Can I still make sales without buying ads?

It seems all the people making real sales here are spending hundreds of dollars on PPC/PPV/Facebook etc... ads.

I don't have access to that kind of cash.

Does making a website/blog work anymore or am I just wasting my time trying to go up against gurus with big SEO budgets?

if you can rank .. no problem.
but is much harder to rank nowadays. google prefers big players and paid commercials.

tfnaq said:

It seems all the people making real sales here are spending hundreds of dollars on PPC/PPV/Facebook etc... ads.

I don't have access to that kind of cash.

Does making a website/blog work anymore or am I just wasting my time trying to go up against gurus with big SEO budgets?

Click to expand...

This can work on small to medium niches. However, if you want to go for the more saturated niches, you gotta invest some money to play the game unless you already own a blog network and the tools.

You can definitely create a website to attract sales. However, you need good keyword research and seo to rank your website so people will actually visit it.

I started a niche blog all about how to start a blog in a certain niche. I used a keyword tool to find a good EMD, ensured I had good, practical, and readable content, and put a couple affiliate links on the site. It probably took 20 hours to set up, but now it just sits in the first 10 search results for a few competitive keywords and I'll get a $65 commission about once a month. In the last 12 months, I've probably made around $800. Just white hat SEO, and grinding away at content.

I think the other method of traffic that a lot of people leave out is pure volume. If you're on every forum, every social network, etc. and have something of value to offer you can make sales. Tools and ads just provide a faster way to get there.

I mean look at people who do PPD on YouTube. Some create a few videos and rank them up. Others create a shit load of videos and do long tailed keywords and make money just by the shear volume of content they have out there.