Get Traffic and Promote your Website!

by Chris Abdey Outsourcing Professional, Project Manager, Consult

Ok, so now you've got your new website, you've chosen your products and or services you are going to market, so what next? The next stage in the game is to promote your selected products and services and to get traffic to your site. There are many ways to do this, and also some PitFalls to avoid....

Where to start in promoting your new site/blog, afilliate product or service? Here are some ways to start:

Rebrandable Viral E-books - Ok So what exactly is a rebrandable e-book, and what exactly does it do? Simply put this is THE hottest thing to drive traffic to your site, and also make some money along the way as well. Everyone loves FREE stuff right? So, picture this, why not give away FREE e-books that have links to the hottest products with YOUR affiliate links in them! So, you're going merrily on your way, saying "Top Tips to making an income online" for example "FREE Rebrandable E-book courtesy of http://www.yoursite.com". Not only are people drawn to the fact that it is free, they will likely go to your site to see what else is there you have to offer, and also be drawn to the fact that they too can give these e-books away for free with THEIR referral links in them! This is by far the most innovative and lucrative way to drive traffic to your site, or promote your affiliate products!

Forums - Many people often overlook forums as a good way of advertising. I'm not saying go ahead and spam everyone every 30 seconds, the best way to promote on forums, is to have a link to your site/product/service in your signature. What this means is that EVERY post you make will have your little blurb at the bottom.. Something along the lines of.. Come check out "Ads 4 us" or whatever. Now this becomes very effective, especially if you are in a forum in the same niche (category) as what you're trying to promote. (It obviously wouldn't do any good to promote car parts in a computer/internet technology forum!) If you are helpful, post relevant posts, give some good advice, chances are, people are going to click on that little blurb at the bottom of your post.. "Wow.. This guy is good, if he recommends it, I should check this out".. That's the effect you are going for. How you get there.. Well, it takes work but it can be done.

Here are some forums to get you started:

Freeadvertisingforum4u

Freeadvertisingforum

postyouradforfree

thefreeadvertisingsite

E-mail Campaigns - E-mail campaigns are a double edged sword... You DON'T want to be accused of SPAM. SO, be very careful who you buy your lists from if you buy them from anywhere, and make sure they are always OPT-IN lists. Or better yet, double opt-in lists. There's still a question if e-mail marketing is effective to drive traffic to a site or product. All I can say, is something must click, because the Spammers keep a spammin' and they're turning out more dollars than the US Treasury! So it has to work on some level. If you really want to get your feet wet with e-mail campaigns it would be a good idea to do your research VERY carefully, ask the important questions: "Is this list Double OPT-IN?" "How did you come by these leads?" "Are these just purchased leads or harvested leads?" If they are unwilling to answer those questions for you, you should be unwilling to do business with them.

One way around this issue, is to make what is called a "safe-list" this is people that agree to recieve your offers, this is by far the "safest" option for your e-mail campaigning needs. I would recommend checking out the "KISS" as it is a good way to get your feet wet with e-mail campaigning an also getting a good start to building your safe-list.

KISS Safelist

Newsletters - An excellent source of new traffic believe it or not, is through a newsletter offered on your site. Many people overlook this because they think to themselves "What..? They already come to my site.. Why bother?.." I'll tell you to why bother. If you send out an informative report that contains some useful information (I'm not talking an e-mail pleading to buy a new product or service here) then they will forward it on to their families and friends, who will in turn become subscribers to your newsletter! Then in the bottom of those e-mails, you can have those little footers with your poducts or services, special offers, etc and conversion rates on those are generally higher again like with forums as long as you maintain your credibility.

Auto Responders - If you are using newsletters then of course you will also want to set up an autoresponder to keep track of your list and help you to distribute them. The BEST autoresponder service I have found to date is through Norabots.

Of course you can always sign up for their Affiliate Program and earn yourself $4 per month per account you refer as well.

Purchased Traffic - Ok, you can go the route of purchasing traffic, but you are walking into a real land mine... LOTS of scammers out there, who sure, will make your hit counters go up, but they will do it with bots, or by annoying some poor internet surfer with a pop-up or a pop-under so they will not even likely look at your site. In the off chance it is legitimate traffic, it often isn't a good bet, because it can't be targetted 100%, anyone that tells you that is full of crap. You can target, but no campaign is perfect. It's also difficult to find places where the traffic is intended for your specific product or service. These bozos that say they went out and bought $6 worth of traffic and made $10,000 are full of it. It costs mega bucks to get quality traffic this way, and who wants to spend mega bucks??? Also VERY important to note, that google does not allow it in their TOS so if you are buying traffic, lose the adsense or you will get banned.

Traffic Exchanges - (WARNING: IF YOU ARE USING GOOGLE ADSENSE ON ANY OF YOUR SITES, DO NOT USE ANY KIND OF TRAFFIC EXCHANGE PROGRAM, AUTOSURF, MANUAL SURF OR THE LIKE THEY WILL BAN YOU!) Ok, that being said and out of the way.. You can get a nice spike in Traffic from Traffic Exchanges.. Although don't expect a lot of sales to occur out of them, many of them are freeloading off the system like you are, so while your stats will go up, the sales ratio will still stay incredibly low.. It's almost not even worth the time or effort to take part in any traffic exchange programs... These are a dime a dozen, and I guess it is pretty to watch the little lines move up and up on the ol' site stats but.. However, that has all changed! Now you can use these autosurfs to get legitimate traffic! See below for details on how you can turn that "junk" traffic into real traffic! Just be sure the links you use don't have google adsense on them, only put your google adsense link ads into trafficpython if you use this system.

This is a new Twist on Getting traffic to your sites! Introducing TrafficPython. You turn any link you want into a traffic python link, and whenever your link is clicked you earn credits to advertise on other sites that use this marvelous system. I have had awesome results with this, give it a try... Tip: If you use autohits.dk as well as shalomautohits.com, you will earn roughly 100 credits every 5 mins! that is 1,200 credits an hour! That means your ad will get viewed approximately 120 times in an hour!

Use this with Autohits.dk they have been around the longest, and are fairly easy to use. Just set up your site, and let your computer run and you'll be earning credits.. And watch that site counter go up... And earn you credits with traffic python!

The second site is ShalomAutoHits. This site is from the same company that brings you Autohits.dk.

Link Exchanges - A link exchange is a place you can place your link, and get visits to your site/product or service if you visit other links. If you participate in a LINK exchange, then google does not penalize you. (although if you SELL text links, they will penalize you...) A link exchange at first glance may seem like a traffic exchange, but it isn't. You have to look for the site, and physically click a specific link each time you want to visit a site, so this in turn develops more targetted traffic than say an autosurf or even a manual surf exchange.

If you would like to try a link exchange, I would recommend trying out LinkReferral. They are the biggest in the business and I have had pretty good results with them.

Social Networks - Social Networks believe it or not, can be used VERY effectively to get a jump on your new online income generating venture.. Again it must be said.. Don't SPAM all your friends, don't create a fake account just to spam everyone, that's just wrong, and believe me unless you are some sort of master hacker, eventually they'll figure it out and your IP will be banned along with your account, not to mention your friends will all be pissed at you! However, putting something in your status like.. "Is happy because he finally got the updates done on mywebsite.com" you will actually get quite a few people ask "WTF is that?" and they'll click. Now whether they'll buy anything or not, you be the judge of that, you know your friends better than I. These places always have groups you can be involved in as well, so that you can share information, just like forums, and drop hints here and there that this product or that service might be useful to someone.. And in slowly doing that you will build creibility and again, this will result in more exposure for your site/product/service and more sales.

A couple of recommended Social Network Specifically for promoting your business and developing an income:

MyLot - This place is good, it has many different categories and lots of useful information about making an income online as well. Started over 3 years ago! You definitely want to give Mylot a try and see what it can do for your promotional efforts.

TheIMNetwork - A relatively new Social Network devoted to making an income online, has contests and prizes for participation as a bonus, and has a classifieds section as well as an ad forum.

APSense - This is actually a good place to start if you are looking to get into the social network scene and want to promote your business, because you will actually earn some money as well. When people view your "article" or your write up on your product or service, you earn money. So, you're going to be advertising your site anyway.. Why not get paid for it?