Viable Online Paid Advertising Models: The Ultimate Paid Traffic Guide

I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.

– Confucius

It’s not uncommon for business owners to steer toward free marketing to bring in some traffic and kick start their businesses. Most new and experienced marketers are scared of paid advertising. They don’t want to spend money on something that may or may not work.

While free marketing works, it generally takes more time to see results. On the other hand, with targeted paid traffic, you can speed up the process of new customers and sales. You don’t have to spend hours on end learning how to create content, learning SEO and doing several other tasks, to drive free traffic to your sales pages or websites. You would have the same results in a matter of hours or days.

However, paid traffic requires an investment.

Many marketers use paid advertising to test an offer or squeeze page that they’re promoting. By doing this they minimize expenditure. This makes sense because you don’t have to spend the time with free traffic, if the offer doesn’t convert in the first place. Once you know that the offer converts, you can either go the paid advertising route or continue with free marketing.

When you’re looking for paid advertising options, no one traffic source is really what you should be depending on. It’s about how to make the diversification across different traffic sources.

Let’s take a look at the options you have as an advertiser.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

Google Adwords is a Pay Per Click advertising platform.  PPC ads are the sponsored links you see on the right hand side of the various search engines when you do a search.

You, as an advertiser pay when your ad is clicked by the search engine users. For example, someone enters “How to lose 10 pounds in 10 days” and your ad shows up in the list of sponsored ads on the right hand side of the search screen; you will have to pay for every single click on your ad, irrespective of what the person’s action is after clicking.

Whether they visit your web page and buy from you OR

Visit your web page and don’t buy from you OR

Close the browser before getting to your web page

THEY CLICK, YOU PAY.

While Google ads are more targeted, it’s possible to lose a lot of money too. The goal is to get your ad in front of search engine users who use different keywords to find what you’re offering.

Everything from keyword research, bidding, ad copy should be compelling and perfect to get that all-important buying click. If you get any one wrong, you’ll get a whole lot of clicks (you’re paying for each click on your ad) and no sales, which leads to losing money.

Google Adwords is at the very top where quality and quantity of traffic is concerned. Google can send a ton of traffic that converts well.

Other 1^st tier PPC networks are Yahoo, MSN, Bing and Facebook.

Non-Google PPC Advertising

Google used to be user-friendly, but it has changed now. There are many people who have been bit by the Google demon. It helps to look at other options too.

You also want to make sure you’re not keeping all your eggs in one basket. If you have Google, Bing or something else as your one and only traffic source, if anything happens to that, you’ll end up losing all your revenue.

The other alternatives, which could be considered second-tier PPC advertising platforms are:

LinkedIn

7search.com

Advertise.com

Adknowledge.com

Adhere.com

These networks are easier than either Google or Bing, as you don’t have to worry about the quality score factor. If you have the money, you bid without worrying about your click through rate or the quality score of your landing page etc.

Google AdWords is still the biggest source of PPC traffic. But if you’re going with Google, run only ads that it allows. Diversify with other traffic sources with some of the second tier search engines.

Pay Per Impression (PPM)

Advertisers pay for every appearance of their ad on a web page. Eg. Banner Ads and Pop Up ads. The benefits of this model is that your banner will be seen a fixed number of times.  But of course, you can’t guarantee the number of hits to your website.

Banner advertising doesn’t sound exotic as it has been used for so many years. With banner advertising, you begin with choosing the appropriate targeted traffic you want. You find out where people in your niche are.

For example, if you’re in the weight loss niche, one of the places online where you’ll find your targeted traffic is the numerous weight loss forums. You have a built-in target market right there. Other places would be related websites.

You pay the webmasters of the site where your traffic is, to display your banners.

Retargeter is a great option for PPM and the cost is very low for the traffic they send.  Only thing is, to continue getting good traffic, you need to keep changing the ads and ad copy often.

Research the sites on which the ads will run and make sure they are visited by your target audience.

Pay Per View (PPV)

Pay Per View is an interesting area that’s slowly becoming mainstream among top Internet marketers. It’s one of the best forms of paid traffic for people to start with because its laser targeted.

PPV is similar to free TV channels run by sponsors whose commercials we are forced to watch. PPV Networks online offer free software, games and other services, which are called Adware.  People who wish to take advantage of these free offers will have to sign up to a Pay-Per-View Network and be willing to have advertisements displayed.

As an advertiser, you will be buying such popup advertising from a PPV network and your ad is displayed to thousands of people who sign up with the network.

That’s what pay per view traffic is all about.

Does this remind you of Spyware? Spyware is something that gets installed on your computer without your permission, whereas with Adware, the people signing up to the network know and accept the advertising in return for the free software.  This software is also easy to remove from your computer. The reputed networks also use the E-Trust seal, which means they follow the compliance of their end users.

One of the very important aspects of PPV is the ability to overlay a pop over window right over your competitor’s web page and divert their traffic. This is considered phenomenal for list building. You can overlay popups on your competitors offering the same thing as you and divert them to sign up with you.

This traffic is highly targeted, because mostly the entire family uses the computer. Just because the child has downloaded the gaming software, doesn’t mean it’s only the child that’s using the computer. And with the PPV toolbar installed on the computer, the mother while browsing may see your “weight loss” pop up and buy from you or the dad might see an ad with a “golf set” he likes and buy.

PPV networks allow you to choose target specific demographics.

Just like solo ads, this takes some testing too, but when it works, it works beautifully.

Networks: TrafficVance, Media Traffic and LeadImpact.

Pay Per Text (PPT)
Pay Per Text is in-line text ads. At some point you might have seen an in-line text ad, and you may not have known about it until you actually took your mouse and hovered it over a keyword or a key phrase in an article that seems to be hyperlinked. But it doesn’t lead you to a link when you hover your mouse over that.  An ad pops up! This can be a text ad, a banner ad or a combination of a text and a banner.

Advertisers tap into networks that offer Pay Per Text advertising. By using PPT, you can get an enormous amount of traffic; especially if you’re bidding on generic one-word keywords.  You’re charged for every click made on the link, so you have to make sure you use the relevant keywords to what you’re offering.  Vibrant Media also allows you to put in video ads.

There are very little restrictions. One of the restrictions is that you can’t send the traffic to pages that offers downloads. So, they’re easier to use than Adwords and Facebook ads etc.

It’s a very different from PPC. Although, you pay per click, it’s a different attitude. There is no such thing as quality score.

For those who has never has any exposure or just getting started, this is a friendly advertising source, where you can get in with $500 on 50 on Red and $1000 on TrafficVance and some are a little more.

One of the niches people have had great success with are the dieting offers. It is still in its infancy, so it would help to jump in now. Now is better than waiting.

Networks: Contera is one of the oldest networks that offers PPT. There are others like 50 On Red, Infolinks, TrafficVance and many others.

Media Buying

Media buying is the purchasing of advertising in any media: TV channels, magazines, newspapers and other media platforms.  In Internet Marketing circles, this term is also used to encompass buying banners in ad networks.

TV and radio are broadcast media formats. It’s even possible to advertise on streaming broadcasts online or sites like YouTube and Internet radio where advertisers can place ads.

The exciting aspect of media buying is that the amount of the traffic that you can get from doing targeted media buying dwarfs pay per click and per per view traffic combined.

There are two types of media buys:

• Direct: Buying ad space directly on a website.

• Network: Buying ad space through a third party network or an agency. They aggregate ad space from a large number of websites and sell it to advertisers like you.

Whether direct buy or network buy, you can choose between:

• CPM (Cost Per Impressions)
• CPC (Cost Per Click)
• CPA (Cost Per Action)

Media buys offer two different types of inventory. One is premium and the other remnant. Premium is superior quality and remnant is the lower and unsold quality. Obviously you get better exposure through the premium which is more expensive, but of course you will have to take your budget into consideration too.

You have to be very careful when choosing the network, as there are many that are not transparent.

Networks: Google Adwords and MSN content networks, AOL Adsonar, Adbrite, Burst Media, 247 Real Media, Blue Lithium, BuySellAds and many more.

Make sure you advertise on sites with heavy targeted traffic.

Solo Ads

Building a list can be a time-taking process, but this can be expedited through solo ads. Solo ads have been around for some time now and many top Internet marketers use solo ads to build their lists.

But what exactly are they?

Solo ads occur when you pay another marketer with an email list to send an email to their list of subscribers on behalf of you, promoting your website. Usually, the list owner sends out a free offer from you that provides value to the people on his list.  This free offer can be a report or a video.  This email is called a “SOLO” ad because there’s only one advertisement that goes out, unlike newsletters that are filled with several advertisements.

These solo ads are generally sent out with the intention of capturing the email addresses.

The best thing about solo ads is that the marketer with the list, by sending out an email to their list is practically vouching for you and endorsing you to their list.  Imagine the number of people you can reach if you get an influential top marketer to mail out and promote your offer to their list.

For a small price of $50, you can buy a hundred clicks or so and when you find something that works – you scale and start buying clicks in their thousands. This continues to remain the number one profit generating tool that all top marketing gurus are using to make millions of dollars online.

Marketers love solo ads and why not? If you could spend $1 and make $2 back, you would spend all your dollars too.  That’s the beauty of Solo Advertising.

The most important thing is to find good solo ad providers. It helps to visit forums to see what people are talking and go with the recommendations, rather than reading reviews on websites, which may be fake.

Providers: Check out the “Solo Ad Directory,” where you’ll find many, as well as the Inner Circle Solo Ads.

Success with solo ads is totally dependant on list selection.  You don’t want a big list of subscribers and zero buyers.

Facebook Advertising

Unlike earlier, adverting on Facebook is becoming more effective and cheaper.  A study revealed that in 2013, there has been an increase in clicks by 29%, with 58% increase in ROI. The Cost Per Click is said to be lower by 40%.

Facebook comes with several advertising options:

• Marketplace Ads
• Promoted Posts
• Page Post Ads
• Sponsored Stories
• Sponsored Results

While it can be a rewarding experience, advertising on this platform can also be confusing and frustrating for many.

Here are a few tips from successful marketers:

• Get to the point.
• Let the image talk. (For a weight loss product, you can show a before and after picture.)
• Use demographics and targeting options. Segment the audience to the smallest increments.

Twitter Advertising

Local targeting with Twitter is wonderful. If you’re a business owner in California, looking to increase your followers and get the word around, you can have your promoted account show up only to your local area Twitter users. If you’re a national company, you can have tweets show up on the timeline’s of thousands of Twitter users.

Your dashboard also lets you know your ad performance. You can see the impressions, clicks and click rate as well as the amount of money you’re spending by the second.

Twitter advertising is pricey and may be useful for bigger companies as of now. If you’re on a marketing budget, this is not for you.

LinkedIn Advertising

LinkedIn ads are different from Google Adwords, Twitter and Facebook ads.  They are great for connecting to a business audience, so leave the weight loss products to Facebook.

A LinkedIn ad campaign allows you to choose your audience by the job title and category.  Things become easy when there are 8 million business users in the LinkedIn community.

Neil Patel a top marketer who tested LinkedIn ads says that LinkedIn had the second lowest conversion rate but provided the highest quality of leads.

Benefits of Paid Advertising

There are several benefits to paid advertising.

• Cost Effective:  In comparison to the paid advertising model offline, online advertising is cost effective, as you pay only for an action taken, such as clicks or impressions.

• Targeted: You can reach millions of readers based on all sorts of demographic information such as age, geography, interests etc.

• Reach: The internet is being used for information predominantly. People are looking for answers to their problems, specific product information and solutions. This helps you reach a larger audience online.

• Measurable: Paid online advertising can be measured. Reporting and analysis gives you evidence of the return of investment for all aspects of your advertising.

• Act Now: People click on links and gain instant access to information or a product or service.

Conclusion

The above list is not comprehensive as there are more paid advertising options. But here I’ve listed the models that work in today’s online environment. Choose them wisely based on your need.

If you read them carefully, you’ll understand the models that will help your online business.