A few years ago, the internet used to be an easy-going place. If you had a web site, a product to sell, and you wanted to have traffic, you simply put some keywords to the right place, swapped links with some relevant sites, and there it was. The lack of competition made it easy and confortable. This is history now. It may sound dissappointing, but you don't have to say years: yesterday it was easier to direct valuable traffic to your site, than it is today.

The numbers of possible ways of getting traffic certainly grew. But these methods - when talking about free traffic - are getting more and more difficult to apply. And first of all, it takes time. Lots of time.

Here is what I'm talking about: dealing with the standard SEO-stuff - which is working for sure - takes at least 3 months to boost up a web site's traffic. Producing content is difficult and time consuming, too. And let's be frank: not everyone can write interesting articles. Creating opt-in mailing lists is also a hard issue, when most people are stuffed with dozens of spams daily.

Sounds bad, right? That is where PPC comes into focus. PPC is an easy way of getting instant, high targeted traffic, and you only pay for what you get - either with your time, or money.

But - wait! There are problems too. Yes, PPC engines are easy to use, and to set up, but you must precisely fine-tune them to earn you more than they cost. Matter of time again: good keywords got awfully expensive, and you have to spend hours and days of keyword-research if you want cheap clicks, that still lead to sales. And you have to do it again and again, or otherwise, your PPC-adventure will be very, very unpleasent.

This is why most "out of the box" systems don't work for you. By the time you start to use them, the traffic you need gets expensive, while the income doesn't grow a dime. It is just like at the Stock Exchange - an incredibly time-sensitive business, too - if it emerges, that you can win a great fortune with a Stock, it gets expensive, so you can't win a cent any more.

This is it: first movers win, the followers are just wondering, where things went wrong.

So, anything, you want to do, you'd better do it fast.