So you really want to make money online? And of course, you cannot make money online without increasing traffic. Yes, traffic is the life-blood of your online business because without real people visiting your online business, there can be no possibility of an actual sale. Just like you have it in your brick and mortar store, people must visit your shop for you to sell.
According to bigcommerce; Website traffic refers to web users who visit a website. Web traffic is measured in visits, sometimes called “sessions,” and is a common way to measure an online business effectiveness at attracting an audience.
Now that we know what web traffic is, how do I go about increasing website traffic to my online business? There are basically five ways in which you can increase traffic to your website:

Earned traffic

This is one of the best way to increase traffic to your website and online business; the only down side to this method is that it takes time. As the name suggest, you will have to earn the traffic by creating valuable contents consistently over a period of time to actually get real prospects to your online business and this takes time and effort and it also require skills. But the up side is that it is worth it as traffic earned can stay with you as long as you keep delivering valuable contents and the level of trust from this traffic is very high.
You can think of your favorite blogs, youtube channel, websites etc where you get valuable content and you have stayed glued to them over the years as a result of the value they provide as against some online businesses that you engaged with as a result of an offer which was pushed through an ad and after you enjoyed the offer, you discontinued your engagement with that business.

Paid traffic

This is one of the easiest way to jumpstart increasing traffic to your website and online business but the downside is that just as the name suggests, you have to pay for the traffic and for a start-up, it might be difficult to fund ads. Paid traffic comes inform of ads such as facebook ads, instagram ads, linkdin ads, twitter ads, google ads. The beauty of this type of traffic is that you can get it anytime as long as you have the money to spend but be ready to lose these traffic if your offer is not good enough. One way to leverage on paid traffic is that you can begin by creating valuable contents and offer and proceed with a little ads which will increase traffic to your website and online business and once the traffic lands on your website, blog, youtube channel, facebook page etc and finds it engaging and interesting, they will stay and become loyal customers. Another advantage of paid traffic is that it allows you to scale faster as you can buy any amount of traffic as long as you have the money to spend.

Borrowed traffic

When you use other people’s traffic; may be through affiliate marketing or joint venture partnership, you are actually borrowing the traffic. You can also borrow traffic through featuring your articles and contents on other people’s platform. The beauty of borrowed traffic is that you may not be required to pay actual money for it, you can go into some sort of partnership which allows you to pay in some other way like providing valuable contents or exchanging some sort of service or products for the traffic. The downside is that you must have something to offer in other to borrow that traffic; it can be a valuable relationship or something else as mentioned above but you must offer something and in return increase the traffic to your website and earn money from your online business.

Recycle traffic

One of the most valuable thing you must have to earn money consistently online is an email list and in recycling traffic, you basically engage with your list continuously whenever you have a new offer and because they have benefitted from your valuable contents or offer in the past, they don’t have any problem receiving new offers from you. Therefore you simply recycle the traffic to increase earning. One important thing to note here is that you must ensure that your offers are worth it and whatever you are offering is genuine as they can unsubscribe from your list at any time if they feel you are no longer true to your offering promise. Recycle traffic is one of the cheapest traffic because you only pay the price once and enjoy the benefit as long as you desire on the condition that your offers are worth their engagement.

Re-target traffic

Sometimes, people visit your website and fail to take any action; you can use facebook or google retargeting tool to reach them and get them to take action that will eventually lead to your earning money. The beauty of retargeting is that you always have access to this traffic as long as you have done the right thing using facebook and google’s powerful technology. The downside is that you must spend some money to retarget but don’t worry it is worth every penny and it is affordable too compared to buying a new traffic since these people already indicated interest in your business through their previous actions.
In conclusion, increasing traffic to your website and online business is quite simple and not as complicated as many put it. My advice is that you start from one, master it and add another until you master the five methods. It is important to note that at some point as you scale, you are likely going to integrate all five in order to get the required result.