I've been mooching around here lately giving a few people advice and checking out where so many people are going wrong. I see a lot of people finding every reason under the sun to invest time in to free advertising, instead of money in to paid advertising. Some of it is incredibly backwards in logic. Are you one of them? Check this out: http://finchsells.com/2009/09/27/the-paid-advertising-syndrome-on-digital-point/ It's why most people here are not going to make more than a side income. I'd like to know basically just why so many people are hesitant to invest money if it increases the chances of earning more money? SEO, article submission, link development - do guys here really consider these techniques to be better value than something like a PPC campaign that can produce overnight success? If so, why? Is it because you're too hesitant to commit money? Or because you see more value in a website that generates free traffic?
On paper, your post sounds good. But in reality, it's way off. Google ads aren't that good for traffic, especially on a limited budget...which is most of us. If you only have $2 a day to spend, there are far better ways to spend it then by purchasing a couple of clicks. And if you have a $2000/month budget, there are better ways to spend it then on Google Adwords. PPC has never worked for me. The best way for me to make money is to provide content and sell ad space. I once owned a retail computer shop. We partnered with a local radio station...we fixed their computers for free, we received a near endless amount of free advertising. Our ads were hammered to a market of 300,000 + people. You know how it helped my profits? Very little. Advertising generally sucks. Provide a good service to those that do stop by, and they'll be back. And for the web, provide content, they'll be back.
i've been using ppc for quite a while now, but it can get quite expensive even for some long tail keywords. also from my experience, natural traffic converts better. some people dont trust the ads.
I would start with PPC but then move to SEO as much as possible or CPM traffic sources. That's worked well for me.
I think this is just a way of doing things,and can be determined by many factors.Since you like this way to invest money,it doesn't mean others like this way.Some guys can make it without investing on PPC or other things.Some fields are not suitable for such invest.In this situation,it's wise for them to use free way to improve traffic.And maybe it's just one stage.They may have other long-term plan.Paid way is not always the best.
I'm think this is happening for one main reason - the vast majority of the people you talk about have only recently got into the business and they work on a very limited budget, therefore bringing them face to face with questions such as: - even if I would want to invest, how would I do it? - does this method work better than that? - how can I be sure I won't get screwed buying this or that (obviously, I'm talking about paid backlink offers etc. here rather than PPC) Also, while I do agree with OP with regards to paid advertising providing a lot more results than free article submissions and such, I have to admit that MuscleandBrawn has got a valid point as well. Some sites (mainly those that produce the majority of its income through AdSense) simply aren't made for PPC and for those sites it would never work out profitably.
Making the visitor's time worthwhile by providing them with "takeaways" whenever they visit our site keeps them coming, they tell their friends/relatives etc about our site this brings more traffic. This may take time/effort [fresh original content] but worth pursuing. As long as the content is targeted to the website visitor/customer profile surely some of these visitors would convert to buyers. Everyone is happy.