Traffic: Quantity vs Quality

I've been giving a lot of thought lately to the question of which is more important, quantity of traffic or quality of traffic when it comes to Internet marketing. Let's face it, content may be King but traffic is the Queen and we all know she wears the royal pants anyway, right? So let's dive into this topic and see where we end up, shall we?

Quantity of Traffic

There are many places you can get traffic online. Some are free, most are not. You'll see advertising selling anywhere from a few hundred visitors per day to hundreds of thousands of visitors per month. But is this type of traffic worth the cost? How does this play out in your ROI calculations? Let's look at one example to see what I'm talking about.

A traffic package I recently purchased cost $22 for 7k hits to my website. At the time of this writing, almost 3k hits have been delivered to the URL of my choice. So, how is that working out for me? I've had three sign-ups for the program I was promoting. Well, that's a 0.10% conversion rate. You'll see in a minute why that's pretty abysmal and how to tell which part of the funnel is "broken."

Quality of Traffic

Now what do I mean by quality of traffic, you might ask. Well, quality traffic would be well targeted traffic that is drilled down specifically enough to your target niche that when they click on your ad's link they are genuinely interested in your offer, kind of like website SEO. So much so, in fact, that they will present with a much higher conversion rate on your gateway, splash page, or squeeze page. How do I know? Here's a great example from a campaign I recently ran on Bing Ads.

For starters, my total cost all-in was $54.83 for the entire run of two months. During that time, my ads (I was testing and tweaking too, to be fair) were seen 35,928 times (impressions). Out of all those eyeballs, 364 clicked through to my gateway page. That comes out to a 1.01% click-thru rate. Not the best, but it was an aggregate of all the ads. My best performing ad saw a CTR of 1.10%. Now, let's take this a step further. Out of those 364 who clicked on my ad, 34 became members of the program I was promoting. This means that the gateway page was converting at a whopping CTR of 9.34%!!! So, for me, that's an ROI or perhaps a cost of $1.61 per new affiliate. Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Now THIS represents quality traffic.

How to Evaluate Your Traffic Source

So how can you evaluate your traffic source? Well, first you have to take control of some of the variables. For example, the gateway page I used in both of the traffic source trials I mentioned above was the same page. Therefore, I eliminated the gateway page as being a problem. With one traffic source it was barely converting at all, indicating that most likely the traffic wasn't very targeted or maybe random, at best. In the other example the page was converting almost 1000% better, indicating much better traffic.

There are other variables to consider, especially if you are running ads in different spots like Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, etc.. For example, how targeted is your follower base? Is it random, or is it people who share a common interest in what you are promoting? I've recently started a new Twitter account just so I can focus on a new, more targeted, demographic. Is it working? I don't know yet. If it does, I'll definitely share it with you! My experience thus far with Twitter is that the traffic isn't converting well, so I suspect my personal account isn't very targeted.

Another thing to think about is the advertisement itself. Is there a strong call to action? Does your ad use words that bring attention to your offer? Do you create a sense of urgency? Don't be afraid to try different ads and even tweak the wording on ads until you get one that starts clicking for you. There are professional copy writers out there who will write ads for you but most programs that you're promoting will provide sample ads for you to get started with. Use them and run with it. You never know, one of them might be the best ad you'll ever try. That's the case with one program I'm promoting!

Conclusion

What's the bottom line, right? Sorry I had to drag you through all those examples, but I think it's important to help you see that it really is the quality of the traffic that matters most. At this rate, my 7k visits will likely only generate 9 or 10 new affiliates for an average cost of around $2.20. I'm running my Bing Ads again and expect to get the same rate as before, about $1.64 each. The one requires thousands of loosely targeted (maybe) visitors, while the other just requires a few hundred of the right visitors (more on Bing Ads and PPC targeting in another blog post).

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I finally finished!

Stop the presses! Something exciting has finally happened. I finally finished an e-book that has been five years or more in the making. I had the idea years ago after I began working from home online and everyone would ask me how I do that or how they could make money online. Granted, it's not for everyone and it can certainly test your tenacity, but for those who truly want to make REAL money online, the e-book is finally here. I'm releasing it in a "classified report" format. Sounds more exciting that way, doesn't it? Well, I think so anyway. So, before I get all wordy here and just babble on, here's the link to my new e-book, which you can pick up for free ... How To Earn Real Money Online 2016 Edition

How To Start An Online Business For Free, Today!

I know the title sounds hype-y, but here's why I used it. I was approached recently by someone who is is involved in several online ventures. This person has had great success ... much better than I have had at this point, to be honest. I knew this person was legit because we used to be co-workers of sorts, when we both worked remotely for a startup out of Sana Monica.

What Does Training Cost?

So, when this person recommended a training program to me on how to do online business, SEO, traffic, Amazon sales, etc., I was very interested. I knew that she wasn't blowing smoke up my rear and that whatever was contained in this training program was material that she had found extremely helpful on her path to a five figure a month income (yes, that's five figures per month). If you knew the person was legit, who wouldn't be interested?

The problem came when I watched a few videos an was ready to sign on the dotted line. So what's the catch, right? Well, the training isn't free. Not even a sampler, lol. It's an annual fee of $8000 OR a monthly payment of $700. Wowza! Now I ask you, who has enough disposable income to afford that? I certainly don't. It's unfortunate, too, because I can see through her success that whatever she's doing is working. I just don't have that kind of cashflow to put into a business expenditure right now.

Why Is Training Even Necessary? 

So what is someone supposed to do if they want to start an internet business? I thought one of the big things about starting an internet business rather than a brick-and-mortar business was the cost, right? Grab a domain and some hosting for a few bucks a month and you're off to the races. Unfortunately, it doesn't quite work that way. It can, but it's rare. To be successful in an online business requires some knowledge that we aren't born with and therefore must be learned. Thus, training is very important.

The good news for those who can't afford big-ticket training like the system I described above, there are cheaper alternatives. Are they teaching the same things? I don't know. But I do know they have successful people, just like the aforementioned group. You have to ask yourself this ... is it better to get started and do what I can at the financial level that I'm at now, or give up on my dream and quit. (Hint: NO QUITTING!!!)

What's the Answer?

So, what's my solution? Wealthy Affiliate, of course. Here's why. Wealthy Affiliate allows you to start for free. That's right. You can start your very own online business today, for free. You'll even get two websites of your very own to work with. This also includes step-by-step video tutorials on how to pick your niche, how to pick keywords, how to set up your WordPress site.

It really doesn't get any easier than this unless you've got the money to pay someone to do it for you (in which case, contact me, lol). Then, when you're ready, to you can move to the premium version, which has tons of advanced training and live chat answers, etc.. Of course, the premium version isn't free, but at $47 a month I think it's a lot more affordable than anything else I've looked at.

Check it out. See what you think. Set up a website, or two. Let me know what you think. Have any question, let me know about those as well. I truly want 2016 to be the best year yet ... for both of us.