finding traffic which produces is not easy
OK, as a media buyer managing over $100,000 in ad buys a month for our websites, I'll share my experiences.
Cheap traffic is crap. In four years, I can count on less than one finger companies who have promised traffic cheaply and delivered.
Better Web Site ROI
Cool background/cool backgrounds
Idiot proof diet
Pink background/pink backgrounds
PPCs are your best bet - and you always want targeted traffic - you might not be selling anything, but if there are advertisers on the site, THEY will need targeted visitors.
With PPC you can monitor the money and adjust as necessary - start small, like $50 or so - use this to get a feel for your market and to gauge the "burn" of your budget - been there done that and lost $10K overnight once with the "Keep me in 1st" option enabled back in the GoTo days...LOL
Bar Pie Graphs MDI GRML
Headlines MDI GRML
Pioneer Report MDI GRML
Tree MDI GRML
After PPC type stuff - incidentally, that is PayPerClick - look for CPC campaigns - cost per click. CPC means you only pay for actual traffic, rather than paying to have ads shown a bunch of times, with no clicks on the ads - much safer for your budget. This can take a long time to fulfill, though, if your ads aren't good - test, test, test to see what works.
Bar Graphs
Product Inventory
Data Management
Grouping Sorting
A new-ish thing on the landscape is CPV - cost per view. It's been around a few years, but recently we're seeing a lot of companies switching over to this concept. ...and it's is CRAP. I am adament about this, as we have the data to show these campaigns are not as effective as CPC campaigns. (Keep in mind, since CPV relys on your site being shown as the "ad", what you're offering folks on your front page has a bunch to do with your success - though it also easily identifies YOUR SITE as the source of the GD pop-up ruining their browsing session at that moment, too.)
Bar Graph GRML
Headlines GRML
Tree GRML
I firmly believe they suck - we will not spend money on them any more.
E-mail campaigns...skip these unless you yourself have developed the e-mail list - other than that, if it's cheap, it's garbage - can't stress that enough about e-mails.
Next up would be networks - good ones, like Fastclick, can send very good traffic to you. Bad ones bleed you dry and don't deliver. Shop around, and insist on running "test" campaigns first - this can help reduce the costs to you starting off.
In the end, be realistic about your budget - many places have a minimum buy - like $5,000 USD - to start a campaign. That's why the PPC stuff from Google and Yahoo are so attractive - cheap and simple to start, and capable of delivering great traffic if you can write good text ads.
What else - skip print advertising, radio ads and TV ads - doesn't really drive much traffic and zero way to accurately track it anyway.
Advertising on the Internet is not cheap - if it works, it costs money. There is no Holy Grail. I $hit you not.