as I mentioned,
depending upon your business model, buying Website traffic has it’s own
disadvantages. Here I’m outlining some of the major disadvantages of Buying
free traffic:
No Targeted Traffic
When you buy traffic in masses like for example at 2$ for a
thousand views from unknown websites, you will see that your Blog will have an
increase in bounce rate , which means that people will only visit your site
homepage or which ever page you bought the traffic for and leave, they will not
bother to check out another related page as the people or bots that visit your
blog through this method have no interest other than the fact that they are
being paid to surf. Also you will see that the Time people spend on your site
decreases as they really do not want to be on your site and are not really
looking for the product or service you are providing. One simple example is,
Stumble Upon traffic. Which gives immense traffic but bounce rate is always
high.
No Sales
If you are offering a product or a service for sale on your
website and you get traffic through un-trusted sources through a paid traffic
program, you can be sure that you will not get any sales of your products and
services.These people are paid to surf, they are doing time consuming work of
visiting thousands of websites for a small trickle of money, you think you will
get even one sale?
If you run Products and Service based site, then do not
waste your time on these kinds of methods to gain traffic, instead use adwords,
Facebook ads, Tribal Fusion, Stumble Upon advertising, DirectCPV and so on,
which can give targeted traffic for your business.
No New Subscribers
If you run an information based website or blog, or buying
traffic to your landing page for Email subscription, then you will see that paying for traffic
from unreliable and un-targeted sources will not convert into subscribers. If you run this kind of a blog or website,
getting new subscribers who like your content and want to read more, should be
your goal. But with this kind of traffic, your one time visitors to readers
conversion rate will be too low.
Huge investment:
Specially, when you get into PPC advertising model, where
you pay when some one clicks on your ads to visit your page, you need to work
hard on optimization. This starts, from working on making your ad visible to
targeted demographics and making your landing page targeted for one time
visitors. Failing into any of the expect will again decrease the conversion
rate and you will never get value for money. You can always hire some social
media company or online websites which work on targeted advertising on social
media and Blogs. You can discus about
their strategy for getting your target audience to your business and how to go
about it and which channel to approach. Some time, Google Adwords is more
viable option than Facebook ads. Again, it depends on your advertising
campaign.
Adsense hates PPC Traffic:
Many Webmasters use to create websites based on high CPC
paying keywords and used to buy web traffic from sites or via PPC advertising.
This become an issue for Adsense advertisers and other ad networks. Google
adsense started taking this seriously and they consider it as Adsense
violation. In most of the cases, when you buy paid traffic for your Adsense
enabled blog, most likely adsense will ban your account. If some one is sending paid traffic to your
site, you can always report the same to Adsense team using this form.
This does not only apply to Adsense, but also to the other
top paying advertising networks such as Yahoo Publisher Network, Bright Roll
Etc.I just took the example of Adsense to show you that these kinds of Traffic
can land you in trouble in terms of monetizing your site.
Paid Traffic Alternatives:
I know, I added some common disadvantages of buying traffic
but there are also some advantages:
Quick traffic to your business
Perfect for running a viral content
Keep your stats up to the mark
When SEO doesn’t work, PPC works great to get targeted
visitors
Less ROI
So, as I mentioned it has it’s own cons, now we will look
into some of the alternatives to PPC advertising model for your business:
SEO:
Nothing can be as great as getting targeted visitors from
search engine. Targeted visits convert into sales and it works the best. If you
are running a static site, you can add a Blog and take advantages of it’s SEO
feature and get free visitors from search engines. I would suggest, use
WordPress as your business site and you can learn why here: Benefits of
WordPress for Online business. You can always take advantage of WordPress
services to set one such profitable blog for you. You can also check out WordPress
guide to get started with your business site on WordPress.
Guest posting:
If you are not much into giving time for a blog, you can
hire a freelance writer, and make them do guest posting on behalf of your
business. In the byline, they will link to your Website on various sites they
are guest posting. (Guest posting sites). This not only help in improving your
SEO, also you will get visitors. Make sure, all guest post should be relevant
to your business and goes to targeted niche blog. Make sure, you publish only quality stuff
related to your niche to create an authority and link your social media profile
with your Website. Make sure to maintain
an Email list and give your readers a space to interact. You can use blog post
for soft-promotion of your products.
Blog commenting & social media:
I have combined both of them because here purpose is going
for branding and getting traffic through it. Create as an authority in your
niche. Most of blogs offer comment and you can add your Website URL in comment
field. You can take advantage of this, Google about your target topic and if
there are blog posts and have commenting feature, comment on it with your name,
URL and Email. Make sure you are signed up for Gravatar, so that your profile
image will show. You can use service like Dropmylink to make targeted comment.
Free Traffic Via Commenting
Similarly, create a Facebook fan page, Twitter profile and
Google+ page for your website or online business. Use it to interact with people,
share useful information related to your niche. If it’s a business website,
don’t go over whelmed and start promoting stuff from your competitor. It’s a
good idea to share useful info, but not at the cost of hurting your own
Business is int it?
Commenting is very important for Bloggers
YouTube Videos :
When we talk about Blogging and Websites, free traffic is
more or less dependent on search engines (SEO) and subscribers. And if you are
failed with both of them, all your investment will go down. Video marketing is
in thing and Youtube being a part of Google, always get an advantage. You can
hire many videos around your business niche and promote it. For example, if you are running a restaurant
business, you can create videos showing how your restaurant works in
background, Dishes menu and many stuff along with it. This will help in more
branding options and since everything will be in-house, your investment will be
a just a good video recorder.
Make sure in description, you at-least talk about your brand
and you can refer earlier guide on using Youtube for traffic.
In my opinion, Blogging and mixing it with social media and
You-tube is most effective and free way to get traffic. Though, it all depends
upon your business model and what’s your plan for. If you are completely new to
your company online presence, you can hire any Blog consultant and discus which
online business model will work for you.
Well, now I’m leaving it in your hand to add more value to
this post with your comments. Do you think Paid traffic have advantages looking
in the term of investment and ROI? Which all sites you recommend for getting
targeted paid visits?
