Paid Traffic

Paid Traffic Methods

This section of the report is the most valuable to you. Even if you don’t have the intention of running paid traffic campaigns right away, understanding the various methods, their advantages, and how to use them will be key to your business planning and preparations as you grow.

Solo Ads

Solo ads are stand-alone advertisements that are sent out to subscribers on an email list in a specific niche. This is a good way to reach a lot of people at once, without spending a lot of money.

A great tool for finding solo ads that will work for your business is: Safe Swaps. This is a service designed to connect people looking for ad space to those who have the ad space to offer. The service is verified and helps protect you against scams, which is why I recommend you use it compared to going out on your own and finding individuals.

You can start with a free “Guest” account, and reach out to 

people who accept guest ad swaps. There’s a “Prime” membership status that runs for $29.99/month, with discounts for purchasing more than one month at a time. The paid account status opens up more possibilities for solo ad exchanges, and is what I typically recommend.

You’ll be able to look for people in your niche offering 

advertising to their customers. For this to be effective, zero in on your niche as closely as possible, so you’ll have a higher chance of conversion once the ad goes out. The specifics of your campaign, such as price and number of views, etc. will vary from buyer to buyer.

Banner Advertising

Banner advertising is also a common method of driving traffic

 to a website. In this type of advertising, you use a graphic banner placed on another person’s website to help drive traffic to your own.

The Internet Advertising Bureau recommends using one of 

the following eight sizes for your banner ads:

·        486 x 60 Pixels (Full Banner)

·        392 x 72 Pixels (Full Banner with Vertical Navigation Bar)

·        234 x 60 Pixels (Half Banner)

·        120 x 240 Pixels (Vertical Banner)

·        125 x 125 Pixels (Square Button)

·        120 x 90 Pixels (Button 1)

·        120 x 60 Pixels (Button 2)

·        88 x 31 Pixels (Micro Button)

It is a good idea to have banners available in multiple sizes,

 to ensure you can meet advertisers requests.

For banner advertising to be effective, your banner ads must 

be placed on highly trafficked, niche specific websites, where you know people will see them. What you’ll be paying for is the placement of your ads on websites.

The best way to handle this is to sign up with a banner 

advertising service, like AdClickMedia, to control where your ads go, and the number of clicks you’ll be paying for. It also prevents the chance of being scammed, when compared to going out and looking for websites to exchange banner ads with on your own. Since this is also pay-per-click, you won’t be paying for ad impressions that don’t result in people going to your website.

When evaluating, make sure your ads are placed “above the

 fold” or where someone can see them without having to scroll on a website. This will enable greater visibility, which increases the chances of your campaign’s success.

To ensure your banner advertisement is effective, make sure 

they are aesthetically pleasing, and are sent to a landing page you can track for conversion rates. If you’re not a graphic designer, consider finding a freelancer who can design a set of banner ads for you.

Google AdWords

Google Ad-words is a popular pay-per-click (PPC) advertising option. Using this brings traffic to your website, by displaying a small ad next to the search engine results, along the sidebars, of the keywords you bid for. Your ad may also be displayed on relevant websites participating in the Google Ad-sense service, where they receive money every time their ads are clicked. You will not pay unless your ad is clicked, so you’re not spending money on ads that aren’t going to bring people to your website.

In order for this type of campaign to be useful, you’ll need to

 choose keywords that are very closely related to your niche/product/service, and choose a specific landing page to send your clickers to. If your keyword selection is not ideal, then you’ll be paying for clicks that will not convert to sales for you. Typically, you’ll spend money for a few days before really seeing any progress, so you’ll need to be prepared to run this campaign for at least a couple of weeks, if not a month.

The good thing about using Google Ad-words is, you can pick your keywords, and see how much each click will cost you, before you start running your campaign. You can also set a maximum daily budget, so you’ll never spend more than you can afford. Google will run your ads on those keywords until your daily budget is reached, and then stop until the following day. Keep a good eye on your campaign, so you can determine whether you need to adjust your keywords before you spend too much money. If you notice it doing really well, then you may want to consider increasing your budget, to boost it that much further.

Google Ad-words will also provide their own internal tracking system from within your account, so you can see how well your ads are performing, and how many clicks the ads are bringing you. Then, you can compare it with your own analytic data to see how well the campaign is working for you. We’ll talk more about ways you can ensure your paid traffic campaigns are working for you in the next section.

To use Google Adwords, create your free account. You may 

have a starter campaign already in your account.

Click “New Campaign” if you want to start from scratch. Or,

use the Starter campaign to familiarize yourself with its setup.

You’ll be able to choose whether you want the ads to be 

displayed just on Google’s search results, just on Google’s ad network partners (Gmail, Google Finance, YouTube, etc.) or on both. It’s a good idea to go with both, as this will maximize exposure, but remember, you’re paying for clicks, so it will also increase the likelihood of your ad being clicked.

You’ll be able to choose whether you want the ads to display 

on all devices, or just on computers, just on mobile phones, or just tablets. For best results, choose all devices. You’ll also be able to choose the location, your bid amounts for keywords and your daily budget.

There are lots of examples on their website which will teach you  how to  develop the actual ad content, and see examples of ads. You’ll also choose your keywords, and be able to estimate the search traffic to determine if those are the keywords you want to use. Google advises starting out with 10 to 20 keywords. If you’ve already done your research, you can import them from a spreadsheet.

 At this point, you’ll set you bids for clicks. You’ll be warned if your bid isn’t going to be high enough. When you’re satisfied with your bids, you can save and move to billing, or you can save the campaign and setup billing later.

Your campaign will not start running until you’ve put a

payment method in your account, so Google can automate billing. You can start and stop campaigns whenever you want, and you can save them for later.

Your hosting company may offer a certain amount of free 

credit after you’ve spent money on your campaign. Check you hosting control panel to see if you’re eligible for any of these offers.