A steady flow of good web traffic increases the potential of any web-based business to make money online but many online business owners know that internet marketing can be expensive. This is why online business owners are so attracted to free web traffic platforms. However, free platforms to gain web traffic have its own advantages and disadvantages.

Apart from the fact that they save website owners a lot of money, some methods to drive free web traffic can help you increase other people's awareness of your online business. Some of them can also help you establish your reputation. Among the methods that will allow you to do this are publishing articles on free article directories and increasing your presence in forums. These will help you attract visitors to your site through your resource box or your signature links.

However, free web traffic also comes with certain disadvantages. Among the most significant disadvantages is the fact that you are unlikely to get very targeted traffic. To some extent, article marketing and forum marketing can help you target your traffic as long as you publish content that are relevant to your offerings. However, other free traffic sources won't allow you to do the same. Safelist services, for example, will help you gain free traffic but will unlikely help you generate sales and leads. Auto-surf programs won't help you gain targeted traffic either and, because you will have to surf through other sites to gain credits. These traffic never convert. In fact, they could get your AdSense account banned if you put in an AdSense site into the program. Your time may be better spent pursuing other internet marketing activities.

Keep in mind that it is not enough to gain tons of traffic for your business website. Your ultimate goal should be to make money out of your visitors and there is no way you can do that if your traffic is not targeted. This is not to say that you shouldn't make use of free web traffic methods as they can still be very useful to your online business. After all, pursuing those free methods can't hurt you because they're free. What you need to do, though, is combine those free methods with paid strategies that have proven to increase targeted web traffic.

By making use of both paid and free methods, you can attract a huge number of visitors and make sure that you generate sales and leads at the same time. Using both methods strategically will not only help you gain visitors to your site but also make your online business profitable.