There are so many ways of generating traffic to your website but where do you start? And how do you know which is best for you?...Hopefully this article will point you in the right direction.

What is Free Traffic? This is generally classed as traffic that isn't paid for such as pay per click advertising. Even if you outsource the jobs the traffic is generally free over time as you don't have to pay for it per impression or per click.

Examples of common free traffic generation methods

Article marketing. When you write an article, distribute it to directories and get links and traffic back to your site.

Blog Marketing. When you put up a blog and get it indexed by search engines for their traffic.

Video Marketing. Putting up short simple videos to sites like YouTube. Where viewers click a link back to your site.

Blog commenting. When you leave comments on high traffic blogs. Readers click on your signature which leads them back to your site. Forum commenting or marketing. Similar to blog commenting. Except you answer posts on a forum. Readers click on your signature which leads them back to your site. Classified ads marketing. Placing free ads on sites such as Craiglsist.org for free traffic.

Examples of common paid traffic generation methods

Pay Per Click Advertising. Probably the most common paid method. You pay per click each time your ad gets clicked on in search engines such as Google.

Banner Advertising. This can mean displaying a banner ad on the Google content network or just buying ad space on a popular site.

Media Buys. When you pay per impression or view on your ad on a high traffic website.

Ezine Advertising. Placing your ad on email newsletters that have many subscribers.

Pros of free traffic - Get long term traffic for free. - With article marketing the there isn't much chance of the traffic stopping. - With article marketing, you establish yourself as an authority in your market.

Cons of free traffic - Is labour intensive. Takes a lot of regular, consistent boring, repetitive work. - Takes longer to see results with article marketing. - With blog and forum commenting, you need to keep doing it to see constant results. This is the same for classified ads.

Pros of paid traffic - Get immediate traffic to your site. - Not so labour intensive.

Cons of paid traffic - PPC advertising is very competitive and does take more work to set up a successful campaign than it used to. - Short term results. You only have traffic for as long as you can pay for it.

- Your business can be at risk if you are just going for straight sales. If the traffic stops, so will your sales.

Summing up I hope you found this review helpful. For your long term future, i would recommend using both free and paid methods. And also to capture leads to your website, so you can follow up with them later. This was you get the most out of your traffic...paid and free.