This article is a back-to-basics review of traffic sources and how to monetize this traffic. First, not all visitors are equal of course. Useless hits are just that - useless. I am like any other internet marketer - I have tried pretty well every trick in the book and spent quite a bit of money seeking the holy grail of qualified visitors.

I have spent money with AdWords, 7Search, Facebook, Plenty Of Fish, Trellian, Microsoft and Yahoo. Maybe I am not doing it right, but I have yet to make a profit on this money. I have bought the books, read the blogs. So after thousands of dollars spent I have learned this lesson:

The best traffic is organic search engine traffic. There is no other traffic source that can beat that. Period. PPC traffic has poor conversion, and these gurus that promise thousands of hits to your site will end up ruining your site credibility. I have tried this, and Google for one is quick to de-list and also bar AdSense.

The sales pitches are compelling though - how can you resist thousands of visitors for mere pennies? I am writing this because I want you to know where the real money is. During the past 10 years I have built a portfolio of about 400 content sites. Earning a living, yes. Making big bucks, no. But I am still learning. And tweaking. The days of setting up a few content pages with AdSense are gone. I know, I had over 700 sites once. Now I only have the good ones.

In analyzing my sites - keywords searched on etc. there is only once conclusion: create sites with real content and create inbound links to them. You can be clever using long tail keywords and other white hat tactics, RSS and so on. All that works. RSS feed work as well IF there is fairly unique content on the site aside from outside feeds. Having been through the past 10 years of this every day - the glory days are over. It's a business. But it's addictively fun.

Your sites need to be clean, clutter free and easy to navigate. They need to be credible and persuasive. Visitors MUST TRUST your site. Otherwise they won't click on anything!

And most importantly - have some valuable content. "How to" stuff always works.

So, how to get traffic. The natural way.

Simple. Proper, one-way inbound links from related pages on credible sites. Lots of them over time. And that is simply done by writing articles. I used that process years ago with great success. For the life of me I can't explain why I haven't done this for years. I recently wrote some articles, and within days they were popping up in search engines.

The best articles are of course educational, informative and the reader walks away with something useful. BUT - that's not why I write articles. I do it simply for the links to my sites. If someone reads it, and click on my links - that's a bonus. It's the links I am after to bolster my site's rankings.

So now you have a site that is well placed on SEs and you are starting to get traffic. Where's the money?

I am still an AdSense addict. Although I have had to really clean up my act. As a result of articles, and making my sites much more "user friendly" the revenues have increased accordingly.

The other way to monetize sites is affiliate marketing. Like promoting products sold by places like ClickBank and the private offer-networks like EWA. I have found the affiliate marketing is difficult. The conversion rate is poor, but when you make a sale - it is usually much higher pay-out than AdSense clicks. But you need very focused visitors. Willing and able to buy.

Finally, a note on what type of sites work best. In my experience, I make the best conversion rate on sites that contain information on something people are willing to spend money on. Hobby sites are poor money makers. So are news sites, plain blogs etc. For example, a site on student grants is performing much better that a site on planting for winter. But don't go chasing the top paying markets such as lawyers, loans and real estate. There is so much competition out there you don't stand a chance. Find a niche you like.