Saturday, January 3, 2009

The 5 BEST Ways to Get Free Traffic

If you're anything like me you've spent your time and money trying to get traffic to your website but you've either failed to get the number of hits you thought or the traffic you did get was virtually worthless. I've spent countless hours using traffic exchanges, banner exchanges, web rings, posting on message boards.all to very limited results. That's when I decided it was time to find new methods without having to break my budget. Here are the methods I've found to be the most effective:
Marketing Tools such as Articles, JV Sites, EBooks, Email and Forum signature, and World of Mouth

Articles - This is one of the best ways of getting free traffic to your site. Write an article that pertains to the content on your site and submit it to the hundreds of article sites. There are many webmasters and Ezine owners looking for fresh content. As long as you include a link to your site when they use your article on their site not only will you get inbound links to your site on many different pages you will also get free target visitors from people who read your article. Can't write? No problem, there are hundreds of PLR articles available, however writing your own article is always the best as it also builds your credibility.
JV sites - Join one of the many JV sites available and add a link to your site. All you need is something to offer, software, articles, eBooks are all great choices as are free subscriptions. When people access your free gift they also sign up for your mailing list, just be sure to always include a link back to your website.
EBooks - Write an eBook with links back to your site and offer resale or give-away rights, every time some sells or gives your eBook away it will have those links back to your site. Once again this gets you very targeted traffic as the reader is interested in the content of your site.
Email and Forum signatures - Check with forum rules before using this one. Don't use banners or flashy graphics, most people just ignore them, instead include a one line text add with a link. Keep it short and sweet, you'll be surprised at how many of your friends and family will click the link just to see what your doing. In forums, use meaningful posts, if people like what you've said they're likely to visit your site.
Word of Mouth - Tell everyone about your site, carry business cards with your website on them and hand them out everywhere. I can't begin to tell you how many leads I've gotten while grocery shopping. Ok, so this isn't COMPLETELY free but it's close enough especially considering you can get 250 business cards from Vista Print for less than $5 and you'll get a lot more traffic than that if you had out your cards everywhere you go. You don't have to be pushy, just tell them you have a website and ask them to visit it.