What is traffic on the Internet and business, and how to make money on it

If you are reading my article, then you actively use the Internet. And if you use the Internet, then you constantly visit different sites. In the article “Traffic - what is it in simple words and what is it for” I will talk about the types of traffic and its importance for modern Internet business.

Why is it important for online business to have quality traffic? How to increase traffic to a website or online store? Why do you need web analytics? How can you make money from Internet traffic? Read about this in my article.

What does it mean

Traffic (English: traffic jam, traffic) is the volume and speed of information exchange on the Internet.

A little computer science for dummies. All data on the Internet is sent in pieces (packets). They are converted into network signals and via wires and radio communications reach a specific computer. There they again become binary code, which the device sees as a movie, text or picture.

Internet traffic is measured in bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes.

Traffic in business and marketing refers to the number of visitors to a website in a given time. The larger it is, the more expensive your site is. Some specially create pages, pump them up to a certain number of visitors and then sell them at least 3 times more expensive.

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It is measured in unique IP addresses that came to your site.

Simply put, there are billions of people on the Internet, and some of them visit your website. Why not everyone? There are several reasons for this:

1. Not everyone is interested in the theme of your site.
2. There are a dozen, or even a hundred sites on the Internet on the same topic. Some people go to them. Typical competition.
3. Nobody knows about the site. It is not on the first pages of search. And he was progressing poorly or not at all yet.

Mobile traffic is the amount of data transfer on the network limited by the cellular operator. They can, for example, give 15 GB for 300 rubles. Simply put, you can download 15 GB of movies or upload videos to YouTube.

What is traffic and why is it needed?

Traffic refers to the flow of users passing through a site or launching an application. This is the number of visitors measured using “visits” (sometimes called “sessions”).

Each unique user entering the site is considered one visit. The more such visits there are, the more effective the resource’s advertising campaign is considered, because it helps attract a larger audience.

Why do you need a large audience? Every visitor is a potential conversion into a sale. The more people get to the site, the higher the chances of making a profit.

Therefore, webmasters try to optimize all possible resources in order to attract as much traffic as possible. Optimization gives:

• increased audience reach;
• increased number of site views (which affects sales and SEO indicators);
• increased number of likes, reposts, comments and other interactions with the resource;
• more applications;
• natural increase in brand popularity.

How do they make money on it?

For online stores, businessmen and freelancers, traffic means people who can pay.

But here a large gap can form between traffic and orders. Not everyone who visits the site buys. Quantity is good. But first of all we need to work on quality. Weed out non-target audiences, check what sources people come from, analyze behavior. Then you will understand where the mistake was made and how to correct it.

Traffic is money. It doesn’t matter what you have: an online store or a blog about how to fry eggs. Without it, the project operates at a loss.

A blogger’s main source of income depends on traffic – the cost of advertising. Less than 200 unique visitors per day – the resource is useless. And such giants as KinoPoisk receive from 30,000 rubles per day for native advertising. You need to work on quality if you want subscribers. At first, you can get by with quantity.

Traffic arbitrage. You register in the affiliate system. You advertise an online store, online courses and receive commissions from sales. The expenses you incur are advertising to attract customers. In simple words, you buy visits and sell them at a higher price. And you put the difference in your pocket.

Minus. You won't get back the money you spent if you can't attract someone.

Restriction of data distribution

In order to save traffic, it becomes necessary to limit it, since even an unplanned update of the system of your phone or the programs installed on it can waste a significant part of the resources you need.

The simplest thing is to set the type of Network that will be used, that is, mobile network or Wi-Fi. You can also set it in the settings so that when you establish a particular type of connection, the system prompts you to use it. The main ways to limit the spread of data:

• in the phone settings;
• using the application.

In the phone settings

Android has a feature that allows you to disable data transfer under certain conditions or set the limit you need, if exceeded, data transfer will stop.

To do this, in the data transfer settings, go to the “Traffic Saving” menu and select the saving mode. Here you can select exceptions - programs to which these actions will not apply. In the previous section “Data transfer”, select “limit mobile network usage” and specify the amount at which data transfer will stop.

In applications

Applications for traffic control, as a rule, have advanced functionality that allows you to set parameters such as the validity period of the tariff plan, different alert ranges.

For example, it is possible to create your own tariff plan. Here you can specify the data transfer limit, billing cycle (monthly, weekly or the number of days you specify). Individual applications can be allowed to use traffic without restrictions.

Kinds

We have already talked about the importance of web traffic. So, data transfer can be of the following types:

• Incoming is the data you receive. For example, a downloaded movie, a viewed page, a message.
• Outgoing is information that you send. Uploading a video, sending messages. Even authorization is considered outgoing traffic. You are sending your login and password to the database.

In Internet marketing, everything that is targeted and warm is profit, non-targeted is husk that needs to be removed. It is impossible to get 100% of interested traffic. There will always be bots, random passers-by.

Traffic through the eyes of an internet marketer:

• Target. Visitors who are interested in your website, product/service.
• Non-target. People who are indifferent to the theme of your site. They have different needs and hobbies. They will not take the target action: purchase, registration, etc.

The main enemy of a marketer is bots. These are programs that pretend to be real users.

They do harm because they can write bad comments and interfere with calculating real conversion. You want to advertise on your blog. Look, it has a traffic of 2,000 people/day. But in fact, half are bots. It turns out that you overpaid for advertising. According to Google, 48.2% of all Internet traffic is bots.

Based on the type of Internet, traffic is divided into:

• Mobile

Speed ​​is slower, volume is limited. The price is higher and there is no limit. But you can use it in any place where the tower catches. Sometimes there are offers with temporary unlimited time, for example, from 12 at night to 6 in the morning.

Do you regularly use mobile Internet? I wonder how many of us there are. Write in the comments.

• Desktop traffic

Limited only by speed. You can download and upload as much as you like. Disadvantage: catches indoors. When you go to school or go for a walk, you are left without the Internet.

What determines the data transfer speed?

The speed indicated in the tariff does not always coincide with reality. A lot depends on the characteristics of the equipment through which the user receives an Internet connection.

Wi-Fi connection speed

Wireless Internet is affected by:

1. Technology. The operating standard applied by network equipment may reduce transmission speeds. Outdated models operating according to old standards reduce speed to 20 Mbit/s.
2. Operating frequency (measured in GHz). The dual-band router is capable of providing wireless Internet space at frequencies of 2.4 GHz – 5 GHz. An increase in frequency will result in an increase in Internet speed.
3. Action area. The thickness of the walls and the area of ​​the living space can also affect the data transfer speed. If Internet coverage is planned for a large space, then it is worth purchasing equipment with increased power.
4. Accommodation. The router's signal may be jammed due to improper placement.

It is recommended to place the router on a table, shelf or low cabinet. The device can be hung on a wall at a height of 1-2 meters to ensure optimal signal coverage. Positioning it too high or low will result in signal loss.

1. Interference. It is better not to install the router next to equipment that operates at the same frequency as the router.

In the latter case, it is better to choose a free channel or replace the router with a more powerful one.

Cable Internet connection

The quality of the cable Internet connection is equally influenced by the supplier’s equipment and the client’s router. The performance of optical fiber is measured much higher than that of twisted pair.

A twisted pair cable with 4 cores can provide Internet speeds of up to 100 Mbit/s.

Optical fiber is capable of delivering speeds measured up to 1000 Mbit/s. The wire length can be up to 1000 m.

To use fiber optics, you need a special router model with a suitable connector.

Despite the high transmission speed, optics have a number of disadvantages:

• fiber optic cable often suffers from kinks and other damage that is difficult to repair;
• if one subscriber’s signal receiver fails, the network will be lost for other users connected to the same receiver;
• Subscribers with one cable gain access to information on each other's computers.

Mobile connection speed

When the quality of mobile Internet is measured, you may notice that the connection is not stable. Its quality is affected by external factors and various interferences:

1. Distance. The further the connected device is from the station, the lower the speed. Your mobile, tablet or laptop may show 4G connectivity, but the actual speed will be lower than expected.
2. Physical interference. Houses and metal structures significantly “eat up” the signal.
3. Load. Connecting several subscribers to one tower also reduces the quality of the Internet. It falls especially noticeably in the evening.
4. Device capabilities. Using the settings of your smartphone or laptop, you can control the data transfer speed.

Where to get it

The traffic source will tell you which promotion tools work and how targeted your audience is.

To understand where people are coming to the site from, you need to install Yandex.Metrica and Google Analytics counters on all pages. They are usually placed at the very bottom of the page (footer).

• Search engines

Shareware method. You don't pay for the transition. But getting to the top of search results without SEO optimization is impossible. Here you either spend money on a specialist, or invest your time and effort.

You immediately get a warm client. He is already looking for “buy a suit in St. Petersburg”, comes across your online store in the search results, and follows the link. And now site traffic is slowly growing.

Such traffic can be achieved from search engines.

• contextual advertising

Everything is almost the same: a person, a search engine, only the links are different. Look carefully to see if there are advertisements at the top or bottom of the page. They match the topic of the search query. This is a paid pleasure for the advertiser. Each transition is paid. For example, if a person reads an article about Bulgaria, he will be offered to apply for a visa or buy a cheap plane ticket.

• Social network

There are a lot of options for attracting: links in posts, status, invitations in personal messages and targeted advertising.

• Messengers

Outperformed email newsletters in terms of conversions by 95%. You send the link in messages, status, group.

• Direct transition

This is when a person immediately visits your website. Enters or pastes into the address bar, opens in bookmarks. In this case, it is impossible to understand how they found out about your site. Someone I knew might have suggested it, or maybe I saw it on a leaflet.

What is traffic for?

The answer will be simple and banal to the point of disgrace. To pass information to each other!

If we take special cases, if there is traffic, people will be able to:

• learn about your product or service
• place an order on your website
• subscribe to your blog, etc.

There is traffic - we will receive news from another Network participant. No traffic - we will remain in the dark.

For example, I cannot imagine how one can live and work in isolation from the outside world. Today, only the savages of the Amazon live in isolation. And you?

Previously, people went to libraries, watched TV, listened to the radio, and read newspapers. Now they are surfing the Internet.

This is the picture.

What is the Internet? We, people of the 21st century, often use the Internet, and it has become so firmly established in our everyday life that we may not even think about how it works!

But it would be necessary.

The Internet is a network of many millions of computers and high-power computing devices. All these computers are connected to each other using communication means: electrical cables or radios.

Usually the Internet is understood as the World Wide Web. However, in some countries, for reasons of national security, there is an internal “Internet” that is not connected to the world wide. A striking example is the Gwangmyong network in the DPRK. But this is rather an exception to the rule.

There are 2 types of devices on the network:

• personal computers or PCs
• servers

People use personal computers to enter and receive information. These are classic desktops with monitors and system units, all-in-one PCs, laptops, tablets, and smartphones.

Servers are intermediaries between PCs, powerful computing systems that store, transmit and process information offline. They require human presence only occasionally - for maintenance.

So, both PCs and servers exchange traffic with each other.

Ways to attract

It's not enough to make useful content and hope to get noticed. You need to be active. Here I have collected 15 paid and free ways that will attract visitors to your site. Use it now.

Free

1. Write a useful article for a popular online magazine. Ask them to link to your site.
2. Learn for free. Make a plan, make a video, or write how-to articles.
3. Promote others. Write a nice review article about a large company in a related field or a video. They usually care about their reputation and monitor information about themselves that ends up on the Internet. They might like your kind gesture and mention you.
4. Place links in social media posts. Twitter is suitable for short notes consisting of a title and a link. Instagram and Pinterest are suitable for online stores and bloggers. You can display the product in a tasty way and write an attractive description. Most needlewomen, photographers, artists, and freelancers sell services and creations through these social networks.
5. Attend conferences and other events. Go wherever there is at least a subtle connection with the topic of your website or business. Communicate, exchange contacts. Try to participate. You will show yourself as an expert and gain prestige. I read a book by a jewelry maker. She sold them through the website. There were less than 20 buyers per month. Then she bought a place at the annual fair in Moscow. She designed the stand in the “Space” style. And in a few days they bought everything from her. Along with the jewelry, she handed out business cards with the address of the online store. Attendance along with conversion increased 3 times.
6. Call the experts. An interview or text with comments from a pro will attract attention. In any industry you will find opinion leaders: directors, marketers, bloggers. The main thing is to persuade them to pay attention to you. Content mentioning a famous name will already show up in search results. You will be even more lucky if the expert himself talks about your content.
7. Search engine promotion. Registering keywords, linking pages, building link mass. Everything goes into SEO, which will help you appear at the top of search results. The method is free if you can do it yourself, otherwise you need a specialist.
8. Viral marketing. It's free, fast and well accepted by search engines. You create engaging, shocking, exciting content that people share themselves. Well-known examples: the “Zhdun” meme, Diana Shurygina and Buzova.
9. Email newsletter. Shareware method. You can collect a database of email addresses manually or buy one. Send manually or use an automatic mailing service. The main benefit is communication with a potential client, which develops a relationship and increases trust. Disadvantage: emails often go to spam.

Paid

1. Hold a competition for referrals and subscriptions. Tell us about it in the media, social networks, forums. Put a valuable prize on the line for your audience. For example, lovers of self-development and planning will love the Moleskine notebook.
2. Launch contextual advertising in YAN, Google Ads. I do not advise beginners to advance using high-frequency queries. This is when you sell dresses and rank for the “Buy Dresses Online” search. On the first page there will be monopolists like Wildberries. Focus on low-frequency queries. In the case of clothes, it could be “Buy a chiffon dress for the New Year.”
3. Banner advertising. Place your advertising image directly on websites or through the Yandex and Google advertising networks. CTR will show how effective it will be.
4. Set up targeted advertising. With its help, affiliates generate traffic. It is a little more complicated than the contextual one. And you will have to choose your social network very carefully. Few people will be interested in 3D graphics lessons on Odnoklassniki, but they will go to YouTube. And then you need to show what cool 3D objects you draw, or give a couple of free lessons, and then invite you to courses.
5. Exchange traffic. This is not about cheating. Using a special code, materials from another resource will be displayed on your website, and your content will be displayed on it.
6. Teaser advertising. Catchy advertising pictures with text like “Shock! This vegetable will cure arthritis, all you need is…” Suitable for attracting a wide audience that has not yet developed immunity to such calls. Cheap, high click-through rate. But if a visitor doesn’t see what he expected on the site, he will leave and never return.

The alarm should be sounded when traffic is growing, but income and orders are not. This means that someone is driving cheap and inappropriate traffic. For example, for the request “Cheap cosmetics in Moscow,” they promote a luxury cosmetics store in St. Petersburg.

Internet speed and distances

In this case, it would not be amiss to recall that distance is also of great importance. What distance are we talking about? We are often asked why the results of measuring Internet connection speed in your Internet speed test differ from the results of measurements in other services. The results are different because measurements are made on different servers on different services.

The speed of an Internet connection can be measured in only one way: checking the amount of information downloaded or uploaded per unit of time. But this information needs to be taken from somewhere. And this is a very important factor. You can receive information from a computer next to you, which is in another room, or from a computer that is installed in the house next door to you, or from a computer that is installed by your provider, or maybe from a computer that is located in Germany.

Accordingly, as we have already found out above, the further the road to the server from which we take information, the more interference there is along the way, which means the lower the resulting Internet speed. If you measure the speed with the server of your Internet provider, which is located several kilometers away from you, then the likelihood of no interference is high and the speed will be almost equal to that promised by you according to the tariff, but if you measure the speed with a server located in Germany, then the information To get to your computer, it must travel thousands of kilometers through the networks of various Internet providers. And along this path, various obstacles and surprises will await her, as a result of which the speed will decrease. Thus, the closer to you the server with which you measure, the higher the Internet speed.

How to find out how much internet traffic to use

You need to track where traffic is flowing. You can identify a virus that leaks information to someone unknown. If you are not watching or downloading anything, and the data transfer volume is increasing, your computer is infected. It's time to turn on your antivirus.

Control and smart use of every megabyte will help you stay connected to the Internet on your mobile.

Using Windows 10 as an example, I’ll show you how to view traffic statistics. You will find out how much was spent and where without additional programs.

Do you want to know how much traffic has already been spent in one session? And at what speed is it leaking now?

Open the Start menu and go to the Control Panel.

Select “Network and Internet”.

Scroll and click on “Network and Sharing Center”.

Click on the name “Connection”. It is highlighted in blue.

In the window that opens, you can find out everything about the Internet on your computer: speed, traffic and connection duration.

You need to find out which specific programs consumed traffic and how much. Go to “Control Panel” → “Network and Internet” → “Data Usage”.

You will see how much traffic was spent over the last 30 days in general and for each connection type. If you want to know which programs have been consumed, click “Show Usage Details” below.

You'll see a detailed report of how much web traffic each program has consumed.

Have you noticed that too much traffic is wasted on unnecessary updates? Then you need to set a limitation in the settings. Open: “Control Panel” → “Network and Internet” → “Change connection properties”.

Enable “Set as metered connection”. The system will not be updated and synchronization with cloud storage will stop. In the browser you also watch pages and videos. Simply, you cut off traffic sinks from the network.

NetLimiter 4. You can set a limit and disable the Internet for certain programs. If you want the browser to load faster than other applications, set the priority higher. In real time you will see what is consuming traffic down to the byte.

Accounting on iPhone

For devices from, sections are also created to account for incoming and outgoing data. They are located in the gadget settings and allow you to view statistics for both a specific period and general ones. To do this you need:

1. Open settings.
2. Go to the “Cellular Communications” section.
3. Select the “Statistics” subsection.

It will display data from the Network and separately roaming data. In addition, it is possible to obtain statistics for each installed application that operates via the Internet. However, if the user is not satisfied with the capabilities of standard assistants, you can install the Data Usage application.

How to find out the remaining traffic on your mobile and save

Mobile Internet is far from perfect due to limited traffic. It's easy to lose 15 GB in a week. As a result, you have to pay an extra 50–150 rubles per additional gigabyte. By the end of the month, the bill grows to 2,000 - 3,000 rubles, but it could have come out to 300 rubles. What to do with it?

Set a traffic limit. For example, 10 GB for a month. When you reach the 9 GB milestone, you will receive a notification. When the limit is reached, the Internet will simply turn off.

I'll show you how to do this on Android.

Step 1. Go to settings.

Step 2: Under Wireless Networks, select Data Traffic.

Step 3. Below the name of the mobile operator, click “Payment cycle”.

Step 4. Click “Set traffic limit”.

Here, in the “Warning” option, you can specify when the phone needs to notify you that the limit is approaching.

Step 5. In the pop-up window, indicate the number of MB or GB that you can use.

Turn on economy mode to avoid the temptation to spend a lot of data in one application. So I got rid of the bad habit of watching YouTube on my phone for a long time and saved 5 GB in a month.

Step 1. In the settings, select “Data Traffic”.

Step 2. Click “Save traffic”.

Step 3. Turn on the saving function. If you do not want to put a restriction on an application, mark it in the “Unlimited access to data” section.

Advertising eats up a lot of traffic, especially on YouTube. Install an AdAway blocker. I managed to save 539 MB on this in 6 days.

Choose an internet package with at least overnight unlimited. Download at this time. If you need to go to bed, install a torrent. These could be films, educational materials that you watch online during the day. My result: 7.4 GB saved per month.

How to find out how much traffic is left on your phone:

1. Log in to your personal account on the operator’s website.
2. Dial a short command like *155*701#.
3. Download the operator's application.
4. Call the operator's toll-free number.

The numbers of short commands for checking traffic are different. Check with your operator.

Secret No. 3: How to cook scrambled eggs?

In some niches, there are situations when you cannot use search advertising or your niche is so highly specialized that you cannot use SEO promotion due to the low number of queries.

We want to eat, but there are few target visitors. What to do? How should we cook our own scrambled eggs and eat?

For example, in the same niche for 3D visualization of interiors, no one is looking for courses in 3ds Max. People are mostly looking for tutorials on Youtube that solve a specific problem, but they are not looking for courses. I had to work with such cold traffic.

The only thing you need to know about cold traffic is that it needs to be warmed up. Yes, yes, we work with the cold flow of visitors and warm them up, pushing them to the target action. How do they warm up cold traffic? Quality content. Therefore, if you have launched targeted advertising on VKontakte, then know that traffic from this channel will give financial returns only after some time. No one can tell you exactly how long this will be. But I had a case when a person from my subscription base “warmed up” for about 2 years and then bought a VIP package of the main product.

Another important point. Our advertising depends on how cold or hot the traffic is. Therefore, make sure that your advertisement has a measurable result for the client. In this case, the traffic will be much warmer than simply writing: “individual approach”, “quality services” or “we are open”.

Internet speed and channel width

But that's not all. On the Internet, all signal paths can be compared to water pipes. The wider the pipe, the more water can pass through it per unit time. The same thing happens with Internet channels. The larger, wider the channel, the more information can be transmitted per unit of time and, accordingly, the higher the Internet speed will be. Have you ever encountered a situation where everyone in your high-rise building suddenly decided to take a shower at one point in time? The water pressure in the shower has decreased, and less water flows to you. This happened because the diameter of the pipe that approaches your house is limited and only a certain volume can pass through it per unit of time. When 10 people go to wash, there is enough water, but when everyone goes to wash, there is not enough water.

Imagine that your Internet provider has allocated a 1 Gb/s channel for your area. This means that the channel width allows 1 Gbit of data to pass through in 1 second. If you and 10 other people from your area are on the Internet, all of you are connected to a 20 Mb/s tariff and use it to the fullest (downloading a movie, for example), then all of you together use only part of the channel. Those. 10 people at 20 Mb/s occupy approximately 200 Mb/s of the channel, while its width is 1 Gb/s. You only occupy 1/5 of the channel. But then evening came, everyone sat down at their computers and started downloading movies. And now there are already 100 of you, each channel has 20 Mb/s and so that everyone can download at the speed according to the tariff, you all need a channel volume of 2 Gb/s, but the provided channel is only 1 Gb/s, which is 2 times. Thus, everyone’s Internet connection speed decreases by at least 2 times.

We often receive letters from our visitors who are confused and don’t know who to believe. All speedometers show different values. Measurement results may differ by orders of magnitude. We hope that our article has clarified the situation a little for you. And in conclusion, we would like to summarize.

Brief conclusions

1. Internet speed depends on many factors and may vary depending on the time of day and network load.
2. It is important to understand that Internet speed is measured in bits and bytes. Always compare the speed according to the tariff and measured in the same units of measurement.
3. The farther the server is located from you to measure the speed of the Internet connection, the lower the speed.
4. The more subscribers of the provider are on the Internet at the same time, the slower the Internet connection speed.