All across the net you can find websites offering to send you large amounts of traffic - banner adverts, pop ups, expired domains, the list goes on. Even affiliate programs offering 'targeted' content fall into this category. The problem is that traffic does not automatically earn you sales. So why bother when you can buy customers?

Buy customers - you are probably thinking am I mad. Paying for people who are supposed to come to your site and pay you. But it's a tactic that is used by shops although to a lesser extreme. Let's say for instance you are a small bookstore selling books and magazines online.

The new Harry Potter book is out and everyone including you is buying it problem the wholesalers at $10 and selling it on at $15. You have to sell it for this price to make a profit so everyone does. But on average each customer who buys a Harry Potter book also comes back to your site and buys $100 of Harry Potter merchandise as well. Let's say this costs you $50 from the wholesalers.

So on average the lifetime value of your customers to you is actually $55 profit. Therefore you can actually lower the price of the original book to say $5 as you know that you are still going to make $45 profit on average from each customer in the end. Now you are selling the book $10 cheaper than everyone else so everyone heads over to your site to buy the book - and consequently the $100 of extras afterwards.