If you talk to any internet marketing expert, and inquire as to the number one question that is asked of them, they will all invariably answer “traffic”.  The most frequently asked question is: How do I get more traffic to my site?
 
If your website does not have traffic, then you will not sell anything.  It does not matter how good your product is or how good your sales letter is.  If no one sees it no one can buy.  You need traffic.  You need traffic that is specifically targeted traffic.  You must have prospective buyers who are interested in what you have to sell.

There are two sides to obtaining traffic, the pay side and the free side.  The pay side includes such activities as Pay Per Click, or PPC marketing, ezine ads, buying links  paying for PR distribution and any other activity that you pay directly for in exchange for getting advertising.  The advantage of the pay side is that it’s results are usually much faster than non paid activity.

For example, with Pay Per Click advertising like Google Adwords, you can set up your ad campaign and literally in a matter of minutes you can have your ad live, running on Google.  The down side of paid traffic generation is of course, the fact that you are laying out money in order to advertise to generate traffic.

On the free side there is keyword and SEO optimization of your website (if you do it yourself), article writing and distribution, using a blog, posting in forums, creating affiliate programs, Posting to web 2.0 sites like MySpace, putting videos on YouTube and getting authority backlinks.

In contrast to paid traffic generation, free traffic generation takes more time.  For example, if you use article writing to promote your website you need to write articles and then upload them to article directories.  Ezine editors and Webmasters looking for content for their venues, find your articles at the article directories and post them on their sites and in their ezines. 

Over time your articles spread throughout the internet.  Depending how good the article is, how much useful information it contains and how popular the subject is, you could end up with literally thousands of copies of your articles all linking back to your website.  This viral process can take months to propagate enough to have an effect on your traffic.  In the long run this is a great way to get traffic.

Most successful traffic generation is a blend of paid and free traffic generation.  In the beginning if you want quick results you may do more paid traffic generation.  As time passes and your free traffic efforts begin to reach critical mass, you may need less or even no paid traffic generation.