e-Business-Formula Internet Marketing Discussion Forum

mailent · Joined: 24 Mar 2006 Posts: 2 Location: Ridgeland, SC

Hi

I am new To online marketing I have just set up my first website. I don't have a whole lot of money to purchase Advertising in order to drive traffic to my website. I am looking for ways to get some Free or low cost traffic to my website. Can body give me some ideas.

Thanks

Steve MacLellan · Joined: 25 Sep 2004 Posts: 206 Location: Canada

Write and submit articles to article directories.
Publish a blog and promote it to blog directories
Publish a newsletter -- submit it to applicable directories
Write an eBook and let other sites offer it to their visitors for free.
Start a forum
Add your URL to the search engines
Press Releases

That should keep you busy for awhile Wink

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan

Kevin Robb · Posted: Sat Apr 01, 2006 11:51 am Post subject:

Steve has made some good solid suggestions here.

Perhaps you could provide us with some feedback as to which methods you chose to use and the results achieved.

Cheers Wink

Kevin Robb

CarrieGee · Joined: 26 Jun 2006 Posts: 21 Location: Canada

If you just need a short-term boost in traffic, you could consider holding a contest or giveaway. Offer a decent prize (it doesn't have to be expensive - it could even be service-oriented) that will appeal to many web-surfers, and have the contest last about four weeks.

Once you've got the contest set up, do a search of online sweepstakes listings and submit your link(s) to them. They'll list the contest along with the rules, and then contest enthusiasts will come by day after day to enter.

Again, this is a short-term solution, but you'd be surprised at the amount of traffic that this can generate!

crassus · Joined: 26 Jun 2006 Posts: 19

I have noticed that a good, free, form of advertising are college hallways. If you live near a college, post ads where ever the boards are, and hundreds of people will notice the ad every day.

geline · Joined: 26 Jun 2006 Posts: 25

Contests are nice for regular sites. For forums, suggest you give credits/points for their posts and convertible to cash later. You don't need to spend that much but say, 100 posts, you give $3 for example. This has been done by one forum and it really works.

jimmys devoted · Joined: 10 Aug 2006 Posts: 56

I held a freebei contest.. no one entered. I had a Topica list and that generated a whoel bunch of interest. But I jumped off of user groups and interest groups that I belonged to through their advertising issues.

Now that I ahve aplan for which way to go with my doll class site, I am interested to know what an article archive is? Article source that was mentioned.............

julie

Steve MacLellan · Joined: 25 Sep 2004 Posts: 206 Location: Canada

First, this isn't my idea...

I read on another forum that people will pass around your URL a lot more if it is something funny or entertaining. So for the mid-term, I posted a couple of YouTube videos to my new dating website that make fun of divorce.

If you're interested to see how it is done:
http://www.overex.net/index.php?page=FUN

Later on, I'm going to create my own stupid video which makes a spoof out of relationships/divorces and post it to YouTube. The video will be edited to show a 5 second advertisement for my dating website.

If the video is really funny it will get thousands of views on YouTube, and other people will be posting it to their website -- viral marketing.

Best Regards,
Steve MacLellan

beglobal · Joined: 29 Sep 2006 Posts: 4

A good way to get it is by submitting your page in directories.
Smile

rogue · Joined: 26 Mar 2007 Posts: 6

Ah, welcome to the age old question - how to get something done, without spending money.

One point that you absolutely need to keep in mind is, despite the lack of physical money, you will need to substitute money with something equally as valuable - in many cases, time and effort.

Some suggestions have already been made to link out to free directories, and writing articles to get them published. This will work in some cases, but not many. It really depends on your site, and what the niche/subject is.

In my opinion, you will need to create some sort of linkbait. This is when you entice someone to link to your website, in return. Link exchanges, contests, free templates, etc. are all examples.

You should find similar websites in your niche to see what they are doing. Are they putting up "tagged" pictures? Are they holding contests? Are they link exchanging? How are they being interactive with their community that allows them to continue comfortably without spending a large budget?

These are all questions you should ask yourself. Remember, creative linkbaiting is the best method.

aquariancore · Joined: 18 Apr 2007 Posts: 3

Don't overlook forums and paid forums like MYlot. If you post appropriate infomation and not just to post and get your link listed you will generate traffic.

Trusylver · Posted: Thu Apr 26, 2007 8:05 pm Post subject:

One thing you must keep in mind is how search engine friendly and how accessible your website is. If search engines (which can provide the bulk of your traffic) can't read your site or identify what your site is about you will have difficulty attracting trafic from this vital source.

Juice · Joined: 16 Apr 2007 Posts: 38

Steve's suggestion on writing a free eBook is fantastic, and it definitely works for generating traffic.

You should take it one step further though and get them to opt in to a mailing list in order to download the eBook. You could get thousands of signups this way, and having your very own opt-in mailing list could prove invaluable in the future.

Chris (cat) · Posted: Sat Jul 07, 2007 4:46 am Post subject:

All Steve's suggestions have credibility... although I don't publish articles to the ezine directories any more, only the major ones.

Although sending articles to directories, websites and ezine editors in your field is worth the effort... more so for traffic than SERP's.

Now that Google has introduced their dup content rule, how is this effecting your article postings Steve... if you wouldn't mind sharing.

After a stack of years online... there is just one secret to get targeted traffic and SEO rankings. (well maybe not so secret)

Get involved in your community!

Don't worry about links, types of links and SEO rankings, just get involved with people interested in your subject matter.

1. Join forums within your business field - and lots of them.
2. Place posts on blogs.
3. Put your link on directories in your business field.
4. Place links on reputable business directories.
5. Post articles to sites in your business field.

Next big thing....

Build a resource people want to link to!

Will get you a lot more traffic and rankings! People come back to good resources.

For example... http://rss-feeds-directory.com of which I put online nearly 3 years ago makes me little money.

Can't do adsense as really advertising to the wrong market. Make some money each month from the submission service and advertising and thats all.

So for the work I've put in (using a free directory script), the money I've got back would probably cover that.

But here is the thing... it's a free resource people link to which has given the site value.

If I sold the site today I would probably get about 10k for it going on rough estimates.

So that's it folks. Get out there and build great resources, not just a website.

Cheers, Chris.