You basically have 2 choices for generating traffic to your affiliate marketing website. You can either pay for it or you can get it for free. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising is pricey but the results are almost instantaneous. Organic search traffic is free and it takes some time for it to develop. Both have their pros and cons so let’s look at a couple of the differences.
PPC Advertising –
PPC advertising works best for fast sales and trendy topics – topics that are only going to be on the radar for a short amount of time. For example, it’s almost Back-To-School time and you know a lot of college kids are going to need a new laptop. For a few weeks this will be a hot topic and then it will drop off again until the holidays. If you want to take advantage of that quick flurry of activity, then PPC advertising is the best way to drive traffic to your site without having to wait for articles and posts to get indexed and work their way to the top of the list.
With PPC advertising you create an ad, like a Google AdSense ad, and bid on keywords relevant to your niche. Each time someone clicks on your ad you owe Google, or whatever advertising method you’re using, a certain amount of money, based on your bid. It’s a great way to generate targeted traffic – the searcher wouldn’t have clicked on your ad unless he was definitely interested in your product.
On the downside, if they don’t buy, then you’ve just paid for a non-productive click. PPC advertising can help you make a lot of quick cash if you know what you’re doing – and if you have a sales page that converts. In the beginning there will be a learning curve but those who’ve managed to get the hang of it swear it’s the best method for generating traffic.
Organic Search –
If you’ve the time and patience then organic search may be the method you prefer. It’s basically free – the only fees involved would be if you paid for outsourcing articles or linking services. Organic search means letting searchers find your site through the search engines – without advertising. Which means you’ll have to do the work to promote your site with article marketing, bookmarking, etc. and have the patience to wait while your site gets indexed and moves up the list. While not as fast at producing income as PPC, you can generally expect to start seeing sales within the first 6 to 8 weeks. Sooner if you do even more promotion.
