LESSON #75: Paid Traffic Sources (Other than PPC)

By | October 27, 2010

In the previous couple of lessons we’ve been talking about PPC advertising, including some advanced PPC techniques.

Today we’re going to branch out and cover several other sources of paid web traffic…

(Watch this video…)

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Main points:

  • Paid traffic is more scalable than free traffic, and it’s on demand.

  • If you want to get rich online with no product and no website, I recommend becoming a paid traffic expert. (But I don’t recommend having no product or website)

  • About those Cheap Traffic/Hits Sites…

    Their traffic generally comes from:
    Pop-ups
    Pop-unders
    Interstitials
    Expired domains

    Some of them are scams, some are legitimate. Results are generally sub-par, due to poor quality traffic. This traffic will skew your statistics because it doesn’t convert well.

  • Offline Media Buying

    Newspapers
    www.newspaperadvertising.com
    www.mediabids.com
    www.advertisingresults.com
    www.usnewspapers.com

    Magazines
    Find a magazine that YOUR potential customers are reading.

    Radio
    www.strategicmediainc.com
    www.bid4spots.com
    www.wholesaletvandradioads.com

    TV
    www.sharktv.com
    www.cheaptvspots.com
    www.google.com/adwords/tvads/ (Recommended to start with)

    Direct Mail

    You can buy targeted lists and send them unsolicited mail, and you won’t be accused of spamming.

    Direct mail is a great way to deliver a sales letter, and often works best for medium to big ticket items.

    Use postcards to drive traffic to a lead capture page.

    Tips:

    Test your offer with online traffic before investing in offline media.

    For all offline media, be sure to use a short, memorable URL.

    Sneaky tip: If you advertise in well-known media (such as New York Times, NBC network, Entrepreneur Magazine, etc), you can say on your website “As seen in…”

  • Online Media Buying

    In the Internet marketing world, “media buying” most often implies display advertising (banners, aka image ads). However, online media buying can include pop-ups, email, text links, video ads, widgets, and other new media.

    Banner Advertising

    Banners have traditionally been the biggest source of paid traffic on the Internet.

    Usually sold using CPM pricing model (Cost per 1000 impressions).

    Option 1) Deal directly with website owners. Find a high-traffic site in your niche, and negotiate to put a banner on it.

    Option 2) Use an ad network. (This is how to get millions of ad impressions)

    Test your ad using an ad network that has PPC or small CPM commitment:
    www.google.com/adwords/displaynetwork/ (Recommended place to start)
    www.adbrite.com

    Take winning campaigns to high volume display ad networks…
    zedo.com
    pulse360.com
    burstmedia.com
    cpxinteractive.com
    traffiq.com
    advertising.com (AOL)
    tribalfusion.com
    valueclick.com

    Warning: Even the paid traffic experts lose a lot of money on most campaigns before making money. You have to have some liquidity to be able to play at this level, AND I do not recommend attempting it until you have studied it in more depth.

    Recommended Training: Media Buys Coach

    CPV (Cost Per View)

    Also known as PPC (Pay per view), CPV is another pricing model used in media buying. Most commonly used for pop-ups. Also for some video ads, toolbar ads, and ads that appear
    in software and computer games.

    CPV networks…
    trafficvance.com
    directcpv.com
    mediatraffic.com
    clicksor.com
    stumbleupon.com/ads/

    Recommended Training: PPV Playbook

    Facebook Ads

    Display advertising, with a unique slant. Access to hundreds of millions of people, and you can really target your key demographics.

    Log into your own Facebook account, and then click on the Advertising link:

    www.facebook.com/advertising

    PPC and CPM pricing available.

    Recommended Training: Facebook Ads Guide

    Text Links

    One of the most controversial forms of advertising on the Internet. While it can be a good source of traffic, search engines like Google don’t want you to be able to boost your search engine ranking by buying a bunch of links. If they find out that you are paying for links, or participating in any type of linking scheme, they may severely penalize your website in their rankings.

    Option 1) Deal directly with website owners. Find website in your niche, and negotiate with them for a link. This will probably not get you in trouble, as long as it appears to be a voluntary link.

    Option 2) Use a text link broker. There are tons of them, just search. But keep in mind that paid links through brokers are generally not permanent links. Therefore I do not recommend it for long-term SEO purposes.

    Option 3) Donate to charity. Non-profit websites are reputable and often carry significant authority with Google. Many of them will give you a link back to your site if you make a donation (you may need to ask).

    Video Advertising

    Pre-rolls, mid-rolls, post-rolls, overlays, etc.

    Prerolls are the most common right now. Viewers hate them, but they’ve proven to be effective (perhaps 10-20X higher CTR than banners). Mostly sold using a CPM price model, but you will find some PPC, PPV, and CPA.

    Video networks/agencies:
    tremormedia.com
    brightroll.com
    spotxchange.com
    adap.tv
    yume.com
    adotube.com

    Or you can deal directly with video publishers who post videos on their own websites and/or 3rd party hosts such as Youtube. You can negotiate placement of ads such as…

    -Preroll ads
    -In-video endorsements
    -Banners or text links next to the embedded video
    -Link in the Youtube description box

    Paid Blog Posts/Reviews

    Warning: Search engines may view this similarly to paid text links.

    Sources include…
    payperpost.com
    sponsoredreviews.com
    smorty.com
    reviewme.com
    blogsvertise.com

    Paid Social Media

    aka “Social media sponsorship”.

    Similar to paid blogging, but shorter 🙂

    You can pay people to post about your product in their social pages. Some agencies are now offering services such as: sponsoredtweets.com

    Paid Email

    Do NOT even consider spamming or buying a bunch of email addresses.

    -Place ads in existing email newsletters
    -Solo ads (much more effective than smaller ads)

    I generally get solo ads by dealing directly with other marketers in my niche. There are also many companies that offer solo ads, but proceed with caution because the quality of the lists can vary greatly. Some have terrible response rates, but are also very cheap, so the important thing is ROI (and not being accused of spamming!).

    Important tip: For ALL endorsements and sponsorships (via video, blog, social media, email, etc) make sure you follow the FTC guidelines. Paid endorsements/sponsorships must be disclosed.

    Expired Domains

    Expired domains with existing traffic can be a good source of traffic. However, it can be difficult to monetize that traffic, unless the domain fits your niche perfectly. An alternative to redirecting the traffic would be to build mini-sites on expired domains and monetize the niches that they originally served.

    Expired domain sources:
    dropday.com
    freshdrop.net
    justdropped.com
    pool.com
    olddomains.net
    snapnames.com
    Godaddy auctions
    Ebay.com

  • This has not been an exhaustive list. There are many other types of paid advertising you can do online such as…

    -paid directories
    -paid classified ads
    -Ebay listings (for physical products)
    -affiliate driven traffic (We’ll be covering this in depth)
    -running your own CPA offers
    -countless other advertising opportunities

    Action steps:

    1) Decide if you want to invest in web traffic/advertising at this time.

    2) If yes… set a budget and start with one source.

    3) Make sure you’re tracking everything.

    We’ll begin learning about SEO in the next lesson.

    As always, you are welcome to post your questions and comments below 🙂

    Have a great day!

  • 86 thoughts on “LESSON #75: Paid Traffic Sources (Other than PPC)

    1. Steve

      Hi Eric,

      If you have time for a quick critique of my iPad niche site, it would be much appreciated.

      http://hidePad.com

      Also, can you recommend a good service for making high quality banners/creatives specifically to be displayed on iPads only? Thanks!

      Steve

      Reply
    2. Micah

      Hello Steve,

      That is a very slick site! Great use of video as well.

      Eric often hires programmers at http://www.rentalcoders.com/ when he needs some quick work done very inexpensively.

      When you find a highly rated creatives person, they should be able to meet your needs when you send them the appropriate dimensions:
      1024 × 768 pixels

      Reply
    3. abdul

      Hi Eric! Good Day & You are Great Teacher as always..and always be..

      I am starting to use yr Commission Autopilot software..

      my question..

      1. How to see that my doc really go into the sites..like scribd, docstoc..etc..how instant it goes or some waiting time?
      2. at the software..Com. Multiplier..we have to choose a category..how certain that we can get correct matches with the site’s category..means if we choose ‘business’ than it goes into the site’s business category..or maybe some sites dont have this exact category?

      i am in trial run now..to gauge its effectiveness or to see how its works?? i am sure you will have the full knowledge in developing the software..

      good day..

      ABdul

      Reply
    4. Micah

      Hello Abdul,

      Paul would be happy to answer any of your questions at the following email:
      support[at]commissionautopilot.com

      Reply
    5. Ben

      Hey this is really good info. I just started doing research on paid traffic via google and this site came up. I just started putting up some Amazon sites and tracked them for two months and so far three of the sites are earning alright. They are earning about $.02, $.05, and $.10 per per “session” (as defined by statpress WP plugin). That’s including spending $10 on marketing a month. So I was thinking of finding a way to see if I can find paid traffic of less than $.02, $.05, and $.10 per visitor. I’ll take a look at the resources you listed. Even if the margins are small, I don’t mind paying $1 to make $1.25 and scale up 🙂 As you said, paid traffic is scalable! Do you have any recommendations for paid traffic in the Computer audio niche, Kitchen appliance niche, Home Appliance niche, and Hiking/Outdoors niche?
      Again, fantastic fantastic post – I will read many times and digest!!

      Reply
    6. Ben

      p.s. sorry for the REALLY poor formatting of my above comment. So excited

      I
      Forgot
      The
      Newlines

      😀

      Reply
    7. Micah

      Hello Ben,

      As with any niche, you might want to start with smaller bids for your clicks. Then, track your commissions as you begin to bid more.

      Paying more for clicks will give you better ad position, and potentially more traffic, but may reach a point where advertising cuts more into your commissions. With enough tracking, you should be able to find the right balance.

      Reply
    8. Connie

      Well, all of these online business things , Wow I am pretty sure this is over my head!

      Reply
    9. Paul H

      Hi Eric,
      I appreciate your lessons very much..thank you.Can you give me a bit of your advice so I can go ahead please?
      I am considering buying an exact match domain but with the suffix 1 (number) at the end ie: bodybuilders1.com Would I achieve success with this sort of domain name or are suffix numbers no good? It has the exact wording in the domain which is what we want..yeh?
      I would appreciate your thoughts on this please
      Thanks

      Reply
    10. Micah

      Hello Paul,

      This strategy has the potential to make people think that your site is not the official domain for your niche.

      It’s usually better to find names that aren’t in use yet.

      Reply
    11. Dejan

      Very good source of traffic are also ezines. The only problem is to find really good ezines with responsive list. If anyone knows for some good ezine please let me know. I would really appreciate…

      Reply
    12. Micah

      Hello Vijay,

      It’s not that hard to get clicks with PPC. If you aren’t getting any clicks on your ads, you might want to tweak your ad copy until you do.

      Or, you might need to choose a niche that more people would be searching for.

      Reply
    13. Danny Chiquito

      Hi guys, i have not idea how i end up in your site but I am so glad i did….wow, what a great information you have here.

      How can I see all Lessons in order?

      Thanks,

      Danny Chiquito
      skype: danny.chiquito

      Reply
    14. Eric Post author

      Here is what the seller says in his auction:

      All traffic is Paid Traffic : 98.5% . Traffic comes from an ad network we are buying visitors in the form of Interstitial and Popup Traffic. Most of the traffic is from Asian countries. Traffic cost is $1000/month.

      Basically it’s low quality cheap traffic. Interstitial and popup traffic is usually low quality because people don’t like getting interrupted. Also asian traffic is usually poor quality for English language websites. So he’s basically figured out how to get dirt cheap traffic, AND monetize it. Is is possible? Absolutely. I’m always skeptical because there’s a lot of BS on flippa. But it sounds reasonable. The guy said it wasn’t easy to figure it out. And the site is only making $3k-6k net per month which is pretty believable based on his story.

      Reply
    15. bffzone

      It’s easy to overlook print advertising in newspapers, on postcards etc. even though it is an obvious choice. I guess living in a digital world makes you forget the other sources out there.

      Reply
    16. Barbara

      Hi, a bit unrelated, but which lesson concerns itself with CPA?

      thanks

      Reply
    17. Robert Shields

      Hi Eric,

      I have always been under the impression that it is illegal to ‘steal’ someone’s name in the U.S.A. Or would that be only if the name is used in the domain and nothing else, e.g. charliesheen.com? Or perhaps I am thinking of ‘brands’, e.g. googleeverydaytogetbadbreath.com.

      Just my thoughts.

      Great posting, as usual.

      Robert

      Reply
    18. Sue

      Eric,

      Thank you for explaining the do’s and don’ts of specific paid traffic sources. This lesson covers an extensive
      amount of paid traffic sources for targeted customers. I really wasn’t aware of all the sources there are until
      I viewed this particular lesson. It’s quite impressive.

      Also, thank you for taking the time to put this all together since there is quite a bit of detail here
      and lots of great information too.

      Have a great weekend!

      Reply
    19. Paul Warner

      This was a terrific lesson. I thought I had heard of most of the sites I would have to look into for getting traffic and then
      he comes up with lists like this and I have to admit 90% I have never heard of.. It is exciting learning about these sites or methods in getting traffic. Just no end to the incredible Internet. Paul

      Reply
    20. Dave

      Ok– so I’ve seen a few people advocating the Social Lead Freak software to use for highly targeted FD ads. Essentially, from what I can tell, it’s a scraper.

      Isn’t the use of scrapers a little suspect? Borderline illegal/ unethical?

      Love to hear your thoughts.
      -Dave

      Reply
      1. Eric Post author

        Generally yes- I’d be leery of scrapers. In some cases they may be illegal/unethical due to ripping off copyrighted content. Another big problem with using a scraper software that was sold to the public is that they often quickly run into technical problems as the content source tries to block them.

        That having been said, scraping in general is sort of a grey area, and there are also some good and ethical applications of the practice.

        The first example I like to point out is Google. Most people don’t realize that the “don’t be evil” company basically built their business by scraping the web. Before website owners even knew what was happening, Google scraped up their copyrighted content and began publishing it as “results”. I could cite many examples of well-known and respected companies whose business models rely heavily on scraping. I just saw an article yesterday about a start-up that is scraping and analyzing every public photo from Facebook to use for advertising data.

        There are also legitimate uses of scraping, such as curating content that is expressly allowed to be used.

        Reply
    21. Adam

      Hey

      Thanks for this nice post. I think you forgot to add LeadImpact, which is probably the best right after TrafficVance who rejected me 🙂 Anyway, here is little something that should help you and your readers. I didn’t create it and I would like to give credit to the person who did, but I don’t know who it is. http://www.mindmeister.com/102423822/traffic-sources

      Cheers

      Reply
    22. phil

      Dear Eric:
      Thanks for the gifts and the Tips lessons.
      I have some questions for you, if I may.
      You, together with Paul Counts and P. Wellman, send me links to a number of courses, material, etc. My first question is: how could I (and anyone, for that matter) buy all those products?
      Im a newbie so all those offers, that you introduce as indispensable for me, just confuse me, and I always remain with the doubt that they are not really necessary, and I know I cannot buy them all: I understand you just have to sell to make money so certainly you push everything regardless of what I REALLY need.
      Because, what do I REALLY need, Eric?
      I would like to have a COMPLETE training about how to get and sell PLRs relevant to the “how to make money online” theme. Complete also with tutoring on PPC/bing advertising my sales.
      I already know how to make sales funnels with Kompozer and Filezille but a little more training on that would not hurt
      So would you have something down that line for me? a REAL HONEST PRODUCT to help me not just you?
      Im closing this message with a comment on your tips/lessons: they are very good but sent too frequently, I think one lesson a week would be enough.
      Thanks for the attention.
      Best/Phil

      Reply
      1. Eric Post author

        The top things you need are: a domain, web hosting, an email host (aka autoresponder). That’s about it. Beyond that, it just depends on what you will USE in your business. I recommend many products designed to help with your business, but not all of them are for everyone. Thanks!

        Reply

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