There are a few things that really get my blood boiling. One is email scam artists who obviously have nothing better to do than to try and steal your money. The other is people who try to dissuade you with an outright lie disguised as a legitimate solution. I am talking about companies that sell traffic. They make all kinds of claims about how great getting a ton of traffic to your website is. The other angle is how easy it’s going to be as well. Some say that the system will work forever and then auto pilots itself so you don’t have to ever do anything again. Wow, how stupid. First of all, if you have a new website don’t ever “buy traffic” it’s a waste of money by someone slicker than you. Think of it this way. Has anyone ever came to you and asked you what you are looking for and then made a suggestion on what website to go to find it? That’s a no. The only possible way that you can buy traffic is to use a pay per click campaign from Google, MSN or Yahoo. But, it is not easy, free, or works on autopilot. Getting eyeballs to your website involves constant strategy and constant tinkering. It also involves building a great site with lots of content and building links to your site. This is not easy and certainly not something you do once and let go of. Ask any reputable website owner and they will tell you so. So how do they do it? Well if you have been sucked into buying some traffic, you will get some actual visits from the service that promised them to you. This is the easiest way to explain it. The companies set up an autopilot script that sends a robot to your site, the robot visits for about 3 seconds which is long enough to register on your tracking logs, and then they leave. They then come again and again with unique codes that show they are coming from all over. What you will notice is that they never stay for more than a few seconds and they never ever buy anything. If you are serious about your site you would know that every site has a conversion factor. If you sell something then you would expect that for every “#” of visitors, X amount buy something. For example, I know that for my site for every 200 people that visit I get one sale. This is measurable and useful. If you have a ton of hits and nothing is going on, then either you wrote the world’s worst website or you have a problem. They will tell you the traffic is qualified. Here is what qualified traffic is. John Doe goes on Google looking for a blue widget. He types the key word “blue widget” and gets a return. He then clicks one the sites, looks around and either buys or leaves. Because John was looking for the blue widget, he is considered qualified traffic. A robot or a computer program is never qualified. They are just a clever way to get some cash out of your hand and into someone else’s. Here is my golden rule. If a company has to use “hope” and “easy” as a selling technique, run away very fast. Instead take the money and hire someone to teach you how to get traffic legitimately.