Traffic Building

Buying Website Traffic - What Every Webmaster Needs To Know

So you are looking to buy some traffic for your website. I bet you have seen the ads, "100,000 visitors to your site for only $9.95!" Sounds great doesn't it? You have seen lots of these ads and want to know which one to go for, am I right? Well, I am going to tell you everything you need to know, so sit back, relax and read on.
How To Buy Traffic.
You don't.
That's right, you don't. Its all a scam. There are several versions of this scam, but they all produce the same results, that is, you will waste your money. Now when I started out I fell for this trick as some of you have already, or may be about to. Let me explain what you are getting. This is the worst possible traffic ever on the web. Its so bad mainly because most of it is not even traffic.
In most cases you are paying for some guy to put your URL into a script that pings your server and records a "hit" on your stat counter. This isn't traffic, this is just creative scripting that fakes your hits.
Then there are the ones that just take your money and give you a special "control panel" which makes the numbers go up every time you log in but nothing is ever sent to your site, not even empty data packets.
Expired domain traffic. Now this type of traffic seller is a little harder to find, but a legitimate one can deliver some real junk traffic to your site just as well. Now you may be getting actual visits, but they are worthless. Why? First you have to understand how this works. Bob has a domain that at one time had a website attached to it, the site had back links and search engine traffic, but bobs website went bust so now the domain name ends up in the hands of the traffic seller. The traffic seller takes advantage of a domain name that traffic is still coming into, but simply redirecting or forwarding it to your site. Sounds good right? Well, the problem with this is, in order for the traffic seller to deliver targeted traffic, they would have to maintain a GoDaddy sized database of domain names that are still pumping traffic in every single niche available. Now this is virtually impossible to achieve and even if someone did do it, it would be terribly expensive and most likely end up as a complete loss for the traffic seller. Especially, since a domain name with no actual website attached to it has a very short lifespan. So instead, they have a few domains, and the ones that are closely related end up going to your site. But of course this is off a redirect, which means that someone clicked a link to get to one place and ended up at yours. Most, if not all, will click off your site at this point. Plus, for the money you would spend for this service, you can easily go and buy the expired domains yourself, for a lot less and only have to pay once to register the name.


Then there is Auto-surf traffic. This is where people sign up, and enter their website into this script that is basically an automatic pop-up ad machine. It shows a web site then after 30 seconds or so, it clicks to another, over and over. The trick was to be better than a banner exchange. Instead of for every banner you show, one of yours gets shown, its trying to do it with your home page. So bob clicks in and keeps the auto-surf site up and lets it flick through the websites in the exchange while he is out mowing the lawn, and he racks up credits so his site gets shown to others doing the same thing, no wonder bob’s site went bust. Now most people know that they are signing up to this, but I have noticed some traffic sellers passing off auto-surf traffic as one of the other kinds.

The best advice is to stay away from traffic sellers altogether. You are so much better off using your money on legitimate advertising and traffic getting methods, like links and such than even wasting your time learning the hard way.

What's the matter? That ad just sounds so good, you want to try it anyway? I’m telling you, you are going to get burned. Ok, before you buy, do yourself a favor. Read through their website, look for a disclaimer. Oh, you will know you found it because they all say the same thing. It is in the standard traffic scam book. It will say something like,

"Your counter can not count all the hits we send you, because our traffic is so awesome and we send so much of it, your stat program wont be able to keep up."
With the professional stat programs that come with most all hosting accounts these days, I would love to know where they got this magic counter that can only record their stats, it must be amazing. That remains the biggest neon sign that says "Scam" right over the site.
Think about it, if your site counter can keep up with 10,000 unique visitors a day why cant it keep up with the 500 they are selling you? Easy, your counter wont record the “hits” because it wont be receiving any.
Now let me guess, it also said that if you want a refund, you need to dig up your server logs and show them, then they will be happy to refund your money right? Good. Ok, where are your server logs? Do you know? You do? Good, now pick out where the traffic your site received came from. Ok, now differentiate between the traffic you got from them and the ones that came from your legitimate back links. Do you see where I am going with this?

The traffic company assumes that you either wont know where the logs are or wont want to go through the effort. Then on top of that, they are hoping that you at least got some traffic from other places to help hide what they claim they sent and what they didn't.
Look, I am not trying to kill your hopes and dreams. I have just been there and done that. I learned the hard way and am now trying to help you out. Trust me on this, avoid buying traffic. If you really need cheap fast traffic, your best bet is pay per click. At least from a PPC campaign you will get genuine traffic.