“Free traffic, ain’t free”
What is online media buying and why is it better than struggling to get “free traffic?”
Scott Rewick used online advertising (sometimes up to $500,000 in one day) to get millions of visitors, build 10+ businesses to generate $200 million in online revenues.
In this video you’ll learn…
- The definition of online media buying
- Why “free traffic” is a myth
- Exactly why Scott says “free traffic sucks!”
Online media buying is a traffic tactic used by the big dogs of internet marketing. Find out why, below…
Jason Bax interviewing Online Media Buyer Scott Rewick
Excerpt from Jason & Scott’s “Buy Traffic & Prosper” Online Media Buying Course
{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
There are a lot of people who have been successful with free traffic, such as video marketing, article marketing, Social media, SEO, etc. However, I noticed that the BIG DOGS in the industry use paid traffic sources. And to be honest, free traffic takes a while to see results. I still like it, though. I use it; however, I will be doing paid traffic pretty soon.The truth is that, if you want to see great results faster, then paid traffic is the option.
Hey, I “grew up” on free traffic in the uber-competitive SEO affiliate markets before making the transition to paid traffic. It was a tough one to get my head around. BUT after being slapped around by Google a few times I quickly go the picture.
IF you can get free traffic…great! But I wouldn’t bet the house on it if you want reliability and scalability.
Free traffic is definitely the way to go for those who are just starting out with internet marketing. Eventually, once you have enough money to get paid traffic, then it would be more beneficial for your business. Thanks for the information! More power!
Thanks for commenting, Carla.
The attraction of free traffic is hard to pass up, isn’t it? But as Scott was pointing out in the interview…free traffic ain’t really free.
He goes on to discuss in the full interview that buying traffic is in many ways easier today thanks to facebook ads and many ad networks using a pay per click model. So people just starting out can get started with a tiny $25/day ad budget.
Traffic is traffic. How you get it, and how much you paid or didn’t pay for it doesn’t matter. What matters is how well your traffic converts into sales or the response that you are after. I have paid for traffic, and I get a ton of free traffic. Right now, the free traffic is converting better.
The problem with a lot of the paid traffic, is that Google, Facebook, etc… do not want you to use tactics that are known to be very successful for the marketer. They hate capture pages. They hate affiliates. So buying traffic is not without it’s trials and tribulations.
Free vs. Paid also depends on the product or service that you are promoting. There isn’t any “one size fits all” scenario with internet marketing. I don’t understand why anyone would take a one sided approach to anything. There is no need for an all or nothing approach.
The bottom line is “what works” for you and your business.
Good points, Mark.
Scott wasn’t making a one sided argument, he was just stating that FREE isn’t really free…there is a cost to get free traffic and that it’s hard to scale “free” traffic for several reasons.
You’re right that Google and Facebook don’t like certain sales tactics. Every media has it’s little quirk, that’s why it’s best to focus hard on one channel.
“Buying traffic isn’t without it’s trials and tribulations” …And neither is free.
Deciding to buy your traffic depends on your desire to scale up to massive traffic and/or have more control of how much traffic and the quality you get.
If your free traffic is converting better than paid take a close look at your analytics and find out…
1. Which websites are referring the best converting free traffic, and/or
2. What keywords people are searching that are converting into sales
3. Then, start buying ads on those sites, use PPC to target those keywords or find similar sites you can get more traffic from.
Hope that helps
Please show me a way to buy great quality highly targeted traffic that converts into sales…. If I knew how to do that, I would be buying as much as I could on a daily basis. I have no problem with buying traffic as long as it works.
1) Pick a “channel” – Google adwords, facebook ads, banner networks, youtube, etc…
2) Find out what ads others are running successfully in your market
3) Become a master of that channel
4) Keep split testing ads and copy until you get an ad that is profitable…then scale it
Marks logtime experience makes his points meaningful.
“Sweat traffic” (free) does cost in terms of time that you spend in going after the free traffic.
Money talks and it always will.
There is no free traffic. I dislike this term, as organic traffic requires time and effort. Time and effort have a value. Of course if your a worthless human being then I guess you could in theory generate free traffic.
“There is NO free traffic”
….Direct from Mr. SEO himself, Geoff Dyck!
Organic/unpaid traffic will always be there as long as your site has relevant and quality content. Conversion from it can be seen as a bonus. Our main source of conversion however will come from paid, highly targeted traffic.
whats this traffic , traffic and traffic ???
free traffic is always good, this shows the way to generate the traffic into sales.
Nobody is saying “free traffic isn’t good,” Dennis. What Scott is saying is it IS NOT free is not reliable if you’re running a real business.
I agree with your. SEO is great, and there are man instances where people are making money and getting leads from the traffic. Long term SEO really does makes sense. For example, one of my sites has about 100,000 visitors a month from SEO. We dont need to pay for these, they just keep coming back to the site. But paid traffic is just as important. Really, it is better to start with PPC and establish that basic marketing structure. This way you build the model and know that the traffic will always be coming and some algorithm update wont wipe out all of your profit. Good Post!
I couldn’t agree more. Except that I hate the phrase “free traffic” because it isn’t free.
great article.
Free traffic is good for long term but short term you really need to look at Paid traffic. This poses an issue with our clients when it comes down to budget. Everyone would like to spend $10,000 to make $100,000 but without the initial 10 grand to break into a really competitive market then where do you start ? free traffic. of course. For example we are a web design and development company and we have dental clients who are just starting out they spent hundreds of thousands on building the location and do not have a large amount to invest in paid traffic while this dentist knows colleagues of his that spend $100,000 in marketing a month budget is always a concern for start ups.
Since when do you need $10,000 to start buying targeted traffic? That used to be the case but it’s much easier to get start today for the little guy.