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I’ve had to look for new traffic thanks to the assholes employees at Facebook. I’ve known about most of these traffic sources for a while but never did any real research on them. Here’s what I’ve found and some short notes on how and where you can get this traffic.

Social Media traffic – I’ve stuck mainly to Facebook in this cause it is what I knew the most. Kinda bit me in the ass. But, there are plenty of other options. Myspace, when you aren’t getting frauded (that all got settled, actually, and I got my money back), is very profitable. There are a shit ton of other country-based, community-based and niche social sites you can advertise on. Some even have they’re own advertising platform. Others you’ll have to inquire for a media kit and run a media buy on.

Media Buys - Say you wanted to buy a banner ad spot on my blog for a month. You pay me however much for that month, and I let your banner run. That is a direct media buy. Media buys can be much more complex though. Many are run with CPM terms, contracts, through networks, and can eat up a shit ton of money on something that isn’t 100% certain. However, they don’t have to be the giant risk everyone makes of them. Hit up Compete, Quantacast or Alexa for some demographic research and find sites in your niche with the demographics you know will convert. Inquire to see if you can do a small direct buy on a small site. You can even ask to test the traffic for 24 hours if you are dealing with a not as knowledgeable webmaster. A good network to check out is Adbuyer.

Traditional PPC traffic – There is always the top three search engines to advertise on: Google, Yahoo and Bing. Google’s Content Network is looking like a promising place to use image ads to basically run thousands of media buys at the same time. There are also smaller places to promote like Ask. They all require different strategies to hit though, so take enough time on one and move on to the next. I’d suggest starting with Yahoo or Bing before heading to Google. There are also PPC networks you can run through like Adbrite (the traffic is cheap, but super shitty, but still good for testing some things like banner CTRs for media buys, etc.)

Twitter – I spose I should have included this in the social networks section, but Twitter is kind of its own thing. Twitter has yet to directly monetize itself. So you’ve got places like Ad.ly and Sponsored Tweets monetizing off of sending Tweets through other peoples streams. There are some big names in it, too. For example, Kim Kardashianianinaiaa (and her fat ass). Zac Johnson put up an interesting case study about using them.

Pay Per View – You know how you’d install those shady toolbars, smileys and crappy games on to your computer when you were a kid, and then popups would start ruining your father’s porno time? Well, that’s all thanks to PPV advertising. People with these things installed have just given permission to be served advertisements. These ads can be banners or landing pages, normally around 700 by 600 px (forgive me if I’m off on this). Some don’t have size limits. You can target by websites the user is on or by targeting keywords they search for. I’ve tested out Zango and MediaTraffic. Both are good for different reasons. Mainstream traffic for the US is better at Mediatraffic (starts at .015 a view), and international traffic is better at Zango (I was promoting Asian offers for 0.0025 a view). I’ll post some real tips on PPV another day.

I know there is some sources I’m missing, but its 6:30 AM, I haven’t slept yet, and I’m undoubtedly tired. Please excuse me as I pass out. Oh yeah, go out and make money.