First Published: March 29, 2016; Last Updated: Sunday, June 6, 2021.
There are plenty of paid traffic sources on the web from where you can buy targeted traffic to your website. The best thing about online advertising (unlike television, radio, print, etc.) is that it's totally accountable and you get to know the exact returns of every single dollar that you are spending. Online advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry and the digital ad spending in the U.S. is all set to surpass television ad spending. Paid advertising on search engines and social media accounts for over 50% of the total ad spend (dominated by Google, Microsoft, and Facebook). The good thing about online advertising is that it's super easy to kick-start an ad campaign and it could attract a lot of targeted traffic in the shortest span of time. But the bad thing is that it may be effective only in the short-term because when you stop your ad campaigns the traffic may pause. However, online advertising is extremely flexible and efficient (in terms of ad targeting, spending, and tracking) and it basically means that if you have a solid marketing strategy then your online ad campaigns can bring in higher return on investment for the short-term as well as for the long-term. As I have already mentioned, majority of the ad spend happens on paid search because of the superior traffic quality (and hence the performance). Also, you can reach 96% of the U.S. searchers by signing up as an advertiser on Google.com (via Google AdWords) and Bing.com (via Bing Ads). Over the past several years, I have published a dozen blog posts about website monetization and it was all about selling ads on your website and rarely about ad spending. Actually, I’m a lover of organic traffic (or search traffic). But it’s also true that it takes a lot of time to get some traction that way. So if you start a new business and want to tap the online advertising space then the best way is buy paid traffic on different traffic sources like search engines, social networks, display ads, video ads, etc. Here is a curated list of some of the best paid traffic sources on the web — categorized and subcategorized.Don't Miss: Free Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising Credits Worth Over $1000
The reason is pretty simple... if you are monetizing your website with the right affiliate program then it can make a lot of money with little effort (of course you need a content rich website with a handsome amount of targeted traffic).
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It's just that it takes some time to figure out what's converting and what's not. So first things first. Affiliate Programs & Affiliate Networks: What's What, And What's Not? Affiliate programs are also called associate programs and it's a deal between an advertiser and a publisher. For instance, if I've a created a software and is promoting and selling it via my blog then I can also generate additional income by inviting my blog readers to promote it in exchange for a commission. So let's say, if you referred a buyer for my newly created software product then I offer you a 50% commission (or 50% of the additional income that I have generated because of you). So if you refer more people to me then you make more income. That's why affiliate marketing is also known as performance marketing. And it's a win-win, right? Now if I have the resources then I can run an affiliate program by myself --- within my own blog or website --- and then it called an in-house affiliate program. But if I don't have the resources or don't want to manage it myself then I can sign up as an advertiser on an affiliate network.
