It’s another Expert Briefs, where I ask really smart business owners to answer your burning questions.

This week I asked our panel of experts…

“What's something that's working right now to get you traffic?”

I think you'll find the responses interesting as everyone's answers were so varied.

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Terry Dean of My Marketing Coach says:

I love paid traffic. The biggest sources for me lately have been Facebook ads, PPV ads, and solo ads. With all of these, I send visitors to my optin pages to get them on my lists. They go through a very extensive email follow-up sequence and then eventually drop into my regular broadcasts.

Facebook is a great place for a beginner to start on their first paid ad campaigns. Below are a few instructions for getting started. I went into much more detail in a recent newsletter inside my club.

My Tips for Running a Successful Facebook Campaign

You can advertise Facebook pages or any page on your site. To get started quickly, you can simply drive visitors to an optin page you already have ready.

Start with a ‘right column' ad. Newsfeed ads get higher clickthroughs, but this is simply about getting started with a simple method.

Offer a freebie on your site to get people on a list. Facebook users are not generally in a buying mood. You're interrupting them. Get them on a list and warm them up to you with consistent follow-up.

In your ad text itself, promise them a free gift. One of my currently running ads has this text:

7 Unique Ways to Create…
FREE Gift: “7 Unique Ways to Create Profitable Emails…Even If You're Not a Writer”…

The image is the most important part of your ad. You will have to test images, but I've found colors than contrast with Facebook's blue to be most effective. This means most of my winning ads feature red or green in them.

You can target very tightly to the precise interests and demographics of your target market. For example, let's say your best buyers are women age 35 to 55. You target that for your demographics.

Then you target precise interests based on your market. For your very first ad, I'd likely target a keyword phrase that matches up to your audience OR a popular author/celebrity in your market. For example, if you were selling a course on Adwords, you could target “Perry Marshall” as a precise interest.

Here are some of the ways I brainstorm interests:

• Keywords – Use any of your favorite keyword tools to come up with possibilities.
• Books – Check Amazon’s best seller lists for popular book titles you could target.
• Authors – What are the most famous authors in this niche?
• Speakers – Which speakers are well known for this subject?
• Celebrities – What celebrities would people interested in this subject listen to?
• Websites/Bloggers – What about the most popular websites/blogs in the niche?
• Magazines – For example, in ‘internet marketing’ you could target “Success Magazine”
• Events – What conferences, expos, or other events take place in the market?
• Fan Pages or Groups – Are there popular fan pages or groups you could target?
• Stores – What big brand stores or manufacturers are in your market?
• Products/Software – Are there popular products or software purchased by the audience?

I suggest you choose a tightly niched audience for your first ad which could mean anywhere from 5,000 to 150,000 targets. And I'd start your daily budget low such as $5 to $10 so you're not risking much.

As a starting point, go with cost-per-click bidding. It's possible your ad or targeting may be poor and won't generate many if any clicks. With CPC bidding, you only pay for clicks to your site. If your ad doesn't work, Facebook will only charge you for the clicks you received and will quickly stop showing your ad. Your risk is minimal (ALWAYS remember to set the daily budget to where you're comfortable).

Of course there is a lot more to add, but these are the very bottom basics to getting started on one of the best ad sources currently available.

Note from Nik: If you want the report that Terry mentioned above, you can grab it here: 7 Unique Ways to Create Money Making Emails…Even if You’re NOT a Writer

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Melissa Ingold of CoachGlue.com says:

One thing that is working for me right now is repurposing my podcast episodes into videos.

I have a whole process that is completely outsourced, and as a result I’ve seen my search engine rankings improve, and the amount of traffic I’m getting from Google has shot way up.

Here's the one I did with Nicole, as an example:

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David Perdew of NAMS says:

Let’s modify the question. In my mind, it should be: “What’s something that’s working right now to make you MORE MONEY while getting traffic?”

This is a three-step process.

1) Step 1: Set up a LIFETIME DATABASE REFERRAL affiliate program (and yes, I was yelling that). I’m not talking about stinking lifetime cookies – those are a joke. Lifetime Database Referral means tagging new prospects to affiliates on the first transaction in the MyNAMS system in the software database where it cannot be overwritten. Any time that customer buys any product in our system, the referring affiliate gets the commission. We’ve created a video here explaining that:

Click image above or click here to watch the video

2) Step 2: Create a high-quality course and give it away for free by letting our top affiliates promote it with a 100% exclusive discount to get more people in the system. We did that with our course: Found Money – Creating Streams of Passive Income featuring… wait for it… Nicole Dean! Those top 10 or so affiliates promoted the course for 2-3 days exclusively.

Pssst. You can still grab that here or by clicking the image below:  Found Money – Creating Streams of Passive Income

3) Step 3: And here’s the money shot! We created unadvertised bonuses with free products from Our Favorite Affiliate programs which also met my PIE test. PIE = Passive Income Evaluation. When customers grabbed those bonuses, I was tagged in the Lifetime Database Referral affiliate programs of my favorite partners too.

You can see the 5 attributes we used to choose affiliate programs we will consistently promote here: Why I Probably Won't Promote your Product.  But here’s a hint about the first attribute: See Step 1 above.

The results were pretty awesome. In 6 weeks since we started this program, we added 4559 new users to our system. And if we compare that 6 week period to the previous six weeks, we get some pretty interesting numbers:

Love those percentages… In the MyNAMS Insiders Club, we work together to figure out how to capitalize on even more traffic.

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Kristen Eckstein of The Kindle in 30 Challenge says:

What's working right now? Kindle books!!

Not only am I getting an influx of buyers, people are opting into my list like crazy. I included a simple opt-in invite after the Introduction of each Kindle book in my new series, Author's Quick Guide, and when people opt-in they go through a survey funnel that helps ensure those on my list are a good fit to work with me in the future or buy my other products.

Another result of the Kindle series is as I've been pumping out one a week for the past 13 weeks and will continue through the end of 2013, I've gotten a lot of major affiliate marketer attention. I recently launched the sales page for a new Kindle in 30 Challenge Boot Camp to take place in January and I literally have top level affiliates climbing all over each other to mail their lists first!

It's been amazing to see my list grow with not just people wanting something free, but with BUYERS who will be likely to buy coaching or a done-for-you e-book service from my company in the near future.

I've also gotten invites for more interviews, Google Hangouts, and offers to guest post on major news sites and in mainstream industry magazines, all more forms to drive traffic to my web of money-making opportunities.

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Dennis Becker of Earn1KaDay says:

I tend to get most of my traffic from three place:

1. my email lists

2. from affiliates, and

3. from paid advertising on Facebook (for example promoted posts).

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Shannon Cherry of Learn How I Get *Paid* to Attend Events says:

I'm finding social friendly images and short infographics are really making people click links for me right now. People love images and the right ones will draw them in.

A variation on this is that I've been creating new covers for social media platforms as I promote new things. (Super tip: I also create a cover image for my clients as well as we are working on a program, which helps promote my program.)

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Dr. Mani of How to Set Goals says:

I've been trying out Bing Ads, and am getting quite a few clicks at affordable rates. The problem is with quality of the traffic, not too great from my testing (but I'm no PPC expert, so I may be doing the wrong things!)

SEO is working best for me, and I've devised a rather effective though simple process which kickstarts traffic to a new project, and keeps it going from adding fresh content for which I repeat the process. Now, I'm NOT talking about a gush of hundreds or thousands of visitors every day. The niches I'm in don't need high numbers, so my focus is on quality and ‘market match' in terms of visitors to the sites.

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Jeanette S. Cates, PhD of Sell your Book with an Ecourse says:

I am very focused on writing and selling books right now, so most of my traffic is aimed at making more book sales and the resulting subscribers to the ecourses that go with the books.

Bing and Facebook ads are working for me for book sales, as well as other paid advertising. It's faster and easier than “free” marketing tactics and lets me focus on writing books, rather than articles and blog posts.

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Nicole Dean of .. here! says:

The basics are still working really well for me.

1. Create great sexy offers.

Example: One of our more popular offers right now is Sticky Social Media Graphics

2. Make them irrisitible.

You'll see at  Sticky Social Media Graphics we have TONS of value added. Lots of people buy just for one of the bonuses.

3. Have a super-sexy affiliate program that rewards loyal affiliates for their referrals – and tie in affiliate contests regularly.

For instance, at CoachGlue.com right now, we're rewarding our affiliates – yet again. For every $100 in commissions they earn this month, they'll also get a $25 Amazon.com gift card. So, they'll have a little extra spending cash for the holidays. And that's good stuff.

4. Release Portions of the Course that our Affiliates Can Promote.

You can see on of those from our   Sticky Social Media Graphics  course here:

5. Network my butt off to get people to promote.

As you know, I frequently travel to meet new people in our industry. (You can meet me here.)

When I get home, I stay in touch with the people who I connected with and those people usually become my top affiliates on a continual basis – and often vice versa, too.

In addition to that, my list is still my #1 source of regular traffic.

• I write a blog post, and then I tell my lists.
• I create a product, and then I tell my lists.
• I am featured on someone else's site, and I tell my lists.

It's traffic on demand. And, not only that, but it's my OWN peeps who are awesome and already love me. That's better than cold traffic to me any old day. 🙂

HOWEVER …

One thing that I have been putting off that I really need to make a priority on is Facebook retargeting. I know that every single day that I put this off, it's money that I could have had in the bank. Plus, implementing it will also help my affiliates earn more money which is hugely important to me, too. So, watch for an update in a few months about “what's working now” – because hopefully I can tell you that the Facebook retargeting is.

One thing surprised me.

No one really talked about Teleseminars or Webinars. What's up with that?

Talk to Me.

What's working for you right now? What are some questions you have about traffic? Let me have it!

Warmly,
Nicole Dean