How much traffic does $20 bring you?

I just read a fascinating series of blog posts from Sodaware - about advertising, and how much traffic you can get for $19.95.

He examined a whole slew of different advertising and marketing methods, both free and pay - for the pay ad services, his budget was $19.95, and for the free marketing, he set a time limit of a half hour. This was a smart way to compare services, because as they say, nothing is free - your time is worth something too. A lot of times, it's more efficient to just pay for advertising than to spend hours on fruitless "free" ads.

Read part 1, the introduction and part 2, the results.

Many of Sodaware's results were as to be expected, but some lessons are worth repeating - like good targeting is key to successful ads. You'll get better results with ads on a well-targeted, medium-traffic side, than poorly-targeted ads on a huge-traffic site.

It's interesting to see the variety of uses and traffic that each ad service can bring - Stumbleupon users are low-attention-span, high-bounce visits that can spark a viral wave of traffic, while a well-targeted ad placed on a highly relevant site can bring in newsletter subscriptions and loyal readers. Which type you choose is up to you, or it could behoove you to diversify your tactics to get both loyal readers and viral bursts.

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