I was recently asked about traffic.

It’d be impossible to touch on everything in a single blog post, so I’ve decided to distill it down into 3 quick tips.

Here we go…

Tip #1: Driving Traffic Is Just An Experiment.

Whether you’re doing SEO, PPC, PPV – No matter what kind of traffic you go for, you nor anyone else will really know how well it converts until you jump in and test it.

Not every source of traffic you spend money on will convert. The trick is to test traffic sources, keep the ones that make you money and get rid of the ones that don’t.

No one can tell you what’s going to give you a positive ROI before you test it yourself.

Tip# 2: How To Stretch Your Advertising Budget.

One of the most important things to consider is what you’ll do with the traffic once you have it. And one of the easiest ways to make the most out of your leads and customers is to focus on your backend.

The guy selling a $20 course is generally going to have a lower customer value than the guy with a $20 course and a few other products to up-sell and cross promote in his backend.

Two quick examples…

Vista Print offers nice business cards at some of the cheapest prices around. They probably break even (maybe even lose money) on the cards. But once you sign up they’ll try to sell you on dozens of additional products and services, and that’s where they make their money.

DoubleYourDating.com pays affiliates $40 every time they sell a $20 book. They can do this because they know their average customer will buy a higher ticket product on the backend.

Knowing what the average lifetime value of your customers is once they’re in your funnel will help you figure out how much money you can afford to spend generating leads.

Tip #3: Traffic Can Come Fast And Free…

Some of the most targeted traffic around can be yours free.

JV’s can bring in some extremely targeted traffic. Guys who have email lists are generally looking for ways to monetize them. If you have a product that fits the bill, don’t be afraid to network and ask people if they’d be interested in promoting.

The same goes for affiliates. If you have a product that converts, it’s not hard to get related websites to promote as long as it makes them money.

The last thing I’ll touch on is public relations.

TV, radio, interviews with webmasters in your niche, writing a column for the local paper…

All of those things can bring in traffic.

With all of this stuff you’ll have to put your sales hat on and convince people to promote you…The trick is to seek out people who are actively looking for stuff to promote.

Have a good weekend!

-Scott Murdaugh

P.S. I talk about traffic generation towards the end of an interview I did, you can listen to it here.

So Google rolled out their new “instant search”…

If you haven’t seen it yet you can log into your Google account to check it out.

The real question is how will this effect online marketing?

What does it mean for PPC?

My guess (and that’s what it is, a guess) is as this rolls out, and if it sticks around, Google is going to have to make some serious changes to how it calculates quality score.

With CTR and impressions playing such a big role in how much advertisers pay for clicks, there’s either going to be some massive changes on the search network or there’s going to be some serious backlash from the next round of advertisers who get “Google slapped”….

What about SEO?

I have no idea. But I do know that more than likely, it’s going to have a serious impact on SEO.

People will start trying to rank for shorter keywords. Others will shoot for more long tail.

Some people will put more weight into the “Google Suggest” tool for keyword ideas.

Users behavior will change, and that’s going to cause some changes somewhere…

It’s too early to make any serious predictions, there’s no data to run with.

So how should you react?

If most of my business came from SEO/PPC I’d definitely be on my toes. I’d be keeping a close eye on my campaigns and my rankings and see if I can figure out exactly how it’s effecting my sites.

Luckily I decided to “De-Googalize” my business several years ago.

Meaning if Google went under tomorrow, while I’d certainly lose traffic and revenue, I wouldn’t be completely broke.

I focus on building targeted lists and relationship marketing.

And that’s not a bad way to go. It keeps you safe from massive Google changes.

Should you be worried?

If you rely on Adwords or SEO for the bulk of your income, I’m not screaming “fire” or anything, but I’d be keeping a close eye on everything and see if I can’t spot some patterns when the changes start to hit.

Do you have any predictions?

Has it effected your traffic yet?

What’s your game plan?

I’d love to know.

Peace,

-Scott Murdaugh

Hey guys,

I let Issamar Ginzberg from Issamar.com grill me in an interview…

It talks about how I got started, my advice on traffic, social media, copywriting, testing, conversions, profitable markets and a whole lot more.

Izzy (Issamar) is a marketing genius, and both people who are new to IM and those who have some experience can take a lot away from this interview. Enjoy!

IMPORTANT: Listen to the biggest marketing mistakes people make. I can almost guarantee at least one of them is costing you thousands of dollars. Seriously.

Also, near the end of the interview, it sounds like it’s over… It’s not. I throw in some traffic strategies at the end that should definitely help some people out.

If you’d rather download it and catch it on your Ipod, click here.
If you dig this interview, you haven’t seen anything yet.

Sign up below for FREE content that will make your online business infinitely more profitable…

Now go hustle,

-Scott Murdaugh

P.S. Nothing for sale here, just solid content. I promise you it’s well worth your time.