Free Traffic is Expensive and Why Paid Traffic is Better

If you're following my online business adventures, then you may know some things about traffic. One thing I wanted to put out there for you to think about is that free traffic is not free.

Free traffic comes from your blog, from content, from social networks. It is mostly the same as "organic traffic" and it is really good, but it isn't free. Please don't make the mistake to think that this traffic is free.

In order for your content to get traffic, it needs to get promoted somehow. If you create a killer blogpost, it still needs to be promoted to the right audience. It needs to be shown to the people that would want to read it. After you spend time writing a blogpost, you may think that your job is done.

Maybe you think that you can just sit back and wait for people to come and start reading your blogposts. But that doesn't happen. At least it doesn't happen for a while. You have to work hard at promoting your blogpost. You need to post on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, then share it on forums, tell your friends about it, tell your family about it. You have to spend time getting that free traffic.

Free traffic costs you time. Lots of time. There are a couple of benefits to free organic traffic, but it is not free.

Another reason why free traffic isn't free is because not only does it cost you money in time. It is expensive because it takes a lot of time to bring results. After you publish your blogpost, you then need to spend hours and hours promoting it. Sometimes people come to the blogpost, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they will come weeks or months later. This delay can be very expensive!

If you want to see a series of articles I started writing about getting free traffic for your blog, check those out here: part 1, part 2. Just remember that if you don't spend money on traffic, you need to spend your time and effort.

Then you still have to wait for search engines to index the content and send the real organic traffic. This is the good organic traffic, but search engines can take a while to index and start sending visitors to it. Time is money and the slower things happen, the more money is lost or not made.

One more reason why free traffic can be really expensive is because it is very resource intensive to obtain, and the quality isn't the right level of quality. You can spend a couple hours promoting your blogpost in several Facebook groups, or Linkedin groups or Google Plus community and get a lot of people to visit your blogpost.

But are these really the people that will buy what you are selling? If they are not the right target audience, you're now wasting time bringing people to your blogpost, but they don't really want to read it. You're wasting your web hosting resources showing and hosting your website but you're showing it to the wrong people.

Think about this next time you're hesitant to buy traffic. I will explain why paid traffic is always better.

Paid traffic is targeted

Whether you buy traffic from banner ads, social media, solo ads or any other paid advertising system, you'll find that the heavy lifting is taken care of it for you.

You can select what type of traffic you want, most social media platforms that offer advertising let you select who will see your ad. When you buy a solo ad, you buy it from the people that sell the type of traffic you need. There is no guess work here.

In contrast, when you get free traffic you don't know if the clicks or visitors are actually interested in reading about your blogpost or product. Maybe a friend sent them the link, or they caught it by accident in your Twitter feed but they aren't really interested in that.

Paid traffic helps you budget better.

When you buy paid traffic, you know how much you're spending and how much you can spend in a week, or a month or whatever time period. You can adjust your budget this way. You can decide to spend $5.00 per day, or $30; but you always have control over this.

In contrast when you are trying to get free traffic, you don't know if you'll need to spend 2 hours, or 20 hours to get a certain amount of traffic. You don't know if you need to write 2 blogposts or post 7 updates on Twitter, or 5 photos in Instagram. Free traffic is ephemeral.

Paid traffic can be sourced relatively easily

To emphasize something I said earlier, paid traffic can be purchased time and time again. The sources might change but as long as there is Internet and people are selling something, you'll be able to buy traffic in some form or another.

In contrast, free traffic is tough to find and it is hard to figure things out whenever they change. For example, 5 years ago it was very easy to get free traffic from Twitter, now the hot social networks are Instagram and Snapchat but it's hard to figure out how to get traffic from those. You always have to be learning how free traffic works if you want to be good at it.

Paid traffic is fast

I have blogposts that have been read tens of thousands of times, and I have Youtube videos that have been viewed thousands upon thousands of times. Unfortunately most times, it takes weeks or months for that kind of traffic to happen organically. When you pay for traffic, you will see the traffic start arriving almost immediately. Solo ads are usually delivered within a week, Facebook ads can send you hundreds of clicks each day, Instagram ads give you traffic within 24 hours. Paid traffic is fast and measurable.

In conclusion

Next time you think about how to get more people to look at your offer, or your landing page, or your blogpost, perhaps you should consider a source of paid traffic. If you aren't sure how to use paid traffic, then do some research, learn one source first and use it. Perhaps try Facebook ads, or Twitter ads. Even Pinterest and Instagram are serving ads now. If you are serious about your blog, or your online business then you owe it to yourself to explore paid traffic.

Here's a course that teaches you exactly how to dominate your affiliate offers using paid traffic, this course teaches you how to dominate each type of traffic. Over 10 experts in the field share what they do best and how they generate thousands of dollars with their preferred paid traffic method.