Initial Traffic and Supplemental Traffic

You can find many different traffic-generating techniques on the net, but before implementing any of them you need to understand the difference between Initial Traffic and Supplemental Traffic to maximize the results. (Targeted or not is a whole different story.)

Definitions
Because you haven't heard these words before (I coined them), I'll start with the definitions.
Initial Traffic:
The traffic which you can receive regardless of current volume of traffic to your site.

For example, whether your site receives 1,000,000 visitors a day or zero, if you place an ad on Yahoo!, you will receive a lot of traffic.

Example sources of Initial Traffic are:
advertisements and
search engine listings.


Supplemental Traffic:
The traffic which is generated by using traffic you already have. In other words, if no one visits your site, you can't generate Supplemental Traffic.

Let's say John has a website offering his own affiliate program. If his site receives 100 visitors a day, his affiliate program will exponentially increase the traffic. However, if no one visits his site, no one will sign up to his affiliate program. His affiliate program will not generate any traffic. To generate traffic by his affiliate program, he needs to get traffic from somewhere else, first.

Example sources of Supplemental Traffic are:
your own affiliate program and
viral marketing.
Rule of Thumb
If you are just starting your website, you have to focus on generating Initial Traffic. You can still profit from Initial Traffic without Supplemental Traffic. As you profit from Initial Traffic, you can invest the profit in generating Supplemental Traffic.

If you've been doing business online for a while, analyze your access log, and check which kind of traffic you are lacking. By doing so, you can invest your time and money in the right method at the right time.

Of course, you can work on generating both types of traffic at the same time if your budget permits. But, never forget that there won't be any Supplemental Traffic without Initial Traffic; no traffic means no money.