20 Low/No Cost Ways to Generate More Traffic

Last week, we polled publishers on the Lightspeed Affiliate Forum about free or low cost traffic builiding methods that worked for them. From this poll, the forum discussions, and a bit of web research, I've compiled 20 methods here:

1. Have a quality site: One publisher suggested this is the most important thing to successfully drive free traffic.
2. Optimize for natural search: Google, News.google, Newsbot.msn, Yahoo, Rss.Yahoo, msnsearch, & blogs linking to good content can bring high traffic volume; hardwardgeeks.com gets 1.5-3m. monthly)
3. Publish unique content: Unique traffic can drive loyal visitors.
4. Try SEO solutions/software: Software like WebPosition Gold (offers free 30 day trial), can improve keyword density to increase search engine rankings.
5. Build more link exchanges: Link popularity improves search engine ranking. Link popularity is built by increasing the number of inbound links to your site. An easy way to do this is to trade links with Webmasters of related sites. Software like LinkCapture can help with making contacts with quality Web sites that are also ranked well in the search engines.
6. Write highly targeted content: Having information that your visitors are looking for will help increase return visitors.
7. Keep your content fresh: Adding a new page to your site every day will drive more traffic. Some publishers have seen their new pages explode with traffic.
8. Offer content syndication or provide free content: For your blogs, you can post a "syndicate" link allowing some publishers to post your updated content on their site, or your can provide your website content free to another site (be sure to include a functional return link in your content).
9. Offer opt-in newsletters: Connecting with your visitors monthly will turn your existing traffic into loyal and regular visitors.
10. Run an e-Zine or opt-in newsletter text ad: Some e-Zine's offer inexpensive text advertising.
11. Encourage book-marks: One publisher with 120k monthly visitors sees 26% of this traffic from bookmarks or URL type-ins and the rest from natural search.
12. Launch and moderate your own forum: From running an outdoors/fishing forum, one publisher was contacted by a local radio fishing show to discuss the site.
13. Try Online Classifieds: AOL classifieds or Yahoo classifieds can be a cheaper option than running an ad in their high visibility spots.
14. Consider offline advertising: Can be relatively low cost; see some options below.
15. Try postcards: They're inexpensive to order and sending them to a targeted mailing list can drive good response rates. Someone I know uses ExpressCopy.com.
16. Run newspaper ads: Posting an ad in Computer/Technology sections can drive visitors; phillyburbs.com leverages strong market share into strong audience and traffic by placing ads in their sister newspapers
17. Run Magazine ads: Can help to drive visitors to a highly targeted site, like a fishing site.
18. Try local print newsletters: Local advertising can also bring in low-cost traffic; one publisher is paying $350 for 8 weeks of advertising (exlusive, no other online ads) in a local coffee shop for the holidays.
19. Consider TV: The same publisher running ads in the coffee shop newsletter is also contacting TV stations about an internet shopping story. Certainly TV advertising wouldn't be low cost, but there are creative ways to work a low cost plug into a story or news item.
20. Make your email signature work for you: Adding a hyperlink to your email signatures will help to increase your visitors.

A big thanks goes out to all publishers who voted and for those who sent in their traffic success stories.

Take Care,
Michelle O'Grady
Lightspeed Affiliate Manager

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