When it comes to getting traffic online, you can pay for it, or get it for free. There are pros and cons to both free and paid traffic, and you should know a few things about both methods. Below we will discuss paid traffic vs free traffic.
- Free Traffic vs Paid Traffic: The Methods- When it comes to free traffic, some of the most popular methods include search engine optimization (SEO) and social media. For example, if you choose to use SEO, then you will optimize your website, blog or content, for the search engines, with the hope that your content will end up in a good place in the search engines’ search results, which will usually result in search engine traffic being sent to your site.
As for social media, a good example of trying to generate free traffic is by joining a few social media platforms, building up your profiles and then trying to get traffic from your profiles to your site. Other free methods of trying to generate free traffic includes video marketing, article marketing and so on.
As for paid traffic, there are a few methods that you can turn to, such as Pay-per-click (PPC), which involves you paying an ad serving platform to serve your ad and you pay per click, hence the name for this form of advertising. A good example of using PPC is when you join Adwords, and then you pay Google to serve your ads, which will generate traffic to your site via those ads.
Social media platforms such as MySpace, Facebook and even Plenty Of Fish, allow you to place ads on their site, but you will pay to do so. Some sites offers you different ways to pay for traffic, such as Facebook, which allows you to choose a post to sponsor and that post will be shown to other Facebook users that meet your ad criteria.
Some people turn to YouTube to advertise their site for money. Another form of paid traffic is media buys and PPV (Pay Per View). As you can see, there are a number of ways to get paid traffic, as well as free traffic, but not all of the ways we discussed. However, the methods above are some of the most common ones that are used.
- Free Traffic: Pros And Cons- When it comes to paid traffic vs free traffic, many people thing free traffic wins because for the simple fact that it is free. This means that you don’t need to spend money on ads or come up with a budget or anything like that. All you have to do is put time and effort into your strategy and you could be getting free traffic to your website.
Another pro is that you can leave your campaign alone for a few days and not have to really worry about anything. Sometimes that is not the case with paid traffic. As previously mentioned, if your efforts pay off, then you can enjoy getting free traffic, while leaving campaigns alone for days at a time.
Perhaps the best thing about free traffic is that it can come in time after time. In other words, it can still come even after you have stopped working. For example, if you use SEO and your site gets a good rank, then people may come to your site day after day, thanks to your site having a good place in the search engines’ search results. These are just a few of the pros that free traffic offer you.
However, there are also some cons, and some of those cons include a lot of effort and it may end up being a waste of time. For example, you may works hours and hours on end trying to get free traffic, only to find out that your campaign and effort didn’t generate any results. In other words, success is not guaranteed with free traffic. Plus, paid traffic is usually not that easy to scale.
- Paid Traffic: The Pros And Cons- When it comes to paid traffic, you will enjoy getting traffic very fast. Not only that, but before you end up spending too much money or time on a campaign, you can spend a little bit of money and test it out first. Perhaps the best thing about paid traffic is that you can reach your targeted market right away, and almost effortlessly, and you can reach them via specific keywords.
As for the cons, you will need to spend money before you make money and there is no way around this. Not only that, but you will likely need to stick with a very strict budget, at least until you figure out what works and what doesn’t. Also, you need to wait for payouts before you can run more traffic, at least that is the case with many business owners and website owners who turn to paid traffic.
- Paid Traffic vs Free Traffic: Which One Should You Choose- By now you may be wondering which one you should choose? The truth is that when it comes to paid and free traffic, one is not better than the other, as they both can deliver you amazing results, and they both have pros and cons to them.
However, if money is a major issue and you don’t feel comfortable with spending money on advertising in order to get paid traffic, then you might want to try getting free traffic. However, if you don’t mind spending a little bit of money, and you want traffic almost instantly, then you might want to give paid traffic a try first.
As you can see, when it comes to paid traffic vs free traffic, they both provide you with many benefits. It is up to you to decide which one you should try first, but it may be in your best interest to use both methods. If you use both methods, then you can determine which one delivers the better results, and then stick with it.