Traffic Building - Look out for the potholes by Francois du Toit

A website is only as good as the number of visitors it attracts. You need visitors to be successful in
marketing and selling your products or services. Without traffic even the best looking website is doomed for
failure. Unfortunately there are many scams on the internet designed to trap desperate webmasters.

You finally have your website published and you are as proud as any parent would be of a new addition to the
family. Well, nearly as excited. You cannot wait for visitors to flock to your site and to gulp up everything
you have to offer them. You expect to hear the cash register ringing all the time. You expect to sit back and
watch the money roll in. After a while you cannot help but acknowledge that nothing is happening and that you
are probably the only visitor to your website. Sounds familiar?

The above scenario is all too common on the internet and most successful webmasters started their first
website anticipating huge results that never happened. They only started to become successful once they
realized that the internet is not a get-rich-quick scheme but that building a successful website takes time,
dedication and hard work, like any other business.

As soon as you realize your website is not getting traffic you reach a crossroad - You can take the straight
and narrow road that requires more work, but that will take you to your destination, or, the broad road that
seems easier to travel on but is actually only a mirage.

Many internet marketers make the mistake of taking the broad road, the easy road. It looks easy at first
glance but turns out to be a road leading to nowhere. A typical case of good from far but far from good.
Taking this road often involves doing business with dubious sites promising you huge amounts of traffic in
exchange for cash. Money that you can often not afford to spend but feel obliged to spend thinking it is the
only thing you can do to get people to visit your site. It is the same as a musician giving free tickets away
to his concert in the hope that people will buy his album once they have heard him. Actually it is worse. It
is more like a musician paying someone to get people to visit his concert. He does not really know where
these people come from and are not sure at all whether he will sell any albums to them. If he does sell some
albums then he normally does not even make enough money to reimburse himself for his initial investment in
getting people to his concern.

This may sound a bit dramatic but is happens every day when internet marketers start getting desperate for
traffic. There certainly are sites out there that will deliver the traffic at the right price. Problem is
that it is not the type of traffic you need. You may end up getting many "hits" but don't be surprised if you
get no sales as the people clicking on your site are often poor people in third world countries that get paid
cents to click on sites but will never buy anything on the sites they visit. Sad but true. By the way, never
subscribe to sites that offer to click on your Google™ Adsense™ adverts in your website. Such clicks are
fraudulent. Google™ will find out about it and you may be banned from ever using their tools again.

There are many schemes out there designed to trap desperate webmasters. As a rule, do not spend any money to
obtain traffic when you just start out. There is an enormous amount of valuable and free information on the
internet that will help you to grow your business. Read up as much as possible on the internet and if you
feel a need to invest money at a later stage in legitimate programs like Google™ Adwords™ you will be able to
make an informed decision.

Remember that if something sounds too good to be true that it normally is too good to be true. Stay on the
straight and narrow road and you will reach your destination.

About the Author: Francois du Toit is the owner of http://www.2sl.com, a website designed to help new entrepreneurs succeed by evaluating various business opportunities, affiliate programs and network marketing options. The website also offers free articles and tools that will assist webmasters in building profitable websites. Visit http://www.2sl.com to subscribe to the free newsletter and receive Allan Gardyne's report "77 Ways to to Get Traffic". Source of this article: www.goarticles.com