Traffic Generation

Effective traffic generation is critical to becoming profitable with CPA, or any other type of online marketing. Therefore, if you implement and master a few of these techniques you will definitely be ahead of the game. There are many ways you can drive traffic to your site and quite a few of these will be covered below. However, the best approach is to master them one at a time, or you may find yourself tackling too many tasks at one time. It’s better to do one thing well rather than many poorly.

Words, Words, Words

Article marketing is probably one of the most utilized traffic generation techniques online. However, using words and content to drive traffic shouldn’t be limited solely to article directories because the adage that the pen is mightier than the sword is quite true. The most important thing you need to remember is that the more compelling your content is and the more value it provides to your readers, the easier it will be to convince them to click through to your site to read more.

By providing value to your prospects before asking for anything in return, you are essentially breaking down the mental blocks people have in place when it comes to advertising. Traditional advertising is losing a lot of its efficiency because people hate being sold to. So, if you offer something first, they are more likely to trust you and want to do business with you.

Article Directories

Article directories have lost much of their effectiveness when it comes to driving traffic to your website and are now used by many people mainly for back-linking and SEO. This is because there are a lot of article directories online now that provide poor quality content and people tend to avoid them.

However, there are some larger directories that are still quite effective, such as EzineArticles.com, Suite101.com and AssociatedContent.com to name a few. These directories, though, are only as effective as the content you write, thus, the more compelling and interesting your content is the more chance you have of people wanting to visit your site to learn more.

One vital tip in writing effective articles for directories is to use the resource box effectively. Most people are tempted to put a shortened version of their resume in the resource box and then they wonder why they don’t get any clicks. Your resource box should essentially be an invitation to readers to click through to your site to find out more.

This means that your article should not come to a clear conclusion that will make people think there is nothing more you can offer them on the subject. Your articles should ideally flow into your resource box and then invite readers to visit your website to read more on the subject.

If you take this approach you will find that your click through rate increases significantly.

Forums

One highly effective yet just as overlooked source of traffic is any forum that is part of your niche. The key is to provide helpful posts that contain valuable information. You don’t want to blatantly advertise as this will put off your prospects. However, if you take the same approach of providing value first, you will find that people will want to learn more about you and will click through to your website.

You can find forums in your niche by running a search in Google. Before you start posting, though, make sure you are familiar with the rules of the board because some have strict regulations when it comes to outbound links. You don’t want to get started on the wrong foot.

Document Sharing

Another excellent way to drive traffic that will allow you to repurpose content you have already used is to upload free reports to document sharing sites. For some reason, it appears that content posted on document sharing sites ranks much quicker and higher in Google than even article directories. Another advantage is that since the content is uploaded in encrypted PDF format, spiders won’t be able to crawl it and you will avoid any real or perceived duplicate content issues.

The duplicate content penalty doesn’t exist, in fact, as stated by Google themselves. However, not all article directories will allow you to post the same article to another site and document sharing sites allow you to overcome this issue quite easily.

Blog Commenting

Blog commenting can also be an effective source of traffic, however, you also need to be careful. Even your comments need to be interesting and compelling, or people will not want to click through to your site to read more. Therefore, you don’t want to drop one liners on other people’s blogs simply telling them their content is great.

You need to find relevant blogs to your niche and actually read the content. Then you want to post comments that are useful and provide value, which also show you have really read the content. You will be killing two birds with one stone because you will be able to drive traffic to your blog as well as start building a relationship with the owner of the blog.

Why would you want to build a relationship with the owner of a competing blog? Simply because the internet is a big place and there is room for everyone. Those who work together tend to make more money in the long run, so you need to consider building relationships for the future.

Video Marketing

Video marketing is becoming quite popular as more and more internet marketers are integrating it into their marketing strategies. You can use videos to either repurpose existing content or create brand new advertising videos.

One way to repurpose articles or reports with video is by creating a slideshow presentation of your content and effectively reading the report out loud. There are a variety of resources online that allow you to feed in written content and will convert it into a video automatically with a computerized voice reading the article or report. One such service is articlevideorobot.com which is not free, but it does offer a free 14 day trial.

Another way you can use video marketing is by creating short videos that advertise your site. The best way to do this is to use photos or short clips from your niche, combine them with music and end them with an invitation for people to visit your site to learn more. You can either use video editing software such as Camtasia or you can opt for online services that will help you create the video quicker.

One such website is animoto.com which allows you to create free 30 second videos with various effects and music. They also offer premium plans that allow you to create longer videos and give you access to a comprehensive library of royalty free music which can save you quite a bit of time and money in the long run.

Once you have completed your videos, the next step is to upload them to popular video sharing sites such as Youtube.com. Of course, the more sites you upload your videos to, the more traffic you will be able to generate.