People coming to a site through a free traffic generation method are not very likely to buy/order/sign up, except those coming from the search engines. But the problem with the search engines is that we can't be sure we'll keep our position in the SERPs forever.
Article marketing and video marketing are great. Organic traffic is the best in my opinion. It has residual effects so to speak. For example, if you use article marketing as a way to drive traffic then your articles will be working for you many years down the line. You post them once and they are on the internet for a very long time. With paid advertising your ad is only up as long as you have money to keep it there. Paid advertising has its place but in the long run I think organic traffic is much better.
Plain traffic is good if your intention is to earn from advertising space and ppc ads. But if you are using your site as market for your products then plain traffic is not enough.
Remember free traffic like from forums, blog posts, yahoo answers, bookmarking, etc. is also highly targeted.
Free traffic, other than organic traffic, seems to be motivated in a different way. They're not motivated to go to your site and buy something, they're mostly motivated for their own personal gain is what I've found. If you can come up with a free traffic generating system that sends people who are actually looking for your product then you would have a winner.
The biggest problem according to me is that it takes time to create a good set up so that you get enough free traffic.. You need to create articles, videos and submit and bookmark them and all this takes time.. Some people need instant money so it is not possible with free traffic.. You will get good results if you target buyer keywords in your niche... Regards,
Article marketing, if done well (including proper keyword search and usage) results in high-quality and targeted traffic...and, except for the time spent developing the articles, it's 100% free. List swaps conducted with the right person, again, are a free and totally targeted type of traffic. But I would agree that free traffic generated with the typical free methods (traffic exchanges and the free e-mail lists) are not worth a moment of your time...you get nowhere fast.
I could disagree with you in some point. Let's take two case scenarios. First you're running a US based website on lets say golfing. You get loads of US traffic from forums, search engines etc. You run CPM and get paid by impressions, not by clicks. You could target of course your advertising with adwords and get more golfers on your website. But unless you're selling clubs, it won't benefit you. So quantity works basicly with CPM
Free traffic with the highest quality - the one from search engines takes SEO work and time. Same with article marketing which can produce (over time) free targeted traffic.
Yeah, its not stable...one day you are at the top of Google, next day, for whatever reason you aren't and that can affect your traffic quite a bit....kinda scary actually...
Single biggest problem I find with free traffic is probably the time put in. You get loads of ways to get quality targeted free traffic, but a lot of them take lots of time and you have to be consistant with it though. Good for marketers with limited budgets.