Free Traffic Sources

I've got two topics I wanted to cover, however they are so different, that I've decided it would be best to go ahead and do two blogs, as to keep the content seperate. As this is he more frivilous one, I shall do it first, so that it will be further down the list. This article is mostly aimed at newer webmasters and those who are looking for bulk, untargetted traffic.

I joined, for a few weeks, two programs that are marketed to produce you traffic. However in both cases, while they might produce traffic, it is mostly untargetted, and fairly useless for the purpose of monetization. You might get the random few clicks from it, and maybe an occasional sell, but it isnt that worthwhile.

The first is Free Viral. A generic and misleading name for the project, as I have discovered it is neither free nor viral. While it might not cost you any money, you have to dedicate your precious attention to it, and despite it's status as free from cost, its certainly not viral. Despite some marketing, it has not exploded virally. However, after setting it up, it is assumably passive. If you can manage to get a few web-masters on board to promote it, they might do the same without much advertising on your side. However the hard part is getting them on-board, and they will have a hard time at it as well. So overall, I rank this project a failure.

The second is Traffic Swarm, which carries much of the same weight as Free Viral. If you can manage to build a downline, it is worthwhile, but for the most part, you have to contribute much of your time to it. In Traffic Swarm, you 'work' for credits, and each credit is used to display the your desired link for promotion purposes. How do you earn these credits? Through referrels an from 'browsing' on the site. Every browse will earn you a number of credits, so it seems that the whole system revolves around this cycle. You 'grind' clicking sites, most of which are internet marketing related, to earn credits so that your site can be 'grinded' as well.

However, I find that the site isn't neccessarily without targetted traffic. I find that most of the websites are those scam-tastic "Internet Wealth System" type of sites. However, a few sites, normal sites, exist on, and they are sometimes worthwhile reads. I found myself glancing at several pages of a site about electronic ciggerrettes before proceeding to google to research them more. In this case, the site served it's purpose, it raised awareness for a product that I didn't know existed, and made it plausible that this might result in a sale in the future. While this wasn't a direct sale, there is a bit of branding that increases a company or industry's notoriety, and for that single hit, was worth their time.

So my opinion? It differs on who you are. If you are just starting your webmaster career or are in the first month of developing a site, I'd recommend Traffic Swarm, if only to build up your number of unique visitors. Even if only a small percentage of this traffic converts to clicks, it will be money that you will appreciate in the early days of your blog/business while you build your arsenal of backlinks and articles for marketing. So Traffic Swarm can be worthwhile.

Free Viral? It isn't worthwhile. The front page is very long, and its doubtful a web-master or surfer will stay on the page that long to read through the BS. You might have some chance with it if your promote it via an article. And even if you do manage to get a few people under you, they will face the same challenge to find people beneath them. Try it if you want.

The end all be all? Continue backlinking, writing articles, and making good content, these will be 100x more important towards your website in producing good traffic then a 1000 hits from either of these sites. However, they are both free, and don't require too much time to get up and running, and free traffic never hurts.

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