Where does your traffic comes from?

A combination of sources, depending on the type of offer/site.

SEO is always great. Proper optimization of a site will invariably yield well-qualified visits that will last for a long time. This includes keyword research and optimization both for on-page and off-page use as well as high quality (mostly manual) link building. If you slack off on any of these and go for the automated backlinks etc - don't be surprised if "SEO" doesn't work all that well.

Article marketing - but in the broadest sense, i.e. including guest posting, manually targeting the best sources. This can work great as well, but is also time-consuming - and takes the time it takes.

Video marketing - same as above, mostly focused on YouTube, but not only. Works great over time but, again, not exactly the fastest method.

For "fast" turnaround work, I do traffic acquisition. In fact, apart from regular quality SEO, this is where I focus most of my energy. The trick is knowing your networks and what each is best at. And then knowing what your acquisition cost will be, vs how many leads and/or sales you're likely to achieve - and making all that work within your set budget.

With traffic acquisition you get HUGE volumes going in, but only a small fraction converting to either your list or to your offer. But even if you convert at a paltry 0.1%, if the traffic is big enough - and cheap enough - you can indeed make a killing. This said, you can also lose your shirt if you don't know what you're doing.

For the "ordinary newbie" the SEO route tends to be the most popular, but be prepared to spend tons of time and have a lot of patience to see the results.

For the "daring newbie" or the "more entrepreneurial type" - traffic acquisition can be a much quicker way, but it's fraught with dangers if you don't know the ropes.

Over time, surprisingly, both approaches wind up costing roughly the same in your average situations, because the "free" SEO in many cases does cost a "wee bit" here and "just a bit" there. Add that to your time (which is worth something, isn't it?) - and before you know it a year has passed, you've spend a few hundred bucks - or thousands - and you're still not earning.

The paid traffic approach, if done wrongly can cost you the same or much more - but it can drain your wallet that much more expediently! So, to prevent that, you need to take a few good traffic courses - and after that spend some time applying and learning exactly to "really" do it.

In both cases (free and paid) anything less than 2 months from outlay to first incomes is almost never possible - in my experience anyway.

But once you've learned and TRIED it - some time+funds later - you can indeed replace your job - and then some!

I've primarily been getting traffic through joint ventures. I've been burned way too many times from Google to depend on anything from them anymore.

According to my analytics I get most of my traffic from Social Media Optimization and Article Submission. pay per click campaigning my another source of traffic.

I've mentioned this before, but figured it'd be good to mention it again. One of the most often overlooked methods of REALLY targeted & free traffic is doing what you're doing now. Forum posting.

Join a handful of high traffic forums in your niche, make sure they allow signatures, and start posting. Don't be lazy and post junk just to get your sig seen. Answer peoples questions, create quality threads, etc. You'll quickly start to see some really targeted traffic coming from your sig. And, in the process, you'll help brand yourself as an "authority" in that niche with a lot of people who read / post on those forums.

I've always found that conversion rates are almost always higher with forum posting than anything else. (Aside from very targeted PPC.) And the same can be said for email signups.

Best of all, it's 100% free.

There are indeed many ways of getting the traffic and one of the important aspect is the degree of comfort we have within certain methods.

Quickest and targeted traffic is always available through Big Email lists. Another way is to utilize sites like linkedin and other social media networks to get more affiliate traffic

It is a wild question with probably a whole forum to answer that. Just read an old thread for this kind of question! But I am sure there will be a new idea rise for this kind of post. As far as I know, based on the pattern of trial and error in getting the traffic, there are two types of traffic and niche relation. When the niche is hot and popular with less competition, it is better to use paid traffic, strike while the iron is hot. But when the niche is old and have many competition, you have to work on social network. I hope it helps!

build a list of people who WANT to hear your stories.

That will give you the highest CTR...

though... it takes the longest time to build

Paid, Paid and more Paid traffic for me. Easy to target an very affective.

For most sites the search engines are going to send the largest chunk of traffic, but I really like delving into my Referral sources to see what links are sending people over to my site. It's a great way to see what kind of impact your link building is having and to get an idea of the kinds of sites your target audience hangs out on. And if you're B2B you can't beat traffic from LinkedIn groups after sharing content.

60% organic, 35% social media, 5% forums.

- Forums
- Social Media ( Facebook, Twitter, Youtube)
- Yahoo answers
- Blog commenting
- SEO

Craigslist, social media (facebook, twitter, linkedin), forums, paid traffic.

-Forums
-Social Media
-Yahoo Answers
-Google (SEO Required - Easy if you chose the right keyword).

Mostly come from Search Engines and Social Media like Twitter, Pinterest, G+. Also a little portion comes from forums.

Also, integrating a website with G+ is a BIG plus for SEO. I forgot to mention that. It's SEO and Social Media In One

thanks for all your replies! I see some of you pointing out google+ I can't seem to get it. Not sure if it is because people at my country is not into it yet. I will look into G+ now. Thanks!

Organic search engine traffic via high quality backlinks from guest posts, social media and YouTube mainly.

My traffic comes from all over the place. I do alot of different marketing strategies online. My top sources are: blogging, forums, and social marketing.

There are so many ways to generate traffic. However if you want traffic extremely fast and be able to upscale it as much as you want, PPC is the way to go. I would personally stick with BingAds, Adwords, 7search, Plenty of Fish, Infolinks.
In saying this, you can also lose money very quick if your not careful.

Other methods could be article writing with ezine articles, forum marketing, email marketing, natural SEO (this is more of a long term goal), solo ads, media buys.

For newbies, I always recommend a bit of offline CPA with classified ads, newspapers and even printable hand-outs!

Good luck on your IM Journey!

I get traffics from links from forum and search engine and 10% of return visitors.

Google
Directs
Various Third Party Sites Combined
Various Social Bookmarking Sites Combined
Clickbank & Clickbank Affiliates

One can either consistently work to get referral visits (consistently comment on blogs and forums), or focus on methodologies that generate them on their own (i.e. proper SEO for SE's to send you traffic, creating quality content so others naturally link back and send visitors to you).

I prefer the later.

Mostly Google, Article marketing and Forum commenting. I have chose the free way...:

My top one are:

Youtube
Forum
Facebook pages
Press Release
PDF sharing sites/Powerpoint sharing sites
Web 2.0
Tutorial Sites
Free eBook Sharing Sites

Simon

Truth told? I've no clue for the most part. My main site is my favorite hobby/business in the whole world. I write - they come. People post a lot of pics in my forum, and that seems to really boost the traffic (it's a gem hunting site). People post about specific rock from specific regions, too, so just yacking back and forth with each other we hit mega keywords in our conversations. I don't write as much as I used to on the blog - but do now and again, and when I do and when I hit a good topic, my traffic goes wild. It also continues to come in for articles posted years back.

This days mostly, I am receiving social media traffics. Pinterest, Facbook, Sccop.it and the common one Google.

I am getting instant free traffic from Traffic Exchanges.

It works a lot when we are trying to promote free-to-signup sites.

Visit: http://www.easyhits4u.com/?ref=vijay5
Thank you.

Warning : It is for only who are not using Google Adsense.

To paraphrase Charles Kirlkland....From Visa & Mastercard mostly

Most of the traffic I get is from search engine and in bookmarking sites. Though many people would say that SEO is dead, i would say no. You just need to be so smart in where, what to to in your SEO works. Always target an organic SEO as you will never hit the guidelines that Google imposed.

I have had a lot of returning visitors on past sites, nearly half of my traffic on my main domain (which I have sold). The rest come from social media (70%), google search and a few social bookmark sites, and a few from here, my forum signature.
If I were starting a new site, which, if my babies would allow, I would focus a fair bit of my attention to social media for traffic, organic (search engine traffic) will follow. I think social media is the king of traffic sources, Facebook and Youtube being the dominant ones in my experience. Of course, the key is, to have interesting content that will compel visitors to interact (have social media built into your site). Debate is powerful, controversy,drama, you know people love that sort of thing.
Best of luck!

I get most traffic from existing costumers who recommend my service to other people..

Mainly just SEO, and from articles. I've got a few articles I've posted on sites like Squidoo, that have ranked well for loads of long tail keywords, just with a few backlinks. For example, I have one Squidoo article that is bringing in around 400 unique visits a month to a money site.

Also get a bit of traffic from YouTube videos, but I haven't uploaded enough videos yet to get a lot of traffic.

From what I read, the answer seems to be:

1) creating good content
2) adequate amount of marketing
3) the traffic will follow

I currently get the bulk of my traffic from two things:
1 - my affiliates
2 - my returning customers (my list of customers that I email regularly)

I am also going to add paid traffic to this model as well. I know some people have mixed emotions about paid traffic, but I have the expendable business income to try it out and I have really done my research on budgeting, where to go, etc. so I feel that it is right for me at this time.

I recently bought a education focused website from a company that went under. come to find out they never purchased traffic for it since it was launched 4 years go. it is a 500 page website and receives little organic traffic. good news is they didn't really mess anything up, they just lost the company. my question is i've always been an Adwords guy but for this niche I need cheaper traffic since my cost per lead payout is only around $20. Any recommendations on networks I can buy traffic from that have proven to work on an education site. Thanks