How do you Pay for your Traffic... Using your Money or your Time?

I prefer traffic paid with my money because I don't have too much time to spare - paid traffic is really quick!

However, I understand that there are people who can't afford to pay for traffic and have plenty of time at their disposal. "Free traffic" takes a little big longer to manifest.

I prefer paid traffic because you can quickly determine whether an offer or a landing page works or not before you devote time, a long term investment in link building for seo. Tracking testing and data accumulation properly done breeds success and the fastest way to accomplish that is with paid traffic.

It's funny when you put it in perspective it's not really free at all.

Time is money for sure.

Free traffic works but if I had to pick one it will be Paid Traffic without a
doubt.

Paid Traffic is fast and if you need to scale a affiliate campaign or your business you can do it right away.

Free Traffic depending on your method it can take alot longer to build
momentum and see some real results.

I prefer free traffic but as you say, it comes with sacrifices. But it is worth it, bearing in mind that I also get experience in the practise and I learn lots more about it, includng any adjustments by the search engines.

Since penguin was released from his cage, i preferred paying for my traffic with time. In long term, you will get more traffic. Sure you still can get pretty good results with "money payed" traffic, but these days is much more complicated.

If you use your traffic wisely (aka build a targeted list), you can re-use that traffic almost free (You pay autoresponder fee and spend some of your time).

Well you're analysis is really on to something there. Anyway, in this case, preference will have to first be derived from research and analysis.

What do I mean? Since there is virtually no free traffic of any sort, that mean we go for the kind of traffic source (way of getting that source) that will cost us lesser or be more beneficial to our cause.

Here's how it goes. Sometimes, we actually pay for traffic to save money because all the time and effort trying to acquire good enough traffic through the seemingly "free" way will actually cost us a more than if we just pay for it. And, the same goes the other way around. It just actually depends on how you see things, and what you think will save you more time and/or money depending on what you prioritize the most.

Anyway, in terms of normal preferences, if you have the money and not the time then you'll probably prefer "buying" traffic. If you don't have money, however, you'll probably have no other choice but to do with "free" traffic. As simple as that if you put all the analysis aside.

Good Luck! :-)

I prefer paid traffic because it affords you the opportunity to build your list at a super fast pace as well as find out how good your landing page converts

Well... Once you know how to get FREE traffic fast, you really don't have to spend too much time in free traffic.

It depends on your skills and the information you have.

I don't know if you heard about Facebook manipulating 80% of the clicks for Facebook Advertising.
They say that they were using bots to click on people's ads and make money with fake clicks...

So I don't trust paid traffic very much lol

BOTH!
And it's the perfect combination.

I think it's important to consider one thing about a lot of free traffic methods. A lot of them allow you to build a more personal relationship or at least presence with people online. That can go a long way, especially if you understand the power in building meaningful relationships and helping people.

That being said, I think paid traffic can do the same if you're leading them to something personal to you and not just some random affiliate offer. And wherever you're leading them, I agree with most who have posted here that paid traffic should at least be part of the plan if you are able to invest. It is convenient and does work.

I do both. Free marketing helps me to minimize the cost of acquiring a customer via paid advertising.

I also do both. Content marketing can get way more quality leads then paid marketing because you lead with value first. Its funny how the people that responded with paid are doing free marketing by responding, lol.

Its not possible for every starting IM will have a lot of bucks to spend on getting traffic, in real people dont even find it relevant to do so...

So investing some time is not a big deal here, this will help them to learn from their invesment & the experience will matter a lot in future point of time...

Free is always good but in all seriousness I use paid to get started - it lets me see what works and what doesnt.

And of course once the revenue starts to flow I can hire a company to rank my website and pretty much move onto another project!