We've already touched on a few ways to promote your site to increase the traffic. Article posting and social networks are a great place, but if you want to kick it up a notch, there are a few ways to buy traffic.

Yes, you heard me right, buy traffic. I recommend doing this in a couple scenarios. First off, when you are split testing, you want enough people visiting that you can see real contrasts between your multiple variations. Second, after the split testing you will want to give your numbers a jump.

If you have 1% of people who visit sign up onto your list and 1% of those people actually purchase, you need 10,000 people to visit your site to make a purchase. What is your profit per unit? Say you make $10 per sale. If you can buy those 10,000 visitors for $5, how many would you buy?

There are a few ways to go about doing just that. Before you make your purchase, make sure that you understand exactly what you are getting. It makes no sense to even have a million visitors if none of them speak the language your website is in!

On the other hand, buying traffic can be a particularly rewarding experience. If you make sure you get the right people on your site, you will see a massive increase in your sales revenue!

Using banner advertisements is one way to buy traffic. You can pay someone to put your link on their website in order to attempt to get traffic sent to your site. This can be done in a few different ways.

First of all, you can pay them to put the banner up, like leasing a booth in a mall. The upside with this method is that you know what you'll be paying. The downside is that you pay regardless of how many people actually end up visiting your website. This can be successful, and the more successful this is for you, the better a deal you often get.

Second, you can utilize pay per click. Before you use this particular method to buy traffic, research it thoroughly; it can be your best friend or worst enemy. There are two primary methods to buy pay per click traffic. First and foremost, you are paying only for the people who click the advertisement and get directed to your site. You can buy traffic from websites, blogs, or even advertising networks.

Another place you can buy pay per click traffic is from search engines. When you search for an item on the internet, do you ever notice up at the very top, or even on the side those "sponsored results"? Those are paid advertisements.

Competition drives up prices on search engines, but content websites normally charge a fixed price. Ironically, "money" is an expensive word to bid on.

Another great way, which you are already familiar with, involves affiliate marketing. This is when you pay a commission to someone else for selling your product! There is a bonus with this method. Once someone purchases your product, you have them on your list. Not your newsletter or email list - your client list. So by doing this, you have a commission only sales agent (who you pay for performance only), giving you money as well as clients. What do you do with such a client? Sell them a second glass of water.

One of the hidden tricks with your list is to find out what products they would recommend to friends or buy themselves. Listen to your list - if you ask what people would recommend to friends, and they give you an answer that is within your means to provide, by all means do so! They're telling you they'll buy the product or even buy the product AND tell a friend to buy your product.

Finally, there is the joint venture. If you hypothetically had a product explaining how to fix up houses to sell them and make money, you may find someone who has a product explaining how to obtain financing for houses to fix up. You and your new friend aren't competing, and there is a high likelihood that people will want both products. At this point, you can both sell both products, to make both of you more money!!

Do your own research and do what feels right for you. There is no "silver bullet", so look around and ask a lot of questions. You may even find someone for a joint venture!

E. Alan Cowgill