After all the debate over website design, shopping carts and credit card processors, every website owner eventually comes to the startling realization that they need one more thing to survive - website traffic!

Without website traffic it's the same as building an expensive billboard and, instead of placing it alongside a busy highway, hiding it in your *basement* where nobody can see it.

Upon realizing they need traffic, most website owners run out and start blowing chunks of money and time trying to get "hits," but they fail to grasp that there are really only three (3) reliable ways to get traffic to any website.

Method #1 - Buy Traffic Currently, the fastest way to get traffic to any website involves using the little classified ads on the right side of search giant Google's results pages.

Called Google AdWords, the system allows any advertiser to open an account with a $5 activation fee and start seeing their ads appear on Google within about 15 minutes.

Advertisers only pay when visitors actually click through from their ad on Google to their website or affiliate link.

Overture.com also sells traffic by the click, but they make you wait three to five days to go through their editorial review process before allowing ads to appear on their network.

You can also buy advertising on dozens of other pay-per-click search engines.

They all follow the same basic model of only charging advertisers for targeted visitors who read an ad based on a keyword search and decide to click through for more information.

Log on to www.payperclicksearchengines.com for a list of over 600 choices ranked by market penetration.

A word to the wise on pay-per-click advertising: Watch your costs and track and measure everything. Even though you can get traffic for as little as a penny, you should track your results by search engine and by individual keyword if you want maximum success.

Many a company has lost its entire advertising budget paying only a nickel or a dime per click, but not watching their conversion rates and pouring money into keywords that don't convert... while neglecting the keywords that do bring sales (mainly because they don't know which is which!).

Method #2 - Borrow Traffic If you need traffic to a website, then borrow it from people who already have it... especially people with lists of loyal subscribers or traffic from search engines, affiliates, or other steady sources.

"Endorsed Mailings" and "Reciprocal Linking" by other people represent the two fastest ways to borrow someone else's traffic.

If they maintain a list of subscribers, convince them to send an email out to their people telling them why they should check out your site.

Also, negotiate a prominent link on their web pages to siphon off targeted visitors who find their website.

Often the best way to persuade someone to do this involves paying them a commission, agreeing to do a similar mailing, or providing a link to them on your site (or a combination of all three).

Imagine how much traffic you could get if someone with a list of 10,000 loyal subscribers told their people to go look at your website!

Method #3 Recycle Traffic The most economical way to get traffic involves turning one-time visitors into regular, repeat visitors that you direct to multiple sites over time.

You do this by pulling website visitors into your sphere of influence by enticing them to sign up for your newsletter, autoresponder sequence, or "mini-course."

Then you keep in contact with regular articles, special reports, and recommendations enticing them to visit your own and other people's websites.

Ultimately, every website owner should orient all of their marketing efforts towards this end of developing a stream of recycled traffic, because it costs the least and creates the best return on time and money invested.

It doesn't matter if you promote your own product, promote only as an affiliate, or some combination of the two... if you don't recycle traffic and get more than one hit out of each visitor, you're making one of the biggest mistakes anyone can make online.