Generate traffic to your website for free!

Nowadays lots of people who have lost their jobs want to make a living by working from home and building an online business. In the face of alarming economic statistics they consider the Internet as an alternative source of income. Are you in that boat? If you are going to make money from your own site, the main thing that you need is traffic. These figures will affect how much you can earn each month. 

If you don’t have any startup capital to buy pay-per-click search engine ads or paid directory placement, don’t give up. There are several ways to promote your baby website and generate traffic for free. They are just as effective as the more expensive varieties. 

Keep in mind that generating free traffic can take a lot of your time and efforts. The number of websites is growing many times faster than the amount of people on the Internet. So you need to work hard to compete with thousands of other website owners. 

No matter how you want to earn money - from PTC sites, Google Adsense or promoting your own products and services – you will need to put much energy into your business. If you are looking for fast income and don't want to work, you won’t score a success. It is a myth that people can make money without any efforts.

There are several ways to generate free traffic to your website – from the easiest tactics such as directory and search engines submissions to the more complex methods such as article writing that may require some special skills. Analyze all methods to decide which ones suit your business best. 

1. Enlist your website.
There are thousands of online directories that allow posting website links for free. Because it could take a lot of time to submit your website to every directory you find on the Internet, consider enlisting your website either to directories with a high PR or to directories that cover your specific topic. 

One of the great online directories is Dmoz.org. It accepts submissions of the websites worldwide. Keep in mind that you need to include your site in an appropriate category in DMOZ, or you may have problems in the future.

2. Participate in forums.
Participating in forums is a great way to generate free traffic to your website. Just log in and post actively! However, don’t write about your website in every post you make. Moderators don’t sleep – you can be banned for spam! 

Participating in forums means that you need to make interesting posts and take part in discussions. This way you will become a popular user. Post your website link or a come-on blurb in the signature line or in your profile. People will click on the links to find out more information about your or about the services you offer. It will help you attract a lot of new visitors to your website. 

Keep in mind that people associate your posts with your website, so be friendly online. Image is everything for a start up business! Would you like to visit a website of a rude and impolite person? 

Because there are so many different forums online, it may be difficult to post actively everywhere. So make a careful research before joining any forums. For example, consider a number of members in the forums, geographical targeting, how active forums are, and what kind of topics they cover. 

3. Write a press release.
Sounds too official? Don’t worry, it really works! This is an excellent free website promotion method that you can try anytime. Make up a press release that tells about your site, its advantages or innovations. You can google various example of press releases to write a good text and keep a balance between advertising and interesting information. Show your work to friends or relatives – do they like it? 

Send your press-release to your friends, co-workers, internet e-zines, newspapers and other mass media. Don’t think that everyone will post it immediately. If your press-release appears on 1-5 popular websites, it’s a very good result! 

4. Write articles.

Article marketing is one of the most reliable and long-lasting ways to drive free traffic to your website. It means the following: you write an article, include your website link at the bottom, and submit the article to websites such as Helium or Article Marketer. 

Article marketing can drive good quality traffic back to your site because your articles will be read by people who are really interested in this topic. If you hate cooking, would you start reading “How to make a perfect omelet”?

What to write about? It depends on the topic of your website. For example, if you have a travel portal, you can write a what-to-see and where-to-go article covering one or several countries. People like to read travel reviews and recommendations! On the concluding paragraph, mention your website. If your article is good, then people will click the hyperlink to find more information from you.

Some website owners say that they attract up to 5000 unique hits a day from their articles! Of course, it doesn’t happen overnight and from only one article. You need to learn about content writing and keywords. 

5. Setup your own blog. 
Blogging is one of the most important marketing techniques to generate free traffic to your website. The keys to success are to post your messages regularly and add new friends. You can make some controversial topics or post interesting pictures to get more attention.

Don’t forget to post your comments on other blogs that have the same topic as your website. Many people like that “I don’t want to have friends who don’t comment” game. However, it is not recommended to insert your website link in every post – your blog can be banned, and it will damage the image of your company. 

6. Post on similar sites 
Visiting and commenting on similar sites can drive free traffic back to your own website. The reason is simple: their visitors are looking for a particular type of information that you site can have! So people tend to get curious and visit your site too. 

However, keep in mind that website owners don’t like when competitors use their resources for free promotion. What would you do if somebody posted numerous links to his or her store on your website? You know the answer, so be careful. Choose subtle forms of advertising: for example, your login can be similar to the name of your company. 

7. Exchange links and banners.
While link exchanging strategies have fallen out of favor with some search engines, it is still an efficient promotion method. There are many websites that allow people to post their website links. For instance, pay attention to EasyHits4U, TrafficSwarm or LinkReferral. Free-Banners.com lets you exchange your banner with over 150,000 members’ sites.

Keep in mind that the quality of traffic from some link exchange resources might be low because they give credits or cash rebates to registered users for visiting links. It means that most of the time these visitors go to your website just to earn that credit or money and have little interest in your website. 

You can also enter into a partner agreement with other website owners and advertise in each other's newsletters or blogs. Both text ads and banners can be exchanged to great effect.

8. Build satellite sites. 

Although this tactics is often considered controversial, it still exists. Satellite means a mini-site that promotes a certain topic or interest (related to the topic of your website) and contains links to your website. It helps you get traffic and boosts your website's page rank. You can use free hosting to create satellite websites. But keep in mind that searching engines don’t like such promotion. 

9. Join social networking websites. 
Nowadays social networking websites are extremely popular on the Internet. One of the biggest social networking sites is MySpace. It has billions of page views per month because each member sees more than just one page per session. Such traffic is a dream of any webmaster! 
Another great place you can use is Facebook. This social network is growing very fast. You can make friends, share your expertise and build the relationships. 

The promotion tactics is similar to forums and blogs. Join a lot of groups and make as many friends as you can. After that you can just place a link in your profile. Having good relationships in social networking sites, you will draw free traffic to your website. However, keep in mind that this tactics is commonly used, so the competition is very tough.

10. Social Bookmarking. 
The next method to generate good traffic to your website is social bookmarking. Using Digg or Stumbleupon on your website can increase your traffic because people like resources or links recommended by other users. Digg and Stumbleupon are used by millions of people all over the world.

11. Produce a video. 
If you want to promote your goods or services online, use a demonstration video! It is one the most popular ways to generate free traffic to your website and home based affiliate business. This way you can attract more potential customers!

Use YouTube to produce and upload your demonstration video in order to promote your products or services. Freelance teachers can make a video introducing themselves. If you are a software developer, consider making a video with the examples of your latest application.

12. Email your contact list 

Another option to draw free traffic to your website is to add a link to your signature in e-mails. Your signature file should contain the following information: your name, e-mail address and website URL.

Adding URL to the signature file is better than e-mailing links to all people from your contact list. This way you can remind about your website every time you send an e-mail.  

You can also print labels on your printer with your site URL and put them on the envelopes of your outgoing correspondence. People who handle that envelope (postmen, couriers, etc.) may get interested in your website.  

13. Recruit friends and relatives 
Ask your friends or relatives to mention your website in their blog posts or tell about it to friends. The word of mouth makes wonders! You can’t be an active poster on each popular forum, but your friends can make several posts with links for you. Offer a free incentive for every post. For example, you can post their ad in your e-zine.

So can you actually get free traffic to your website? The answer is yes. As you see, there are many ways to promote your site for free and make money. However, you will need to compete with other website owners to push your fortune. The development of e-commerce and increasing unemployment level make many people turn to the Internet. 

Keep in mind that promotion and traffic doesn’t mean that your site will be popular. If you don’t have original and interesting content, people will not visit your site again. 

In addition, make sure that you website is compatible with all major web browsers. It can be checked by validating the HTML and the CSS. Uniform display to all users must be one of the main tasks of any webmaster.