So far, I haven't invested any money into marketing my site, and have been relying on free methods (submitting to directories and social networking). Well, I have decided to try and put some funds forth and tackle the marketing side of my site more seriously. This is my website: http://www.afkay.com It is a gaming blog/forum. As you can see, the forums are off to a decent start, but still need quite a bit of traffic, so, my first thought was to use the money to buy quality posts off of DP. Before I did that, I wanted to hear from other members if this would be the best option. These are my forums: http://forums.afkay.com and these are my stats: Threads: 1,349, Posts: 15,159, Members: 377, Active Members: 51
I need to look into that actually. I'm not too familiar with it. I'm guessing you mean buy ads using google adwords which means my links will show up on other (related sites) who also use google adwords, correct?
You could buy traffic from adwords and some of the other pay per click sites. Try getting low cost keywords so you get more traffic.
If you sign up with Bidvertiser they'll give you $20 of free clicks, some say their rubbish but $20 would be enough to see
If you do that, your traffic is temporary. It will all go away once your funds are over! You have 2 options... bid for high paying keywords and advertise for a period of 6-12 months. People will notice your site and will start speaking about it everywhere. Next... continue your free methods. Will take some time and is slow, but its a proven strong foundation. Traffic will be steady!
I'm not sure what you mean by 'bid for high paying keywords'. Is this something through google adwords?
Yeah, adwords is a bidding system where you pay according to how highly sought after a keyword is. The other Adwords users determine the cost of your clicks. So the secret is to bid on low-cost keywords that other advertisers aren't bidding on. This is a science in itself. Personally, I think that Adwords is not likely to have long-lasting effect and is mostly profitable for those with a good turnaround on expensive items. But many have found it effective. The difference is, if you invest that $100 in a quality link-building campaign to raise your SERPs, you can achieve a more permanent benefit for your site.
Adwords is a choice. As well as link sales for advertising/traffic. There are plenty of options as well. Like buying signature links and you could try and join Namepros. You get NP$ for clicking links and than use that money to buy traffic into your site. You can earn money as well there without spending any money.