Social Traffic Does Not Earn Money Online

First off, I would like to share my story about how Iwebsites, make people come to you...you shouldn't
started learning how to earn money online. The firsthave to chase people to come to your website. You
experience I had with trying to earn money wasshould be attracting the people that are seeking
through affiliate marketing. I didn't have anyinformation or trying to answer a question. This is
experience in affiliate marketing and didn't knowwhy search engine traffic or "organic" searches is the
anything about how to drive traffic to a website. All Ibest type of traffic.
thought was, "the more traffic I get, the higherSocial networking traffic is poor when trying to earn
chance of people clicking on my ads and buying mymoney through AdSense because it's not targeted
product." I started to read ways on how to earntowards a specific user. Case in point, I see that
money through affiliate marketing. I bought somemany celebrity gossip sites throw on Google
random e-book from a "guru" and started to followAdSense advertisements to try and get a few extra
his process. This is the basics of what I did:bucks. Google AdSense has contextual ads which
1. Bought a domainmean it will display advertisements that are relevant
2. Bought hostingto your website. If Google cannot determine what
3. Set up a blog in Word Presstype of site you have, it will give you random ads or
4. Wrote a post on the productworse, give you "public service ads" (note - you will
5. Started to get traffic through any means possiblereceive NOTHING if you get public service ads).
The E-book stated that I should drive traffic to myThere is a celebrity gossip site called LA RagMag that
website using social networking sites like Twitter,had Google ads on it. However, the ads were not
Facebook, MySpace and grab as many RSStargeted towards a specific niche, nor the site had
subscribers as possible.proper SEO, therefore the site only displayed public
So this is exactly what I did, I figured since it workedservice ads. LA RagMag gets thousands of visitors a
for the "guru" and since he was making a ton ofday, yet does not make as much money as smaller
money, that he was the authority in this niche andtraffic SEO blogs.
that I should follow suite.Also, these people need to post at least 10 times a
I opened my Facebook account, downloaded aday as users of these types of websites want
"Facebook Bombing" software (automatically addsconstant and fresh updates. If there are no updates
friends) and started adding as many friends asand new content at least once an hour, then people
possible. I also did this for Myspace, Twitter, RSSwill stop going to their websites and will go to
Subscribers and Craigslist. I started to feel bad whenanother celebrity gossip site. The majority of these
doing this because I became a spammer and evolvedsocial networking, untargeted blogs receive the
into the one thing that I hated the most on themajority of their revenue through paid
internet. I ended up wasting whole days addingadvertisements (because of the massive amount of
friends, "following" people on Twitter and posting ontraffic they receive). I'm sure the advertisers are not
Craigslist. Did I see an increase in traffic? Yes. Didhappy with their conversion rates (rate at which
anyone click on my ads? No.people buy per X number of page impressions) from
When you start adding people from various socialthese types of websites. Many times, I see "You're
networking hubs, the strategy tends to be to addAd Here" blasted all over various popular blogs.
people within your niche. For one of my failed blogs,Advertisers are better off using AdWords Ads so
(a DVD exercise program) I followed people onthat they can get targeted traffic. You would think
Twitter that were doing that program. I also startedwith all the traffic that they receive that advertisers
adding people through Facebook and started bookwould be DYING to have an ad on their blog, right?
marking my posts on sites like Digg.Wrong!
This is a good way to get traffic to your website,A perfect example of this is a post that I read about
but is a poor way to get people to click on youra blogger that had a very popular site about "The
Adsense ads or for people to click on your affiliateSecret Diary of Steve Job's". Basically the blogger
link. Here's the reason why traffic from socialcomplained that you cannot monetize blogs and that
networking sites does not convert well when tryinghis health and live were affected by the amount of
to earning money from AdSense - you are addingwork that was involved in posting to his blog. A press
people that are either competing with you to marketrelease drove over a half a million visitors in ONE
the or have already bought the product. I was addingDAY. You'd think he'd be rich with 500,000 visitors in
people who already knew about the product when Ia day. Well...he ended up only receiving a little over
should have been seeking people who didn't know$100 in AdSense revenue for that day and $1,000 in
about the product and wanted more informationadvertisement revenue. This is unbelievable! If an
about it. The people that were following me onAdSense expert had 500,000 targeted unique visitors
Twitter were congratulating for joining the exercisein a day, they would have been able to convert
program and telling me to "stick with it". This meansmore clicks and made a heck of a lot more money.
that they were already doing the exercise programThe main point is that you need to find targeted
and had no desire to click on ads for additionalusers to your niche and the best way to do this is to
information. They WERE the information and theyfocus on search engine optimization. This is the best
already had the product.way to earn money online and the outcome is usually
The point is, when driving "buying" traffic to yourbetter for long-term residual income.