Hi pianogirl. Honestly, stay away from paid traffic for now...there are plenty of ways to get free traffic to your site without having to pay for it. It looks like your site would do well on Facebook, but you have no reason to pay for advertising at the moment. Have you created a Facebook page for your website yet? Instagram? If not, create a Facebook page and join instagram. Also hook up with twitter and start following others who have the same interests as you. Have you heard of Reddit? Start a Reddit "AMA" (Ask Me Anything!) Eg. Hey Guys! I'm the Owner and Author of the Website The News Giraffe - Ask Me Anything! Post a link from your Reddit AMA to your website and watch the traffic flow in! Also make sure you have your Facebook fan page linked to the Facebook app on your website so visitors can like your stuff. There ya go! A good head start - and money kept in your pocket!
First of all, please stop wasting your money. You don't need money to make money. Ask these questions to yourself : - How much content do I have? It is high quality? Should I do more? - Is my SEO in good shape ? - It's my website easy to share? - Visitors have a good time visiting so they come back? - what are my competitors doing with their website? Mine looks better? How they monetize theirs ?! - How to deliver the best out of my niche ? You can only think about investing in advertising after you solved every single issue in here. And start out with cheap ones ( facebook ads, bing ads , bidvertiser ) and start testing out, see which one delivers results. Also , paying to get into some well ranked directories might be a good idea.
Looks like your site would profit readily from some serious social media marketing, basically free. Acquire some stickiness to your site and away you go! Create some sort of email capture for new article notifications, etc. Solicit writers.
You should only pay to advertise when you know that every dime of that would go into creating an asset such as: 1. Building an email list 2. Making a sale 3. Getting leads It is never about how much you pay, but how those dollars will in turn multiply and return a profit.
First of all you should study how to generate unique and interesting content for your website. You can spent a lot of money for advertising and development but if you will have filling it will not work.
Businesses actually starts marketing their business before they open. some websites starts marketing before they launch... so this will depend to you when you would start marketing.
I agree with Patricia here. AdWords can be expensive, especially if you're new to it and are unsure of how it works. Creating a successful and affordable campaign can be difficult for new users. I would take advantage of as many free ways to get your site out there as possible. Social media is great, especially if you have supportive friends who will share you with their friends. Another suggestion is to network with other bloggers and form relationships that are beneficial to the both of you.
Hey pianogirl, nice site you got going there! Grats! Why don’t you search for similar sites (not the big ones of course, but also personal spoof news sites) and promote each other? Share each other best posts on social media and make sure to backlink each other.