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How Traffic Works Online for Beginners

Many beginners struggle with understanding how traffic works online for beginners. They also struggle with getting visitors to their affiliate offers. What is traffic? In terms of marketing, traffic is basically visitors that you can get to your sales page, offer or whatever it is you’re promoting.

There’s no point having a product which you’ve spent ages creating or an affiliate product that you’re trying to promote if you don’t have any visitors. You want your sales page or your product to be found. In order to do that, you’re going to need traffic.

Over the years I’ve experimented with different traffic methods including blogging, YouTube, Facebook, solo ads and paid advertising.

Key Takeaways

- Traffic simply means visitors to your offer or website

- Free traffic is slower but safer for beginners

- Paid traffic is faster but carries more risk

- Facebook, YouTube and blogging are good beginner traffic sources

- Building an email list is important for long-term growth

- Consistency matters more than chasing every platform

Why Traffic Matters in Affiliate Marketing

If you’re sending traffic straight to a sales page, there is a chance they won’t take any action, will exit the page and you lose them forever. Using opt in pages for affiliate marketing is better anyway because you’re capturing the lead, i.e., capturing their email address.

When they enter their e-mail address, that goes onto your e-mail list and then you can follow up with them as many times as you want until they unsubscribe. You can keep sending more offers to them. However, all that requires you to sign up with an auto responder service and learn how to use it. Learn how to create an opt in page and an e-mail list. You need to get your head around that kind of tech. It’s not difficult. Once you’ve done a few then it becomes easier.

How Free and Paid Traffic Works Online

So how do we get traffic? Well, there’s two kinds of traffic. There’s free traffic and there’s paid traffic. Free traffic tends to be quite slow, but obviously it’s not going to cost you a penny. Some of the best free traffic methods for beginners are Facebook, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest and blogging. You can get traffic this way, but it just takes a bit longer.

The alternative is paid traffic. Paid traffic can be things like Google ads, Facebook ads, Bing ads, TikTok ads. The traffic is pretty much instant. It’s a lot faster to see results. Also, it’s good for experimenting. For example, you can see very quickly if what you’re promoting has any demand.

My Experience With Solo Ads

If you’re in the make money online niche, the best kind of paid traffic is probably going to be solo ads. However, there are pros and cons to solo ads. The way it works is like this. A lot of marketers have big lists of subscribers. So, what they do is they allow you to promote your sales page or your product to their subscribers. You just send them the link to your sales page and they’ll send that link out to their subscribers. However, it’s going to cost you. You could pay something like $90.00 for 100 clicks. And it can get more expensive.

Now the problem I’ve found with solo ads is that it’s very difficult to get right. It’s not easy at all to make profit. In fact, I’ve never made any profit when I’ve tried, I’ve always made a loss. In the initial solo ad run, it is possible to make a sale or two. You have to price your product low – $7 or less to give yourself the best chance of a sale. That is not much money if you have paid $100 for the solo ad. The idea is that once they are on your email list you can send them more offers via email. This way you can end up breaking even or getting into profit on the price you paid for the solo ad. In reality it rarely works like this. Solo ad leads are known to be bad leads because they are on so many email lists and get so many offers sent their way.

Why I Recommend Starting With Free Traffic

If you’re a complete beginner, I would advise that you start off with free traffic just to get a feel of things and see how things work. Then if you have some spare money lying around have a go with paid traffic. Just test it out, dip your toe in the water and see how you get on.

In the make money online niche there are a lot of underground traffic sellers. Some of these are good, some not so. In my experience they are all quite awful. In fact, some of them could be bots, so you need to be extra careful.

Also, with the make money online niche, platforms like Google Ads and Facebook ads don’t like this kind of marketing on their platforms. They are known for not liking affiliate marketers. You have to be very careful because there’s a chance that they could shut down your account or even shut down your profile. I would advise sending traffic to an opt in page, rather than a sales page. A sales page can look scammy, even if that is not the intention.

How Facebook Traffic Works for Beginners

Now, if you’re posting on Facebook there’s a chance that you can boost one of your posts. This is a feature that Facebook has, and it doesn’t cost very much at all. It might cost you a dollar or something like that to boost it. The good thing about Facebook is that it has targeting. This means you can choose the demographics of who you’re trying to target – the age group, gender, the country they live in etc.

Using Your Facebook Profile Properly

When it comes to how to get traffic from Facebook profile pages, your profile is prime real estate. Add your link to your profile, just under the banner image and point it to an opt in page and start collecting leads. In my experience, you can get a lot of leads from your Facebook profile.

Ensure you post a lot of valuable content on your profile. People get curious and they might come and check out the link in your profile. The main problem I found is that you can get a lot of leads coming in, but it’s difficult to make a sale.

A lot of the leads will be from countries who cannot afford to buy anything. However, it’s still possible to get leads from places like the USA, UK, Canada, Australia.

Facebook Groups

One of the best ways of using Facebook groups for affiliate marketing is by posting valuable content inside niche groups.

There are thousands of these groups on a variety of subjects. For example, if you’re in the yoga niche, you’ll find loads of yoga groups there. If you’re in the finance niche, again loads of groups. If you’re in a make money online niche, the side hustle niche or the affiliate marketing niche, there are a lot of groups as well.

Go into a group and post valuable content. Don’t put your link in the post. In the post you can put some text saying ‘DM me if you want to know more’ or something like that. Then if someone makes contact, you go into the DM (Direct Messenger), and you could give a link to the person that way. If you’re wondering how to promote affiliate offers on Facebook without getting banned, avoid dropping links everywhere.

Stick to the rules and you will be ok. Facebook is for sure a good place to pick up weekly leads.

X (Twitter) Traffic

There are other platforms out there like Twitter, now called X where you pick up leads. The way it works is that you have to connect with people in your niche. You can connect with about 100 people every day. There’s a chance that some of those people will connect with you in return. Create content and drop it on your profile. The people you connected with will get to see that content and they might engage with it. They might become a lead of yours even.

How YouTube Traffic Works for Beginners

One of my favourite methods of using YouTube for affiliate marketing is creating tutorial style videos.
I’ve used different YouTube channels over the years and found it works very well for me.

I started off in the IT niche because well, that has been my career. I created different products in the I.T niche and used YouTube to drive traffic. These were tutorial videos for the software I’d created. I also created tutorial videos about the software platform itself. Imagine creating a product about Excel and then showing people on video how to use that software. Then you can create videos showing people how to use MS Excel. I found this was a very good way of getting leads and making sales.

My early videos were quite poor in terms of picture quality and sound, but it didn’t really matter because people were more concerned with the value I was giving. I recommend YouTube. These days I’ve noticed YouTube has become harder because they’ve changed something with the algorithm. However, it’s still worth having a YouTube channel.

How Blogging Traffic Works Over Time

One blogging and YouTube strategy that has worked very well for me over the years is combining articles with embedded videos. In time those articles will get indexed in Google and people will come to your blog to check it out. They might opt in to your list or buy something you advertise on your blog.

Medium.com and Article Traffic

If you enjoy writing articles, I can recommend a site called Medium.com. Over the years there have been many article sites. Most of them have disappeared now, but the new kid on the block is called Medium.

You can write an article and post it on the Medium site. It has a huge amount of members and some of these people will read your article. They might end up subscribing to you so that they get notified of your future articles.

It is worth noting that Medium site is supposedly favoured by Google. When you perform a Google search, you will at times see an article from the Medium site in the search results.

Not Every Traffic Source Fits Every Niche

Not all traffic sites are equal. For example, if you’re in the affiliate marketing/make money online niche, a site like Pinterest is not really going to be good for you. Pinterest is better for more visual kind of things, especially for female related products. If you are into fashion, makeup or jewellery, then Pinterest is going to work very well for you. I would say the same logic applies to Instagram and TikTok as well.

You can pick up some leads and some sales from TikTok and Instagram if you’re in a make money online niche. There are a lot of people trying, but again, it’s a lot more difficult compared to female orientated products or more youthful type products?

It has been said that people go on social media to socialise with their friends and family and don’t really go on there to buy anything. Keep that in mind. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t use it.

The Truth About Free Traffic

If you’re going to use free traffic, that means you’re going to have to create content, and a lot of content as well. That could be articles, a post on Facebook, images even. Basically, you’ve got to be consistent. You’re going to have to create content every day.

If you’re learning how beginners get traffic online, don’t overwhelm yourself trying every platform at once. Concentrate on creating content every day. If you do stay consistent with it, you will see results. It could take a few weeks, sometimes months. Just be patient and you will reap the rewards.

Traffic is only one part of affiliate marketing. You also need a good offer, a way to capture leads and consistent content.

Final thoughts

At the end of the day, traffic is really just about getting eyeballs onto whatever it is you’re promoting. A lot of beginners overcomplicate this part. They tend to jump from one platform to another, trying every new strategy they hear about. In reality, it’s usually better to pick one or two traffic sources and stay consistent with them.

Over time you start learning what works, what doesn’t and where your audience hangs out online. For me personally, YouTube, blogging and Facebook have worked best over the years.

Whatever platform you choose, focus on creating value first and be patient. Traffic takes time, especially free traffic, but if you stay consistent it can eventually snowball into leads, subscribers and sales.

Frequently Asked Questions About Traffic

What is traffic in affiliate marketing?

Traffic in affiliate marketing simply means visitors. These are the people who land on your sales page, website, opt in page or affiliate offer.

What is the best free traffic source for beginners?

For complete beginners, platforms like Facebook, YouTube and blogging are good starting points because they cost nothing other than your time.

Is paid traffic better than free traffic?

Paid traffic is faster, but it also carries more risk because you can lose money testing campaigns. Free traffic takes longer but is usually safer for beginners.

Are solo ads worth it?

Solo ads can work for some marketers, but in my own experience they have been difficult to make profitable. A lot of solo ad leads are already on multiple email lists and get flooded with offers.

Why do affiliate marketers use opt in pages?

Opt in pages help capture a visitor’s e-mail address so you can follow up with them later. If somebody leaves a normal sales page without taking action, you usually lose them forever.

Can you use Facebook for affiliate marketing?

Yes, but you need to be careful. Dropping affiliate links everywhere can get posts removed or even cause account problems. It’s usually better to focus on valuable content and lead generation first.

How long does free traffic take to work?

Free traffic can take weeks or even months to build momentum. Consistency is the key. Most people quit too early before results start compounding.