Gone are the days of cheap banner ad and pop up traffic. It is becoming increasingly harder to develop good traffic sources, and even more traffic and more highly targeted traffic is needed as web searching becomes faster. It is not unfathomable to click through 20 or 30 or even 50 websites in 20 minutes, searching for exactly what you are looking for. As more people get hi-speed internet, I believe it will be even more difficult to keep a customer on your site. Only the very best will survive--are you ready?

Today I will cover some of the best techniques that are currently available and how to maximize your return on each, and literally generate more traffic than you can handle.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC): PPC is extremely popular today among internet marketers because it circumvents the search engine optimization process. You literally buy your way to the top of the list when you buy PPC. Two keys here: 1) You must be highly targeted. If you only sell specialized hunting equipment for elk hunting, you cannot afford to buy hunting or fishing as keywords. You must buy elk hunting. You wont get as many clicks, but they should cost you less and they will convert at a much higher rate than the general terms. 2) Do not bid your way to the very top of the list. You will pay too much for the spot. You see, the first spot gets a lot of clicks from happy clickers--they click in to your site, and if it isnt exactly what they want or doesnt load fast enough, they click right back out--leaving you with the bill for their click. But if you bid the 3rd or 5th spot, it is less expensive, and the people clicking on those ads are more likely to be genuinely reading your ad to see if it is what they want.

Article Writing and Submission: Article writing and submission creates some of the most highly targeted traffic possible, as long as you write specifically to your purchasing web site audience. One thing that is incredibly powerful with this is the emotional connection a reader develops with the style of writing in the article. Therefore, it is important that the copywriter for your web site also be the writer for your articles, if at all possible. The style of writing is one of the things that prompts a reader to click through to your web site, and if the style remains the same, you are more likely to create a customer out of the click.

Ezine Advertising: One of the keys with ezine advertising is targeted ezines. The more tightly targeted the topic of the ezine, and the more highly correlated that topic is with your web site, the higher the chance that you will be productive using that ezine. Another key with ezine advertising is testing and tracking. You must track every source. Create a spreadsheet and put in each of the sources, the price you paid for the ad, and the number of leads or sales you generate. If you do not do this, you will likely fail at ezine advertising. Some ezines will make you a lot of money, and others nothing, but if you do not know which, you might simply break even, or worse yet, lose money.