Introduction to Bulk Traffic

The adverts look so appealing - get thousands of visitors to your site for a few bucks. I mean, if you can get just 1% of 1% of the bulk visitors to sign up for one good CPA site, then you'll be showing a decent profit. No, I'm not exagerating - 10,000 'visitors' will cost $80 or less and you can get $100 or more per signup. Wow!

Before you start giggling and dreaming of the day that you'll have a money pit like Scrooge McDuck, let's have a closer look at this idea - like why did I put visitors in quotation marks? Well basically because there are a few nefarious ways that unscrupulous companies will try and trick you into thinking you're getting a lot of visitors, when really, you're not. It's a bit technical and boring, but the short version is that unethical companies can deliver you fake hits that register on your counter without visitors actually seeing the website. To try and prevent this, we only list providers we tried and are satisfied with. There are other good sources of bulk traffic out there, but as with everything, it is important do your research (Google the company's name and maybe their name and 'scam' or something similar). Always buy a small test package first, and if something doesn't smell right about the results, don't buy a full sized package.

There are a number of ways that the providers get bulk visitors, and every company will try and convince you that their method is the best. The main methods of bulk advertising are Expired Domains, Exit Traffic, and Banner Advertising.

Expired Domain traffic is when visitors to a website that doesn't exist are sent to yours. The domain owners, for whatever reason, don't have a site on their URL, so they install a little script that allows the traffic company to send their visitors to sites that will pay for them. If you get targeted traffic, this can be very effective. Doing it yourself (see the article for more details) is easily the best option, but can be very time-consuming.

Exit Traffic is buying another site's visitors after they leave that site. Some places (mostly in the adult industry) do a forced redirect in the existing browser window, but usually the site uses pop ups (a pop up is exactly that, a window that pops up in front of the active window) or pop unders (a pop under is a full sized browser window that opens behind the active window). For affiliate sites, we have found that pop under advertising is more effective - probably because reviews require more attention, and we can't afford the annoyance of pop ups because we need the visitor's continued co-operation.

Everyone knows what Banner Advertising [link] is, right? You put a banner (large image promoting your site) on another site linking it to yours. Good. Basically, your main choice is between banner exchanges and paying for placement. We haven't yet tried any banner exchanges. You can also contact other webmasters directly for either banner exchange or paid placements. There are also companies like who will arrange placement of your banner on many websites simultaneously.

Bulk traffic can be a very successful tool for promoting your website. It's a numbers game, but so is more expensive traffic. As with every promotional tool, it takes some skill and experience to use correctly. This article is a start, but can't be much more than that. Read the articles we have about the various methods (expired domains, exit traffic, and banner advertising for a more detailed introduction.