The goal of any online business is to make money today. You could have the best website on the internet and market the best-selling product, but if no one visits your site, you won’t make any sales. Traffic, and lots of it, is the key to generating sales from your website. How do you generate traffic without a large advertising budget? This article will discuss several free methods to do just that.
1. Search Engine Optimization: Almost everyone uses a search engine to find what they are looking for on the Internet. Search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN. Haven’t you done this? Type what you’re looking for into Google and you’ll get page after page of websites or articles related to your search. SEO is essential for anyone who has a website. When your website is optimized to be found by search engines then you have a much better chance of driving traffic to it.
2. Social networking has recently become all the rage and if you participate on sites like Facebook, Digg or Twitter then you have the potential to spread the word about your website to hundreds if not thousands of potential buyers. It depends on how active you are on those sites. Building a large following can add substantially to your list and increase your chances of making sales and making money today.
3. Forum Participation – This is a great way to network with people who are interested in what you sell. Find a forum related to the product you are marketing. Learn what questions people are asking about it and answer as many as you can. Once you learn the forum rules, you will most likely be able to start posting your link to your website in the answers you give. This will allow readers to click through to your website and hopefully join your list or purchase your product. This takes some work, but is well worth the time.
4. Article Writing – This is a great free method to build traffic and increase your chances of making money today. The concept here is that you write several articles related to the service or product that you are promoting. Then submit those articles to the various article directories out there. Someone finds your article on the Internet (just like you found this one). Your article will contain a link that, if the reader clicks on it, will be redirected to your website. There they will see what you are advertising or a signup sheet for a free product. If they sign up, you can add them to your list and start communicating with them about what you’re selling.
5. Guest Writing – If you enjoy writing, you can offer to write a guest post for someone else’s blog. If you find a well-established blog that has a large following, writing a post with your website link is a great way to reach targeted traffic. Many blog owners are more than willing to accept a guest post. This frees them from some of the work they have to do.