Unlimited free website traffic

We’re going to focus today’s web Wednesday issue on getting unlimited free traffic to your website.

But if you’re hoping for me to fulfill on that promise, unfortunately I think this issue will come up short.

Last Friday, I highlighted the work of John Oszajca, the musician and internet entrepreneur who has been applying online direct response marketing to the music industry.

I love the example, because it’s an industry we all have at least some passing knowledge of. AND it’s an industry where most folks would think our kind of emotional direct response marketing would not be all that effective.

After all, “the music is the marketing.” (Don’t laugh — I read this on a top music industry authority’s website the other day!)

If people like your music, they’ll buy. You don’t need squeeze pages or email autoresponder follow-up campaigns, or sales funnels and irresistible offers.

All of that marketing stuff is hogwash when it comes to music, right?

Not so much.

What John found was that the better he got at applying direct response principles to his music business, the more fans he gathered and the more music he sold.

What does this all have to do with unlimited free traffic?

We’ll get to that, but first let’s rag on how most musicians do marketing a little more! Don’t worry — we’ll come around to the traffic part. 🙂

(And don’t forget that when I’m talking about ANY industry, including the music industry, you need to think, “How does this apply to MY industry?”)

For most musicians, the goal is to build out a presence on all the social platforms. Facebook. Twitter. Soundcloud. YouTube. Tumblr. Instagram. Pinterest. And a dozen others.

All these places that can be a source of free traffic.

Thinking if they just establish a presence there, and let their fans find them there, they’ll get found. After all, fans’ friends will see the fans engaging… And they’ll seek you out.

This isn’t a COMPLETELY asinine strategy.

It can work. It can have some impact. It can get people to your website. It can sell a few albums.

And it doesn’t even cost MONEY. It’s FREE in that sense.

And yet it’s not a very scalable strategy.

To have impact on all the different platforms, you have to be on and interact on the different platforms. You have to post videos to YouTube, tweets to Twitter, and so on. Each platform has its own way of interacting. Each platform takes its own time.

Yes, as your network grows, each item you share will reach out to a broader and broader audience.

But if you’re dedicated to FREE, that’s a snowball that can take a long time to grow.

In the meantime, you’ll be worked to the bone to get all that FREE traffic.

And you’ll start to discover one of the universal truths of the internet…

Free traffic doesn’t tend to convert all that well!

If all those folks landing on your site for free don’t already know, like, and trust you (they’re already fans), it’s unlikely they’re going to buy.

In fact, paid traffic doesn’t even convert all that well to a customer right away.

But paid traffic has a couple huge advantages over free traffic:

1. You can control where it goes. You pick which page on the site your paid traffic visits first, including a page designed just to get their contact information and permission to follow up.

2. You control the volume. In many markets, it’s largely a matter of finding the unlimited traffic stream and tapping into it. And you can have as much traffic as you want.

This is why figuring out the paid traffic equation is the holy grail of online marketing.

If you can figure out paid traffic, you can scale your business so much faster than with free traffic.

Yes, you have to make it economical. You have to at least be able to break even in short order on your traffic investment. This usually involves getting the opt-in on the first visit, and having a follow-up system in place to monetize the opt-ins. Even better if you have an ascending series of offers to get maximum value out of each new opt-in and each new customer.

But once you know you can do that, you can “turn on the spigot.” Get all the traffic your website and business can handle. And grow as fast as your budget allows.

You can never do that with free traffic.

But there is one secret about free traffic I can tell you…

It’s a whole lot easier to SELL the idea of unlimited free traffic, than it is to sell the idea of paid traffic.

Nobody wants to have to pay for traffic. Or do what it takes to get the incredible growth paid traffic can provide.

So they slave away on social media, SEO, and so many other “free” traffic platforms day-in and day-out, trying to make it work. And there’s an endless line of folks who are ready to sell you the next $97 information product on how to get free traffic to your website.

Next time someone writes an article (or an entire course) promising you “unlimited free website traffic,” read it with a skeptical eye!

Yours for bigger breakthroughs,

Roy Furr

Editor, Breakthrough Marketing Secrets