If a site goes up on the web, but there’s no one there to see it, does it make any money?

Just because you have a stop on the information superhighway, that doesn’t mean the right people will visit it. Just because you build it, that doesn’t mean they’ll come. You need to get traffic to your website. And not just any traffic, but the right traffic.

There are myriad people who will try to sell you the latest fool-proof traffic technique, because traffic is a key element of a website strategy. Unfortunately, most of these traffic techniques don’t work. Or at least they aren’t magic bullets. There are no magic bullets. If you buy into Dr. Terminus’s cool new website traffic program, it won’t magically send you all the right customers and turn you into a millionaire overnight. Yes, I’m sure Dr. Terminus is making a bundle. As Perry Marshall recently warned, “In the ’make money on the Internet’ category… a sucker is born every six seconds.” But you don’t have to be one of them.

The cold, hard truth is that building traffic is hard. And it can be expensive. Don’t let anyone fool you! Getting traffic to your website takes time, it takes money, it takes effort, and it takes smarts. But it’s a necessary part of any business website. Because without traffic, no one will discover what you have to offer, and so no one will buy your product or service.

So how do you build traffic to your website? I agree with Jim Edwards, co-author of Turn Words Into Traffic and Niche Advertising Secrets, and one of the good guys. There are basically 3 ways to get the right traffic to your website.

1. You can Buy traffic, through targeted, paid advertising.
2. You can Borrow traffic, via recommendations and links from others.
3. You can Build traffic, by turning one-time visitors into repeat visitors.