Top 5 Ways To Generate Low Cost Or Free Website Traffic

There is one hard and fast rule in generating income for your website: A steady flow of unlimited website traffic. If no one goes to your site, it hardly bares a chance of generating an income. Many sites have tried and failed in doing so, and these results to the sites demise. It takes money to maintain an income generating site; it also takes money to make money.

BUT, it doesn’t take a whole caboodle of cash to generate website traffic for your site.

Ever wonder how does big hit sites drive traffic top their site? Most of them are spending tons of money to drive the traffic to their sites, investing in many advertising campaigns and different forms of marketing schemes and gimmickries. This is all worthwhile because, well, they are what they are now, high earning, big hitting websites.

You don’t have to do this if you don’t really have their resources. There are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you don’t have or can’t afford. Many people have banked on high cost methods and have ended up losing their shirt over it.

Here I present to you the Top five ways to generate low cost website traffic that could help your site a whole lot. Even if you only get a small percentage of successful visitors in to client ratio it still works especially if you get a high number of website traffic.

Exchange Links

This is a sure and proven method. Rarely would you see a site where there is no link to another site. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more public awareness about their sites. You’ll soon see and feel the sudden upsurge of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

A major prerequisite in exchanging links with other sites is having the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is continuity in the providing of service and information to what interests your target traffic.

Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking in search engine results. It is common knowledge that search engines ranks high sites that have inbound and outbound theme-related links. With a good ranking position in the search engines, you will generate more traffic in your website without the high costs.

Traffic Exchange

This is like exchanging links but on a different higher level. This may cost a bit more than exchanging or trading links but could be made cheaper because you get to earn credits. You can use those credits when viewing others traffic, while you earn credits when someone views yours.

Traffic exchange services are the viewing of another’s site or page. This is done vice versa where a site can use your sites contents and so can you to his or her site. You both benefit from each others efforts to generate traffic. The other sites visitors can go to your pages and know more about your site as well as theirs. Once again the public awareness of your sites existence is boosted.

Write and Submit Articles

There are many e-zines and online encyclopedias in the internet which provides free space for articles to be submitted. If you want to save costs, you can do the articles yourself. There are many freelance writers who are willing to write for you for a small fee, but to save money, it is wise to do those articles yourself.

Write articles that are themed along with the niche of your site. Write something that you have expertise on so that when they read it, they can feel your knowledge about the subject and will be eager to go to your site. Write articles that produce tips and guidelines to the subject or niche your site has.

Include a resource box at the end of your article that can link them to your site. Write a little about yourself and your site. If you provide a light, information-laden and interesting article, they will go to your site for more.

Make a Newsletter.

This may sound like hard work because of all the articles you may need to use to build a newsletter but on the contrary, this is not so. There are many writers and sites that are willing to provide free articles as long as they can get their name in on your newsletter. This will also provide free advertising for them as well.

As your newsletter gets pass around, you can widen your public awareness and build an opt-in list that can regularly visit your site.

Join Online Communities and Forums

This only requires your time and nothing else. You can share your knowledge and expertise with many online communities as well as your website. You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche with your site.

Share your two cents and let them see how knowledgeable you are with the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site, making it a reputable and honest business that could be frequented and trusted by many people.

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How to Generate Leads and Grow Your List with Facebook Marketing

If you’re struggling to grow your email list and want to generate more leads, I’ve put together a free email series where I show you my system for generating massive leads on Facebook in the next 30 days. And, each of my seven strategies can be implemented in less than 20 minutes. For access to my free email series, click here.

Rick has written 1 awesome articles for us at Basic Blog Tips

Twitter: @rickmulready | Facebook | Google+ | Blog ? Rick Mulready

by Rick Mulready on February 15, 2013 · 29 comments

in Guest Posts, Social Media

Ah, Facebook.

The social media platform that everyone (well, not everyone, but many people) loves to hate.

Since going public last year, Facebook has taken its fair share of bad PR and public outrage. Some of it may be justified and the rest I think is just over-reaction.

I’m a Facebook homer, though, as I teach small businesses and online entrepreneurs how to grow their business using Facebook marketing.

And, when I tell people what I do, I hear the full spectrum of responses.

The good.

The bad.

And a lot of the ugly lately: Facebook doesn’t “work” because none of my fans see my status updates anymore. I’ve tried Facebook ads and I lost all my money without any return on my investment.

I’m on a mission to show you how Facebook marketing can be an effective and efficient way to grow your business, without breaking the bank.

With over a billion users, over half of which login every day, the opportunities are just too big to write off as “not worth it.”

Let me show you a couple ways Facebook marketing rocks.

As bloggers, we want as many highly targeted readers as possible. It’s even better when those people are on our email list.

After all, the money is in the list, right?

Facebook marketing offers a unique opportunity to grow your list on autopilot.

Two really effective ways to this are through custom apps and Facebook Offers.

Apps are the little boxes just below your page’s cover photo:

When someone clicks on an app, they’re taken to a landing page (within Facebook) that can contain an opt-in form. This is where you can give away something of value (like an ebook, video series, webinar, etc…) in exchange for a person’s email address. Ms. Ileane does this well with her “Blogging Tips” app shown above.

Don’t worry, apps are easy to create using sites like Heyo, ShortStack and even AWeber. You don’t even need to know any coding as they both use drag and drop functionality. And, depending on how many fans you have, they can be free to use!

Once you’ve created your app you need to drive people to it. Each app has its own unique URL which means you can use that URL in your Facebook posts or ads (including Facebook Mobile ads).

The reason this works so well is because you’re keeping the person within Facebook. It creates trust between you and the user.

Think about when you’re on Facebook. You’re there to share updates with your Facebook friends and family, post pictures, etc. If an ad catches your eye and you click on it, you likely don’t want to be taken outside of Facebook, far from what you’re doing. By keeping people within the same platform, you’re more likely to get them to take the action you want.

Lastly, you can use your app’s unique URL in your business emails or marketing materials. Rather than sending someone to your Timeline, why not send them to your custom app where you can collect their email address and then they can also check out your Facebook page?

I’m betting you’ve seen Offers in your news feed before but might not have known what they were.

Here’s an example of what one looks like:

Offers are a great way for website owners and businesses to promote products and services through targeted word-of-mouth marketing on Facebook. You can even use them to promote your free products that people get when they join your email list.

In order to use Offers, your business page needs to have at least 400 fans (although I’ve recently seen where they are available to anyone). You have the option of choosing whether someone can redeem your offer online, in your actual store, or in store & online.

Offers can be awesome word-of-mouth promotion for your website, too, because when someone claims your Offer, it shows up in their News Feed. Friends of that person can then see that their friend just claimed your Offer.

Offers do cost money to use. It’s a form of advertising, after all. But before you dismiss it, I want to tell you about a little ninja trick.

As you’re finishing up creating your Facebook Offer, check the “Promote Later Using Another Facebook Ad Tool” box. This allows you to create an ad out of your Offer in your Ads Creator and bypass the pre-set budgets Facebook gives you. You can then choose whatever budget you’re comfortable with.

Finally, I realize the issue of Facebook “cutting” the number of your fans who see your status updates has raised some concern.

Yes, they did make a change to their algorithm late last year that affected the percentage of fans who see your posts. It all has to do with their EdgeRank formula that Ms. Ileane discusses in-depth here.

And yes, if you want to reach all of your fans now, there’s a cost associated with doing so in the form of a Promoted Post or Page Post ad.

I know, I know how dare they start charging for something that was previously free. I don’t love it either but I also understand why they’re doing it.

Here’s my take on it:

1) Facebook is now a public company and has to show they can monetize their billion plus users. Charging brands to promote a post to their entire fan base is one small way to do this. If you want to play you have to pay. After all, social media is an investment.

2) They’re your fans, yes, so shouldn’t they see all of your posts? If I saw every post from every page I’ve liked my news feed would be crazy inundated with stuff. I’d never see everything because posts would constantly get buried in a matter of seconds.

This is one reason why the EdgeRank formula exists. It’s designed to filter out the content that you want to see most. Remember, Facebook is all about engagement. If you want to see more updates from pages you’ve liked, start liking, sharing and commenting on their posts.

3) Think of your Facebook posts like email marketing or Twitter. If you have a list of 1,000 people and you send out an email to them, how many actually open it up and read it? How many even see it in their jammed email inbox? And, these people have opted-in to be on your list, just like they might be a fan of your Facebook page.

With Twitter, people have chosen to follow you. But how many of your followers actually see your tweets? If they aren’t on their Twitter account when you tweet, they likely will never see what you posted.

4) If you are going to promote one of your posts, I recommend targeting your fans rather than fans and friends of fans. I’ve seen and heard too many cases where when you promote a post to your fans and their friends, it gets shown to people outside of your ideal audience. Until Facebook works this out, just be aware this is happening.

As you can see, Facebook can be a powerful platform to grow your blog or business.  I’m only just scratching the surface here of what’s possible, but hopefully you can see that smartly leveraging Facebook marketing can be a very effective complement to your blog growth strategies.

I’d love to hear your experience. Do you have a community on Facebook full of engaged Fans who fit your customer profile? Have you used custom apps or Facebook Offers yet? Please leave a comment below and let me know!

Tagged as: Facebook Marketing, Facebook Offers, list building

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