Traffic Exchange Programs
|
| Leverages competition and surfer behavior
to generate traffic. |
Requirements |
- Moderate technical skills required
- Duties include requesting a link exchange,
interpretting reports, managing a group of cooperating webmasters.
|
Costs |
- Time:
- 30-90 Days of intense initial marketing.
- Ongoing Time and Effort:
- A mature traffic program, by its nature, promotes itself.
- Software
- $495 setup plus $100/month (+ bandwidth)
- Hardware, etc.
- Not a concern at low traffic levels. At high traffic levels we will
upgrade your server as required.
|
Benefits |
- Traffic is high quality because other
sites in your market have targeted traffic
- Stable, reliable traffic
- Broad base of referrers insulates you
from search engine changes
- Low cost
- High sweat equity
- Low risk - At worst, fraud might cost
you some traffic
- Built-in fraud detection. Advanced technology
to identify bad traffic
- Marketing and management are straightforward
|
Risks & Comments
|
- Traffic programs are more difficult to promote
than affilitate programs
- Competition helps you promote a traffic
program
|
|
Affiliate Programs (PPC and Partnerships)
|
| Probably the best way to go if you
have lots of funding and human resources. |
Requirements
|
- High level technical skills required
- If program is your primary traffic strategy.
|
Costs
|
- Time:
- 30-90 Days to set up. Initial promotion is another few months.
- Ongoing Time and Effort:
- There is ongoing time and effort required to detect credit
card fraud.
- Software
- $300 - $10,000, depending on sophistication.
- Hardware, etc.
- Initial costs are reasonable, large affiliate programs are sophisticated
operations involving many servers. Hardware costs can be considerable.
|
Benefits
|
- Traffic is good quality
- Easiest program to promote (webmasters sign
up easily)
- Consistent, secure traffic on a mature system
|
Risks & Comments
|
- High risk of fraud. Credit card fraud is
intense and you are liable
- Unproductive affiliates cost time and effort
- Monetary incentive encourages affiliates to
send less qualified traffic
|
|
Search Engines (SEO)
|
| The most common method, search engine
optimization (SEO) is a time intensive, uncertain strategy. |
Requirements
|
- Moderate technical skills required
- If program is for supplimental traffic.
- High level technical skills required
- If program is your primary traffic strategy.
|
Costs
|
- Time:
- 30-90 Days of study to begin. Advanced optimization is a full time
job.
- Ongoing Time and Effort:
- There is ongoing time and effort required to maintain search
engine rankings. The more commercially valuable your search term, the
more time and effort you will need to expend to maintain your rankings.
- Software
- None needed to get started, sophisticated
systems may use very expensive software.
- Hardware, etc.
- Serious search engine optimizers have sophisticated operations involving
many servers. Hardware costs can be considerable if top performance
is required.
Consultants are very expensive. For most small companies search
engine expertise must be developed in-house to be cost effective.
|
Benefits
|
Traffic is very high quality
because it is highly targeted. |
Risks & Comments
|
- High rankings are difficult to obtain
- High rankings can be lost at any time
- Competition for commercially valuable
search terms is intense
- If key employees who perform SEO leave the
company, rankings are usually destroyed
|
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