Advertising can be an easy way to break into the
internet but there are many downsides to it. Unless you are running a
community based site, have a site offering very unique content, a
valuable service or product the traffic usually only comes as long as
your paying for it. Of course ad campaigns can also be very expensive to
run and maintain so you need to be sure your squeezing everything you
can out of it. You should only proceed with a ad campaign if you are
positive your site is the best it can be, otherwise you may just be
pouring money away. There are thousands of companies on the internet who
offer to provide you with ad campaigns, many of which never deliver, do
not let any of these points put you off advertising.
If you want quality traffic with affordable prices you are
recommended to stick with the major search engines and their partners.
Google Adwords, Overture and MSN are all well respected companies which
will deliver you the best traffic. All of the forementioned websites use
pay per click systems which can be perfect as they drive traffic with
keywords you specify directly at your site, these advertisers are all
interlinked with the main search engines so you should expect to get the
most widespread sections of the population from them. Because they have
the traffic numbers to support ad campaigns there can sometimes be
bidding wars on popular keywords, I advise you to stay away from popular
keywords and do your research. Overture provides a free Keyword
Selector Tool which can help you find out how much traffic similiar
keywords recieve each month, these are usually a lot cheaper and still
provide the same high quality traffic.
As I mentioned before advertising wont necessarily mean a good flow
of traffic after you stop paying, other routes of advertising can mean
you get listed in a search engines immediately for a set fee. Yahoo
offers the ability to pay for a index within their search engine or
directory, although your site still needs to abide by the same rules as
other sites it gives you the opportunity to get indexed immediately
within the search engine, a more subtle way of advertising power.
Alternatively you can find quality sites that are related to yours on
Sitepoint.com and WebHostingTalk.com who may be willing to put a one way
link up for a nominal fee.