Why Buying Web Traffic Is Rarely a Good Idea

All websites could benefit from a little more traffic. Irrespective of how successful your online business may be, more is always better. After all, no right-minded business owner would happily turn down the prospect of additional sales.

With competition in all sectors at an all-time high, businesses worldwide are resorting to various weird and wonderful tactics to boost web traffic. One of which being to buy traffic in bulk.

 

On paper, it sounds like a relatively simple tactic with obvious appeal. You hand your cash over to a service provider, who in turn sends a predetermined number of visitors your way. It could be 5,000, 50,000 or even 500,000 visitors – a quick, easy and affordable boost that could make a huge difference.

Or at least, so it seems.

Think of it this way – if it was really so easy and effective to buy web traffic, wouldn’t we all be doing it? Or to put it another way, if it was possible to buy all the web traffic you need at an affordable price, why waste money on conventional marketing and advertising?

The short answer is the obvious answer – it isn’t quite as easy as it seems. In fact, it’s comparatively rare for buying web traffic to be an advisable course of action.

The following four reasons going some way to explain why:

1. Zero targeting

First of all, there’s nothing to gain by sending a whole bunch of entirely untargeted traffic to your website. Sending hundreds of thousands of visitors your way is all well and good, but what if not a single one of these visitors have any real interest in what it is you do? Unqualified prospects are about as much use to your business as no prospects whatsoever. Hence, any traffic you buy that isn’t meticulously targeted may prove to have zero value.

2. Heavy penalties

In most instances, those who sell bulk web traffic provide their services by way of automated bots. Or to put it another way, the visitors that come your way aren’t in fact visitors at all. At least, not the kinds of human visitors of any real value to your business. Not only does this mean little to no positive impact, it also leaves you and your website wide open to heavy penalties. When the likes of Google and the other major search engines detect these kinds of tactics, they’re not in the habit of letting them go unpunished.

3. Scam potential

This is also an area of the digital marketing spectrum that is rife with scam tactics. Find yourself at the mercy of a substandard service provider and the consequences could be catastrophic.

4. No guarantees
Along with all this, there are absolutely no guarantees that you won’t be wasting every penny of your investment. They may promise to deliver hundreds of thousands of profitable visitors, but there are no guarantees they’ll deliver even one. And if you’re unhappy with their services, there’s precisely nothing you can do about it.

If you want to drive more visitors to your website, there are hundreds of safer and more effective avenues to explore. Nevertheless, if you do decide to go ahead and buy website traffic in bulk, you need to be extremely careful when choosing a provider.

Some Top Tips For Making Money Online

First, the good news: absolutely anyone can make money online if they learn how to go about it. The not-so-good news? It takes time, effort and a lot of trial and error before you get it right. If you’re a start-up online business with a very limited budget then you will naturally want to do as much research as possible before taking the plunge. This way, you can maximise what assets you have.

 

Here are some of the key strategies you can employ to set you off on the right foot:

Research the Market: You may think you have a great product that’s going to sell like hotcakes, but how do you know until you’ve tested it out? Don’t waste time and money by taking your idea straight to market until you have ironed out any kinks, or found out if there is even an audience for it. Get feedback by carrying out market research with potential customers. 

Why not try running a campaign on crowdfunding platforms such as Kickstarter to gauge pre-orders? This way, you will know the potential of your product and also get some idea how to market it online.

Know Your Competitors: Do your homework and find out everything you can about your competitors in the market – both larger and smaller players. What kinds of customers are they targeting and what kinds of services do they offer and is there anything you can learn from the way they do business online? Is there anything unique you can bring to the table? Once you ‘know your enemy’, you can work out ways to differentiate your brand, and this leads us on to the next point.

Marketing Plan: Once you have discovered both what your competitors can do well and what they are lacking, it is time to develop a sound marketing strategy that plays to your relative strengths. Your action plan should begin with an idea of what you want to achieve (whether that’s a turnover figure, customer numbers and so on), and then you can break it down step by step in a way that will help you achieve this. 

Assuming you are working to a limited budget to begin with, think about getting your head around free marketing methods such as blogging, social media or article marketing. If you do this right it can really pay off, but it does take time so be patient.

Build A Strong Website: In this day and age, not only is it absolutely vital for a company to have a website (particularly, of course, if you want to do business online!) but you also have to spend a great deal of time making it look professional and update it on a regular basis. 

Make sure that your products and services are clearly displayed and described and don’t over-clutter it with unnecessary images, text or videos. Above all, ensure you invest in a good check-out system that makes it easy for clients to buy your products. If it’s slow, the modern customer can quickly lose patience and go elsewhere.





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