One of the most asked questions on any board has got to be, where can I buy traffic for my website and who's reputable? The pat answer is 'don't do it' followed by mudane comments about how if the traffic was any good they wouldn't be selling it anyway, or it never worked for me, so it must be a waste of money. Although I do agree with those answers in general, the truth is that there are ways to utililze even the worst quality traffic. However, that's not what I want to talk about today. The point I'd like to make is that when we say 'buy traffic' we are really talking about any form of traffic that costs us money and is not strictly limited to broker traffic that usually is in the form of exit popunders, blind links and 404 errors. Pay-per-click advertising is certainly 'buying traffic' and as most of us know, can be among the best you can find. Another way to 'buy traffic' is to pay for advertising. It can include PPC, but would also include buying text links and banners spots as well as offline advertising, like print publications. If you are paying to get a customer in the door of your website, you're 'buying traffic'.

Personally, I've found buying advertising to be the easiest way to get good targetted traffic and you don't have to worry about it going away -- like SE traffic can when Google decides to dance -- unless you stop paying for it. Certainly, you'll need to keep track of your ROI and drop any advertising that doesn't work, but once you find a good source, as long as you continue to pay, you'll continue to get good quality traffic.

The first thing that comes to mind when someone thinks about buying advertising is to look for big sites that have lots of traffic and have an 'advertising' link on their site somewhere. The problem with that is that usually, they've priced the advertising at the point where it's not going to be cost effective for the average webmaster and is primarily useful for large companies with very big advertising budgets that are interested more in branding than direct financial results and have allocated a certain portion of their advertising budget for that purpose. So, now you're probably wondering how you find websites to advertise on if they don't sell advertising already. The answer is that almost any webmaster will sell advertising on his site but doesn't actively do it because he doesn't think he has enough traffic to justify it. The way I look at it, if your site has enough traffic that it can produce even only a few sales a month for me, you've got enough traffic. When you find a website that you like and you think is getting enough traffic to make it worth your time to pursue, send an email to the webmaster and ask them if they'd consider letting you advertise on their site. Note: If a website has an Alexa ranking of 200,000 or higher, they're worth a shot, IMO.

Anyone can buy traffic this way and you don't need a large advertising budget to consider trying it. The truth is that spent wisely, even $200 a month can produce excellent results and if you reninvest some of what you make in profits each month, you should be able to add to your budget as each month goes by. In the beginning, you might spend $200 a month to make $500, but soon, you'll soon be spending $2000 a month to make $5000 and eventually you'll be spending $20k a month or more. The old saying "It takes money to make money" is very true, but it doesn't mean you need to be rich to get started.

So, the next time you're out surfing the net, looking for sites to trade traffic with, or checking out the competition, or just looking for some good porn to... well, never mind that last one, I know none of us actually look for porn to jerk off to. wink, wink, nudge, nudge -- keep on the lookout for advertising opportunities. If you find a website that has some logical synergy with one of your sites and they aren't already promoting something similar to your site, fire off an email. Tell the webmaster you like his site and tell them that you'd be interested in paying them to put a text or banner ad in a good spot on their site. You'll be surprised how many webmasters will be happy to take as little as $50 a month.