Types of Affiliate Web Site Visitors

By now, you probably know that a website needs visitors to make money. The next important thing to learn is that all visitors are not created equal. Traffic, like almost everything else in the world varies in quality and cost. Here's how I break down the different types of visitors, and some brief comments on each one.

Excellent quality visitors are actively looking for what you are promoting on your affiliate web site. They want what we have, all we have to do is put it in front of them. Signups are by no means guaranteed, but you've got a good very shot at them. This sort of traffic takes time or money to get (as is normally the case, the more of one you spend, the less of the other). Cost Per Click advertising can be somewhat costly (you could be paying $1 or more a visitor, depending on the keywords and the search engine) but has immediate and measurable effects. The other way of getting excellent quality visitors is through Search Engine Optimization which takes longer and the results are less guaranteed. That said, SEO can produce the best value traffic because you aren't paying money for every visitor and you're getting a lot of exposure.

Good visitors are interested in what you are promoting. This is how I categorize visitors from fairly good links and poorly implemented CPC traffic. You'll convert quite a few of them, but we're definitely starting to move into quantity over quality, although as always, the smarter you are in how you get visitors, the better quality they are. Getting your link up on as many webpages as possible is OK, but really that is just a Search Engine Optimization tactic rather than a traffic building one. To get quality visitors, you need to put in some thought and effort into your link exchanges