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When it comes to getting traffic to your site, there are pros and cons associated with every traffic generation method.

There are also costs. Some are obvious, such as the monetary cost of paying to run an ad in a newsletter or on a search engine. Some are not so obvious, such as the time and possibly monetary cost of harnessing search engine optimization or viral marketing.

As discussed in yesterday’s feature article, it’s important to be aware of all the relevant costs and make choices accordingly. Otherwise you could end up paying much, much more for something than you first expected.

In particular, there is often a large, yet not-so-obvious cost, associated with relying on seemingly free traffic generation methods such as search engine optimization (SEO) and article marketing. Many Internet marketers are attracted to these methods because they don’t necessarily involve any hard costs (unless you hire people to help you). But, apart from the time taken to do them – for example, the time taken to optimize your website, write articles, seek back-links, etc – there is another significant cost.

It’s the opportunity cost associated with not knowing how appealing your product or service offer is, or how effective your conversion tactics are.

There is often a lag between when you begin SEO and article marketing and when you start generating significant traffic. That being so, days, weeks, months – even years – could go by while you wait for enough traffic to be able to assess how appealing is your offer and effective are your conversion tactics.

Given that you didn’t pay anything while you waited, you might be content with that. But what if, after all those days, weeks or months go by, you discover that no-one wants to buy your product, or that your current conversion mechanism is an abject failure?

Not only did you waste time on doing SEO or article marketing… but you missed the opportunity to spend time on alternative offers or conversion tactics that WOULD have generated results.

So what’s the alternative? It’s to aim for FAST rather than FREE. It’s to pony up some money to invest in advertising – such as (but not just) pay-per-click advertising with the objective of TESTING your product or service, your offer, and your conversion mechanism (e.g. landing page).

Sure, this may cost a few hundred or even a few thousand dollars. That may sound scary… but if it ends up SAVING you weeks, months (or more) of wasted time and ignorance about what does and doesn’t work… it’s actually very cost-effective.

None of this is to say that you should neglect SEO, article marketing or other (seemingly) free traffic generation methods, or that you should just focus on paid advertising to test what does and does not work. It should be noted that there ARE ways to generate substantial search engine traffic in a relatively short amount of time WITHOUT paying for advertising… In this case, it may be possible to generate traffic FAST and (somewhat) FREE.

The point is, however, to fully assess the costs AND opportunities involved in each traffic generation method available to you BEFORE choosing one or the other.

Recently, we’ve heard a lot about the economy. How banks have gone bust, people are buying less, tech companies are laying off people, how we’re in (or headed for) recession, and so on.

If you’re like me, you can see the opportunity in all this. I firmly believe that this is a time when the pretenders will fall away, and only the strongest will survive and thrive.

But what about another kind of economy that really does doom Internet marketers? In fact, it’s the kind of economy that dooms us in good times and in bad.

It’s the ‘false economy’ i.e. the circumstance where you aim to save in one area… without realizing that what you save actually COSTS YOU MUCH MORE overall.

A great example of this is someone who drives across town to find the cheapest gas station… but ends up paying MORE in fuel costs (not to mention time) based on driving the car to find the cheapest gas station!

Unfortunately, I see the same phenomenon among small businesses and, in particular, Internet marketers. Actually, I’ve been guilty of it myself.

There seems to be, for example, a common tendency to try to avoid anything - whether it’s information, software or traffic generation methods - that costs money.

Now, there’s NOTHING wrong with looking for low-cost or free ways to do things, but the question is: is there a false economy in doing so?

Will the time you spend trying to cobble together your own website really be time well spent? If it takes you 6 weeks of struggle as you try to learn how to put together a website… is that really cheaper than enrolling in a web design course and learning how to do it properly? Or than paying someone to design and develop the website for you?

Even if you ARE an accomplished web designer… is your time better spent designing all your websites, or doing something else that has much more value (such as marketing)?

Or if you insist on using only free traffic generation methods such as search engine optimization (SEO) or article marketing… are these really free?

Or is there a price to be paid in terms of the TIME you must spend on SEO and article marketing to generate meaningful results?

And could you have learned what does or does not work much FASTER and ultimately more cheaply had you invested a few hundred dollars in pay-per-click advertising?

In some cases, the choice to take the ‘free’ option may entirely sound. But, as the saying goes, nothing in life is free. There is always a price to pay, whether it’s in terms of time, money or both.

On that basis, I would urge you to consider the obvious and not-so obvious costs of everything you do… and decide, on that basis, which is actually a false economy… and which will genuinely be cost-effective overall.

Have you found yourself thinking (or shouting) those words? Or do you know someone in this situation? You might be shocked at how often I have heard this from beginning Internet marketers and - more worryingly, those who have been involved in Internet marketing for several years.

While it’s impossible for me to advise someone about what they should do in this situation (without knowing their individual circumstances) let me offer a perspective on this predicament: having hundreds of private label rights (PLR) ebooks, software scripts, etc is about as useful as having a garage full of books, toys, laundry products or ANY kind of product. It’s the same as having a supply of any kind of inventory… without having a store (online or offline) to sell it in or customers to sell it to.

Unless you have a means of attracting customers, you don’t have a business. And unless you have something valuable to offer your target market, you don’t have much chance of converting people into customers.

What’s more, even if you are able to generate traffic to your site… if you’re simply offering the same PLR products that everyone else is offering - with no, unique or better point of difference - you’re unlikely to convert any traffic you do get into customers.

My suggestion? Put those PLR products to one side and work out what kind of business you want to be in, who you want to sell to, and how you can deliver what they want in a different and better way than everyone else.

If, after doing that, you find that some or all of those PLR products fit into your business model, then by all means give them the attention required. Otherwise, forget about them.

A guest post on the Hitwise blog by search engine optimizer / analyst Dustin Woodward, suggests that the long tail of search might be much longer than most of us expected.

Woodard evaluated a data set of search terms used in the last three months, and found that the top 1,000 search terms only accounted for about 10 percent of all search traffic.

Indeed, the Hitwise’s top 100 search terms account for just 5.7 percent of all search traffic, while the top 1,000 search terms only account for 10.6% of all search traffic. Even the top 10,000 search terms drive just 18.5 percent of all search traffic.

What does this mean for Internet marketers? Well, it does NOT mean you should try to optimize your site for all those long tail keywords. Together they may account for a lot of searches, but if anything, Woodard’s analysis confirms the fact that long tail terms are infrequently searched on i.e. they are likely to be ‘one-offs’.

There may still be opportunities to pick up traffic for such one-offs, but trying to target such keywords is unlikely to pay off – simply because such words are unlikely to be searched on next month.

So it still pays to optimize for the most popular, relevant keywords you can afford to target. And if you want to be creative, think into the future rather than the past. In other words, instead of targeting last month’s long tail keywords, think about what keywords you think will become popular, based on trends in your market or industry.

Source: Frederic Lardinois, “Hitwise: The Long Tail of Search is Much Longer Than Expected”, ReadWriteWeb, November 7, 2008

As tempting as it is to dish out advice on who Americans should vote for in today’s United States Presidential election, I am no more qualified than any non-American with an opinion!

However, I will say that if you have the right to vote, you’re wise to exercise that right.

Election day may be the only time the average person can really have any kind of influence over the decisions of the government, by virtue of who they choose to govern. Decisions that heavily impact your everyday life - from how much tax you pay, to the availability of health care and education, to the state of the roads, to how you conduct your business. And in a zillion other ways I couldn’t possibly list in this article.

The point is, if you don’t vote and make your voice heard about who you think should make decisions on your behalf, plenty of other people will do so for you. And they might NOT have your best interests at heart.

What are the issues for you to keep in mind as an Internet marketer?

Well, these would be issues that affect most small and mid-sized businesses - economic policy (specifically policies that impact on inflation, interest rates and the strength of the U.S. dollar), taxes, employment laws, trade laws, competition laws - as well as issues that specifically relate to the Internet and doing business on the Internet.

I’m not sure where Barack Obama or John McCain stand on all these issues, but they are all factors to consider, along with the other issues that are important - and may be far more important - to you.

Of course, however important these issues are… and whatever the elected administration does once it gets power… nothing will affect your success as an Internet marketer more than YOU. So while it’s important to have your say about who governs - and the government of the day WILL make decisions that affect you… none of that will have anywhere near the same influence on your success as YOU and what YOU DO.

I feel fairly confident saying this about the United States (and a number of other countries). I’m not so sure when it comes to the various totalitarian regimes that still exist in the world. Which is all the more reason to celebrate democracy and vote. And after you to that… it’s back to business!