Buying website traffic is a hot talking point when it comes to trying to grow your website, blog or YouTube channel. It can be slow and time-consuming to start receiving traffic organically before your website or Youtube channel becomes popular. While some may see buying traffic as cheating or unethical, there are a lot of positives that come with buying traffic for your website. What are the benefits of buying traffic? Why should you do it? What are the best and most cost-effective ways to buy traffic for your site?
The most obvious benefit is exposure. The more views, likes, clicks or thumbs up you get, the more your content rises to the top and the more people will see it. Many would scoff at this and say something like, “those aren’t real people?” and will point to a website or YouTube video that has millions of views and use them as an example of someone with real people. To be honest, a lot of those numbers are repeat visitors and watchers, so in the end what’s the difference. And as your exposure grows more people will see your content and your numbers will continue to grow. When people mention traffic not being real people, they are referring to websites that provide bulk traffic from different IP addresses. This type of traffic does nothing to help your website.
The next obvious benefit is money. As the saying goes, you have to spend money to make money and traditional advertising can get pretty expensive. Buying traffic has become its own business and is less expensive meaning you can use your money to create more content. When more traffic comes to your website, you can use programs like Amazon Affiliates or Google AdSense to start earning money. Then the money you earn can go back into getting more traffic and exposure.
The one true downside is you have to be careful who you buy website traffic from. It requires a fair bit of research. Since traffic has become a business of its own, there are those who will try to take advantage of people’s ignorance towards the traffic game. They can charge exorbitant prices and only give you a small boost of traffic. It’s important to look at the person you wish to buy from and try to find reviews or any information you can on them.
Benefits of Buying Quality Online Traffic
While websites like Fiverr have people who are willing to sell traffic, it is best to go with a website who has made it their overall business. Buying website traffic from these sources has a few added benefits.
Trustworthiness
Businesses who sell website traffic also make it a habit to be trustworthy and professional. This is because that website traffic has so much competition that any bad business could damage their brand. Businesses like these also act as an authority in the process of buying traffic and can provide helpful hints and tips for improving your product or website.
Allows You to Test Your Server
It’s important to know how much your website server can take, and buying traffic can help you determine the limits sooner or later. You want your visitors to be able to use your website with no problem, and this is a way to fix the problem without inconveniencing people who may become permanent followers or subscribers.
Extra Conversions
As mentioned above, you can earn more money quickly by buying traffic. This is because if you put ads on your website, more people will see them and that increases the likelihood they will click on the ads and that earns you money.
Negatives of Buying Traffic
Buying traffic is a positive way to improve how well your website does, however, there are ways where it can be detrimental, and you have to be careful. There is something called untargeted paid traffic, where the people you buy traffic from will just kind of throw your website out to the wolves while not caring about your website at all. With no targeted traffic, you will see your numbers increase, but they won’t stay past the homepage and this isn’t the type of traffic you want.
You also won’t make any money from untargeted traffic. If you are selling a product or service then you need people to stick around so they can hopefully buy from you. The type of traffic you get will not benefit you in this regard. In the same vein, you won’t receive any new subscribers and that in turn also won’t give you anyone who sticks around long enough to buy your product. You would be wasting money on nothing, and some places will overcharge you for untargeted traffic. Not to mention there are some tools like Google AdSense who will penalize you if they suspect you are buying traffic to your website and that in turn can cost you money and exposure.
Alternatives to Buying Traffic
Buying traffic is a good way to increase traffic fast, but you are going to have to do some of the work yourself and there are plenty of ways to help drive traffic to your website in addition to buying traffic.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is the main way that search engines find you. By adding content to your website and using your target keywords and phrases in the content you can increase your chances of ranking. If you are building your website using WordPress you can use many existing SEO plugins and themes to further optimize your website.
Guest Posting
Since you have a website, chances are your website is an authority in your niche or topic. By finding opportunities on other sites to write an article or blog post for them, you expose your website to a wider audience. As they say rising tides raise ships.
In the same vein, you can also comment on other blog posts and social media relevant to your topic. Comments allow you to prove your knowledge on something but in a shorter format and can drive people to your website, especially if you use it in your signature after a post or comment.