When you go this route you are opting for the method that will require the most work and effort on your part.  However, it is also the one that will be by far the most beneficial.  To create your own traffic you need to build ways to get people to your site.  In otherwords, just like cities need several highways to carry the daily traffic into them, you need to build roads for people to get into your site.

You can do this by a virtually unlimited number of ways.  Here are some of the most common.

Well, review our search engine basics section for some information on how search engines work.  Even though search engines are a great way to get traffic, they are highly unpredictable and can change any day at any time.  So it's always smart to have a solid backup plan in case you get dropped from the search engine listings one day.

To get listed on directories is relatively easy.  You just have to do a little search and surfing to find services that offer listings.  Then submit your site as many listing services as you can find.

Opt-in E-Zines and Newsletters are great tools to use and I highly recommend them.  You do have to have something or interest to write about and provide your readers.  I'll go into creating effective E-zines in a future article, but for now let me just summarize that this is a great tool to use because not only do you capture their email address as well as their eyeballs every week or month (depending on when you send your E-zine or newsletter), but you also get listed in your readers mind as an expert in your field.  This is always a good thing for your business.  For those of you who don't know what an E-zine is, it is a short newsletter or magazine style publication that you write and send out via an email subscription list.

What is Viral marketing?  Well, ever see those vista print business cards that have the business info on the front and an advertisement for vistaprint.com on the back?  Or get an email from an AOL member or someone using Yahoo email and on the bottom their is a little advertising blurb about how great AOL is or how much better Yahoo is than AOL?  Well, that's viral marketing.  You create a service or tool or piece of content that someone might want to use and you give it away for free or for a small fee.  But then in return you get to slap your advertising on it somewhere.  This is a great tool and method to use if you can find something that fits your business model.  One thing I can recommend to almost anyone is to create a small informational video or audio recording and release it over a podcast or give it away for free to others to share, but make sure that you pitch your site at the beginning and at the end so as to get benefit for creating it.

Remember not to forget traditional media!  Journalists can be your best friends so use them!  Create and send out press kits (electronically if you want to save money), create a press room page on your site and write stories for local journalist to use in their publications (make sure you use a creative commons license so you also get credit).  Use a good PR firm to get you some air time on the local news station, then you can also use your air time recording on your website and in podcasts to give you credibility.

Create content, reports, and other useful information that other people want to know and give it away on your site.  Not only will this help build your site up in bulk and credibility, but also it will help with your search engine rankings as you build content over a specific area and topic range.  But then keep making the content.  Keep adding to it so that people continue to come back to learn more from you.  Then, after you have the traffic, you can start to change memberships for your "premium" insider tips and suggestions.

Finally, placing your content on other sites is a biggie these days.  Very big, as well as easy to do.  Using a technology called RSS feeds, you can offer your content to other publishers and sites for display on their websites.  The love it because it helps build content on their sites, and you'll love it because when people want to see the full article they will have to click on the link which takes them back to your site.  Some people might say this is technically "borrowing" traffic, but I disagree.  Synidiation is just another way to get publicity.  Afterall, you are the one creating the content and creating the interest to visit your site to begin with.

 

 

I'm not a big fanboy of buying your traffic, but if you are smart about it and do your research you can really cash in by buying your traffic.  The biggest things to be careful of is to make sure you are getting in front of your target audience, and then when you do you have to make sure you are hooking them right away.  To buy your traffic there are essentially 4 things you can do.

Pay per Click Advertising has been popularized and refined by Google's Adwords program.  Most people think of this when they think pay per click.  Simple to do.  Go to Google or Overture and simply sign up and create your ad compaigns.  I'll give some pointers on this in the future to help keep you from getting burned, but if you want to do this now be sure to do your research on how to do this properly!  Because if done wrong this can really burn you (as can all of these buying traffic methods).

E-zine advertising is simply sponsoring or paying an existing E-zine or Newsletter to place your ad.  This is one of the more concervative methods and difficult to really get burned here.  But I also don't think you'll see mega success either, unless you have a great target audience in the E-zine and you have a super copywriter that can write a killer ad.

Banner Advertising is simple enough.  Find some sites that have great traffic and more specifically have your targeted audience captured.  You can usually tell by the webiste, it's content, as well as the comments on it's forums or bulletin boards (if it has them).  If you are not sure, call up the website owners and talk with them abou their demographics.  If is sounds like it has your target audience, then go ahead and sign up.  Most places change by impressions, which means how many times you ad is displayed.  The Best method for you is Pay-per-Click through, however most websites don't do this anymore.  The second best option, especially if the site has high traffic is to pay for monthly placement.  However, this is rarely done also.  Be prepare to pay per impressions.

Finally we have your traditional marketing and direct marketing methods.  Not much new here.  Just make sure you have a great copywriter that can write ads that work.

All advertising methods work!  If they are not working for you it's probably because you are writing poor ads and haven't done your research on how to write ads that sell.  Take time to research this as this is just as important if not more important that the method used.

Share your resources with others and all of you can benefit from each other's pooled traffic and resources.  So how can you borrow traffic?  Try any of these following methods:

I'm not going to go into the details of the borrowed traffic as I think most of these are self-evident and you can find many examples that are non-internet based.  This is basic marketing stuff here, but you can absolutely apply it to you internet business with great results.  A good example is seeing seminars that have multiple, huge, high profile speakers at one event.  For example seeing Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, and George Bush Sr. all at the same seminar on leadership.  Why?  Because if one high profile speaker will bring is a ton of people then 3 high profile speakers will pack the place no matter what the ticket costs are.

All of these methods will create traffic for you.  My favorite is creating traffic because I believe that also builds equilty in your site and builds on the foundation of your company.  However, everyone is different and has different needs and one of these methods will work for almost anyone no matter what your current needs.

Good luck on traffic bulding quest.  As always, call or email us if you'd like specific help on this subject.  We are always happy to help.