Buying Clicks & Traffic Brokers

If you have looked for ways to get traffic to your website you have likely encountered "Traffic Brokers". These brokers will sell you direct traffic to your website for pennies. Unfortunately, its worth just that, about a penny. In fact its not even worth that, because it will cost you for extra bandwidth and give you less than a zero return.

First, lets understand what traffic brokering is all about.

Traffic brokers, will buy exit traffic, 404 traffic, banner traffic, pop under and pop up traffic and just about any other nefarious sudo click thru generator. To better understand what that traffic consists of each must be looked at individually.

• Exit Traffic: when a page visitor exits a page they are redirected to a new page rather than the page they have chosen. So if the person clicks on a link to see pics of Paris Hilton, they are quickly sent to a page selling washing machines. Since the person is not interested in appliances, they try to exit the page, only to be sent to one new website after another. Bombarded with ads from clothing to new cars, but never getting one single picture of Paris Hilton. If your site was in the loop, you paid for that visit. Needless to say, the visitor was not interested in buying your product.
• 404 Traffic: This is a redirect when a page has been removed and is still getting visitors. But you will never get specific types of traffic. So if someone searches google for yesterdays news, and the article has been deleted, they end up on your website. Does that help you? Not likely, unless you have what they are currently looking for. In many cases it will generate angry e-mails complaining that when they try to access the news story, they get a page with your widgets.
• Banner Traffic: a direct banner click. Sounds good right? Not really. You have no idea where the banner was displayed or if they have sent you a real visitor or some automated bot that just inflates your hit count and lines their pockets with your money.
• Pop Ups and Unders: These are the very worst deals. When you leave a website you might get a new page that pops up over or under the current page. You have no interest in the page and have to work to close the window. Some times you can get caught in a loop of hundreds of pop ups and have to shut down your computer just to get out. We have all been there, and none of us have bought products from any of the sites. Even if you wanted to, with new windows popping up left and right, you could never use any of the sites. This can be executed from a web page or via spyware that is attached to other programs you may have installed or via a virus you don't even know you have. It will generate pop ups making the traffic broker money and aggravating you. The spyware also know as adware is often packed in forms of advertising for your site. You download an application, install it and it will generate traffic to your site. But in reality, it just bombards you with paid ads.

So now that you know where the traffic is coming from, how can it help you. Clearly it can't. The people that actually get to your website are more victims than visitors, most never see your page and some are angry that YOU did this to them. Its a Lose Lose Situation. You pay for nothing and at best get some angry visitors as well as an inflated bandwidth bill to boot.

We strongly suggest you stay away from these programs. Although there are a few that can send you good traffic, its almost impossible to find them.

Stick with, adwords like google or overture that sell you targeted traffic based on your ad text. The ads are displayed on content specific websites and tend to bring in high quality traffic, provided your ads are truthful and accurate.