Pay per Click, Paid To Click, and Organic Traffic

There is no underestimating the need to understand the difference between PPC and PTC programs. Pay Per Click (PPC) means you pay for every click through to your website after signing up for a pay-per-click- program such as Google AdWords. Paid To Click (PTC), on the other hand is entirely different. if you don’t understand how each works, you can find yourself deep into a program that isn’t right for your needs.

Paid To Click is still considered a gray area way of driving traffic to your website. Not everyone is in love with it. There are many paid to click companies that promise excellent traffic to your website, but not all are equal. Ads are served up to subscribers within a membership network and on specified websites only. The ads are displayed for negotiated period of time, and each subscriber is paid per click on an ad if they view the ad for the entire duration of the display time. It’s not a giveaway, but it’s not always something works out well either. PTC has had a history of problems.

PTC can get traffic to your site, but the problem is that these are not targeted visitors. The subscriber network is not really interested in your products or services; their goal is earning money through the paid clicks scheme simply be viewing as many ads as they can. Many will sit and read a book or play online games while working their way through required ‘viewings’. This does nothing to help you in the least.

This makes PTC one of the more unsuccessful traffic generation strategies. If at all there are any websites that are benefiting from PTC programs, it is probably the PTC websites themselves. If you just want views, you’ll get views. Don’t start counting on conversions though. Those who want to make money clicking on the ads are always on the lookout for more PTC programs to signup to make more money. So they get greater click-throughs and conversions. Some work from home websites may also do well with PTC, since PTC’ers are already in that niche.

When it comes down to SEO and SEM strategies, it is not enough simply to know about successful strategies; you must also know strategies that do not work so that you will not spend your money trying them out – or your time lured by their empty promises. Stay away from PTC programs. That can’t be stressed enough.

There are paid traffic generation strategies that do work though. If you have to pick the best method to reinforce your online marketing efforts, select PPC or contextual ad networks. These are the proven and highly successful models. If properly placed, they can increase your traffic as well as your sales. The difference is these are targeted – not just ads random people are clicking on for a few coins. This gets you people that are interested in your product or service.

Using banner ads was a good approach, though the exposure is more limited and less valuable than it once was. However, if your ad partners are carefully chosen, they can send highly targeted traffic to your website. Depending on the nature of your business and the limitations of your budget, you may also choose to launch affiliate programs. If you have a great affiliate product, this has one of the highest ROI as you share profits with the affiliate marketers and don’t pay anything unless they make a sale. This makes them do a lot of the converting for you.

Paid traffic generation should only be used as a boost and back-up for organic traffic generation strategies. Have your SEO firm show you how to spend your dollars wisely on natural SEO and link building efforts! If you do that, paid programs can be taken or left – you’ll already be doing good organically!

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