There is no more hotly-debated topic in the online business world that driving traffic.

It only makes sense really – without traffic even the best offer in the world can’t possibly make sales.

But our rush to think we need a “massive” amount of traffic might actually be shortsighted. 

In this video I explain why that’s true, and how you can profit from it.

I hope you enjoy it.

Prefer to read? Here is the enhanced transcript for your convenience.

Hi, this is Charlie Page. Welcome back. I want to share the truth about traffic with you. These are core principles that I’ve learned, sometimes the hard way, in the last 10 years.

I don’t hear a lot of people talking about this. These are things that I know to be true. I want to share them with you.

Truth number one is that not all traffic is created equal. 

There is high-quality traffic and low-quality traffic.

Let’s look at each of them.

High quality traffic comes from things like article marketing, blogging and special reports.

You can distribute special reports whether you write them or not. There are webinars, teleseminars, video marketing and other sources.

Why are these things good?

They’re good because they give before receiving. 

When you give something to someone, what do they want to do? They want to reciprocate.

The natural thing to do is to give something back. That often means buying your product.

They’re not just selling. 

They’re not saying, “What’s in it for me? Pitch, pitch, pitch. Buy, buy, buy.”

They help people. That’s a good thing.

When you help people they will help you in return. People will reciprocate. They will pre-sell for you.

Pre-selling is the key. It creates a warm audience. A warm audience will buy from you.

What is a warm audience? It’s a group of people who know you, like you and they trust you because you’ve given them high quality, free information.

Let’s look at low quality traffic sources.

Low quality traffic comes from safe lists, traffic exchanges, free postings and auto posting or commenting.

This is software that you buy where you type in something like, “This is a wonderful blog. How did you ever get to be so smart? I hope you keep blogging. I’m going to bookmark it and return.”

Then that is spammed out to one hundred million blogs. It supposedly creates backlinks.

It does not work.

Guaranteed visitors also create low quality traffic. I want to be clear. These sources can create clicks but they’re low quality and they don’t buy. 

Why are these bad?

Here’s the reason. It’s very important.

These are bad sources because the visitors they create aren’t interested in what you have to say or offer.They’re clicking or visiting to earn traffic or get paid.

That’s very, very important.

Here’s a true story. I bought a half million guaranteed visitors from a very well-known site. It was not the cheap stuff.

I sent them to the Directory of Ezines, which is a page that I know converts very well. I’ve owned the DOE for many years, I know exactly what our numbers are.

The result was zero sales.

I lost $1,100 in that experiment. I don’t mind. I learned something and that’s good.

Here’s another true story about safelists which I think are not so safe. 

One client joined all of the top safelists. He spent five hours per day for three months sending emails.

He made an honest-to-goodness effort.

He sent 200 million emails.

It’s hard to believe.

He had zero sales and he made zero money.

His inbox was flooded with offer after offer. I spoke to him on the phone. He said, “I can’t read all of this email. I said, “Of course you can’t.”

How could this happen? How could he send 200 million emails and make no sales. It’s because the way that safe lists are supposed to work makes no sense at all.

People join safe lists for one reason. That is to send email, not to read email.

Safe lists actually teach you how to avoid reading the email you will receive by using a free email address. I know because I joined a bunch of them last year to test it out.

Here’s my question.

If everyone is using safe lists to send email but no one is reading the email then how is anyone going to buy anything?

The answer is that they don’t.

He lost about $200.

What is worse is that he lost three months of time. Imagine what he could have done with that time. He really wanted to try it. He wanted to give it a hard try. He did. Unfortunately it didn’t work.

Bad traffic methods hurt good people. 

It’s sad but true.

Here is truth number two …

There are only two sources of traffic. 

There is traffic that you buy and traffic that you earn.

Let’s look at each briefly.

Traffic that you buy is powerful. 

It’s available to anyone with a modest budget. It comes from things like banner advertising, solo ads and pay-per-click, especially on Facebook.

It’s pretty cheap.

There are endorsed mailings, text links, CPV traffic and your own affiliate program. That’s a way of buying traffic. You are paying a commission.

There is re-marketing. If you don’t know about this it’s very powerful. There are also ads on your competitor’s site. That is another powerful method.

There are ad networks out there that will target only the specific websites where you want your ads to display. It is incredibly powerful.

There is traffic that you earn. 

That comes from things like article marketing, blogging and participating on forums, social media like Twitter and Facebook, viral marketing and search engine optimization. That is a mystery to a lot of people. It comes down to providing high quality original content. 

When you do that search engines will reward you.

Joint ventures are a way to earn traffic.

Publishing an ezine is a wonderful way to earn traffic. Webinars and teleseminars are very effective as well.

The secret to my way of thinking is in the mix.

When you combine proven free sources with proven paid sources you create high quality traffic.

These are the type of people who join your list. These are the type of people who buy the products you recommend.

These are the type of people who become loyal followers.

They reward you with repeat sales and by recommending their friends to you. I have an entire module about traffic inside Common Sense Email Marketing.

Here is truth number three …

When it comes to traffic you need less than you think.

I know that’s a radical thought.

Everyone is saying you want massive hordes of traffic.

You want floods, waves, avalanches and volcanoes of traffic. You really need less than you think. I’ll tell you why.

It’s not how much traffic that matters but what you do with the traffic.

Consider this. If you sent 1,000 visitors to a site that converts at 1%, which is average, that means 10 sales.

You make money today. That’s good.

Now it’s over forever.

That’s it. It’s one and done.

What if you sent that same traffic to your lead capture page or squeeze page and 30% opted in to your list?

That is less than half.

Now you have a mailing list of 300 real prospects that have raised their hand and said, “I want to hear from you.”

?You can mail to them any time you want.

You’ll make much more by sending more often to your own list than blasting out to the biggest list only once.

It costs nothing to send to your own list as often as you want. It costs quite a bit to send to big lists.

Sending to big lists costs money especially if you want to do it over and over again.

With your own list you can send for other people and have them send for you in return.

That’s called a “list swap” or “ad swap.” It can be very profitable when done well.

You can have people approach you to do joint ventures.

Think about that for a minute. How cool would it be to have someone write to you and say, “I’d like to do a joint venture with you?”

People will approach you to do joint ventures because now you own the list.

 When you’re a list owner you’re in a different category.

If you added 300 people to your list once a week you would have a list of 15,000 people in a year.

How long have you been trying to sell things online?

 What if you’d been adding 300 people a week to your list all that time?

If you’re thinking, “That sounds great but I have no idea how to drive traffic.” then don’t worry. I teach members how to attract traffic to their sites.

You will notice that I say “attract” traffic.

We use the term “drive” traffic. That’s a misnomer. That’s a bad picture. You can’t drive traffic like they are cattle. You have to attract people who are interested in what you have to offer to your site.

I prefer the term “attract” traffic. 

What are you doing with the traffic you generate now? Do you send them to some sales letter and hope that they buy? Do you get them on your list and give them more reasons to buy?

There are a lot of reasons that people buy products. When you send prospects follow up emails then you can cover all of those reasons. If you’re sending them to a sales letter then you can’t. Do you remind them to return or hope that they come back? 

Many people are doing “just hope” marketing these days. The choices are partial profits or more profits. If you send traffic to any page but your own squeeze page then you’re settling for partial profits.

I want to help you create maximum profits. That’s why I made this free video series.

That’s why I created the Follow Up Selling Systems membership.

Anyone can do this. You don’t need to be a guru. You don’t need to be rich. You do need to learn this method of marketing. It’s different. If you continue to send traffic to low converting websites and directly to sales letters then you will be forever stuck trying to get traffic. You’ll never build a list.

There is a better way.

Do the work once and profit over and over again. 

We can fall for the hype. Many people have. 

You hear, “Click this software three times to make $1,000,000. Force Google to send you all the traffic you want.”

I don’t know anyone who can force Google to do anything. From where I sitting, Google does anything they want.

How about this one? “Go from zero to $100,000 in just 90 days.” Do what is proven. Do what is conservative.

Do what every successful marketer is doing now. Use follow up email marketing. There is no reason why you can’t do this or why it won’t work for you.

It works for those who work it. If you want to know more then click the charter membership link on this page.

If you have any questions or you like this video and want to leave a comment I’d love to hear from you. I answer every question myself. I read every comment myself.

I appreciate your time. I look forward to seeing you on the next video.