Can You Buy Traffic to International Websites?

There’s a problem with the web. A huge number of websites, and a vast majority of all content, tends to be focused towards an American audience. You’re lucky when you find content addressed to brits or to aussies, let alone locations in other areas of Europe, Asia and the middle-east. At least, any content geared towards many of these site owners is written in another language, one us English-speaking webmasters can’t read.

So, for those of us who run international websites, there’s a question that’s hard to answer; is there anywhere good to buy traffic, and is it worth the time and effort required?

The Giants: Google and Facebook

Anyone with a mind to buy traffic knows of the two giants in the industry: Facebook and Google. With American and other English-speaking countries, these are by far the dominant sources of paid traffic. However, a lot of time and energy goes into specifically excluding an international audience, typically because of the low conversion rates associated with such traffic.

To which I say; take advantage of it, international site owners! These people click ads, but they don’t convert on websites not designed for them. If you design a website for them, the audience is there.

Google AdWords is a great program with a great CTR, particularly when you’re running international ads. You have less competition, simply because so many businesses block other countries. When you target and monetize these countries, you’re golden.

Just like with American ads, when you’re running international ads through AdWords, you need to exclude most other areas of the world. The difference is, you’re probably going to want to exclude the big English-speaking countries if you can. If your site is solely geared towards the Middle East, you’ll be able to get a much lower cost per click than if you leave the United States in the equation.

Facebook is much the same way, but as always with Facebook, you have a huge amount of interest and demographic targeting options. On the other hand, you have to be hyper-aware of the so-called clickfarm countries. If possible, go really deep into refining your geotargeting to exclude some countries and include others, specifically just those you can sell to. If you sell to countries like Bangladesh, well, you’ll have to figure out some workaround with interest targeting.

So how do these sources of traffic stand up? They’re great, if you can use them. The problem is, a lot of the actions you might take as an international site owner are similar to actions black hat webmasters take. You’re skirting a fine line, and both Google and Facebook have “block now, ask questions later” attitudes when it comes to removing people from their programs.

This is why the rest of this article exists. If you could get everything you need from Google and Facebook, you would. The problem is, so many international webmasters are either blocked from the programs or aren’t able to get accounts, for one reason or another. That’s why other networks exist.

The Networks

There are hundreds of CPC networks on the Internet, ranging from low quality botnets to high quality private traffic exchanges. I’m gong to list a few that are good for international traffic, but you need to realize that this list is by no means exhaustive. If you have a favorite network you’d like to add, or if you have criticism of one of the networks I list, by all means, let me know in the comments.

TrafficVance: This is one of the more selective and exclusive networks out there, which means it’s great to get into, but it’s hard to do so. If you have a decent site and a history of positive interactions with various ad networks, TrafficVance is a good one to go for.

LeadImpact: Maybe it doesn’t have the best of reputations, but LeadImpact is a pretty good network on the opposite end of the spectrum as TrafficVance. Rather than being exclusive, they take on just about anyone. On the other hand, they’re also quick to prune out those who don’t meet their standards, so you see a lot of poor black hat marketers complaining about the “scam network” when they were violating the terms of service in the first place.

Clicksor: Another of those older networks with a lot of old reviews telling you to avoid them. Honestly, it varies a lot from person to person and situation to situation. Give them a try, but don’t get too invested in them until you’re sure they’re going to work for your site.

The Long Shots

Of course, you can always take your traffic buying to a site like Fiverr. There are a lot of traffic sellers there who use clickfarms and “third world” networks to send traffic to English sites. This obviously doesn’t work for those sites, but it could potentially work for yours. It depends entirely on where the traffic is coming from and how you’ve monetized your site.

I wouldn’t recommend going this route unless you have a few bucks to burn and have no worries about getting a bunch of fake traffic. You might stumble on someone using an ad network that gets you targeted traffic. More likely, you’ll get clickfarm traffic or just bot traffic, neither of which does you any good.

Is It Worth Buying Traffic?

This, in the end, is the question you need to ask. Is it worth the time, energy, money and effort it takes to find and buy traffic for your international site?

Thankfully, the answer is simple; it’s definitely worth it if you’re making money. If you’re not making money, don’t do it. If you’re buying traffic from a site that isn’t converting, don’t waste a lot of time trying to contort your site into a form that will convert that traffic; find a better traffic source.

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