This is an interesting time of year. I often get overwhelmed by the holiday season. There are so many expectations to be met and yet I am often not meeting them -- at least in my mind. I would really like to just fast forward to January.

Since I cannot zip ahead, I will continue talking about internet marketing and making money online. Today I will discuss some "Traffic Tactics". Traffic is the lifeblood of any site.

One thing that any Internet Marketer quickly realizes is that if they do not have any traffic coming to their sites then they are not going to achieve anything. Traffic means people coming to your sight and it is a word you will regularly come across in Internet Marketing circles. It is a widely debated subject; however, there are some basic strategies that you can follow which have proven to be successful for many years. Some of these are free and some of them are paid.

One tactic, which can prove to be extremely profitable, is becoming a member of several forums. Many of these forums will allow you to create your own signature, which will be displayed at the bottom of every one of your posts. You can include URLs in your signature. Therefore, in your signature you can have URLs which will either go to your own website or an affiliate program that you are promoting.

The key to this signature tactic is to write something catchy alongside your URL which makes it more likely that people reading your post will click. A good idea is to answer people's questions with interesting answers full of good advice or to start your own thread. By starting your own thread this means that people will see your posting first and this further increases your chances of getting clicks.

You can also customize your signature when sending emails. The fact that this tactic is totally free is a real bonus. If you are into internet marketing, every email you send should have your signature at the bottom. Every email program I have seen has a place to create a signature that is automatically included in each email you send.

Another target that almost all successful Internet Marketers utilize is called Pay Per Click (PPC) The concept behind this is that you write an Ad for a particular keyword and then this is either displayed at the Search Engine page or on affiliate pages. Every time someone clicks on your Ad, they will go to the website or affiliate program you are promoting.

PPC is very performance driven as you only pay when a click occurs. Therefore, if you pay $0.20 per click and it takes 50 clicks to get someone to buy your $40.00 product then you are making $30.00 for doing nothing. If you repeat this successfully for several different keywords then you can make a lot of money. However, you must try and avoid paying for expensive keywords that have a lot of demand. Try to look for some cheaper ones that have less competition. You must also make sure that you have a strict budget and that you know exactly what your spending otherwise things could spiral out of control. Build up campaigns slowly, one at a time, and make sure they are pulling a profit before moving on. There are complete courses in pay per click marketing.

If you love to write then there are a couple of tactics that are perfect for you. These are articles and press releases. By writing articles and sending them to the article directories, you can get a lot of traffic because you get to customize your Bio and include your URLs. However, the distribution of these articles can be time consuming and so it is best to use software or a service. Yes, some sites sell a service that submits each article you write to a large number or article sites.

People often look for articles to dress up their websites with information they do not have time to write about or are not expert enough to write a good article. You can simply go to an article directory and take an article and post it on your site. Instant information. THE CATCH is that you have to keep the BIO or signature at the bottom of the article. The author gives you permission to use the article royalty free IF you keep their signature intact. If you do not keep their BIO then it is called plagerism.

Here is an article on RV Living Magazine that was taken from an article directory, Camping Lanterns.