Dec

9

Traffic Generation Ideas Part Four

Filed Under Blogging, Classified Ads, Craigslist, Email Advertising, Giveaway Event, RSS, The Idea Bin, Traffic Generation 

This is part four in a series of how to generate traffic to your website or blog.

Read Part One Here

Read Part Two Here

Read Part Three Here

1) Participate in Giveaway Events. Not only can you join a giveaway event to get some good products you can use and resell yourself, but you can also use them to drive traffic to your site! By joining as a contributor, you can create a giveaway product and offer it on their site for others to download. MANY marketers build very nice opt-in lists by using these giveaways and if they participate, you should take note of that fact and participate as well! Your giveaway item should be useful to those downloading it. Because you want to earn their trust and keep them on your list…so you can sell to them later on. Almost every giveaway event allows you to send the visitor to an opt-in form to collect their name and mail - and then deliver the freebie to them. So, it is best to have a way to collect that information. I would suggest a good autoresponder service - such as Aweber or GetResponse (these are without a doubt the two top autoresponder services on the net.) You can find out about these Giveaway Events by joining several email lists of better known marketers. To find some, you can go to Gurudaq.com - which lists MANY of the top internet marketers. To give you a start, here are a few current Giveaway Events:

Use these wisely and often, and you should easily be able to get a solid 500 to 2000 new potential clients in a short amount of time!

2) Use Free Advertising sites. There are several highly traffic Free Advertising sites that you can list your website, blog, or product on. Again, you can try and sell on these sites, but a better use is to use these sites to get traffic to your site by offering a freebie. Here are a few of the more well known sites you can try:

3) Craigslist. What started as a local directory has blossomed into one of the most visited classified site on the net. I read that they receive something like 8 billion page views a month…hello!! You can try and get yourself a little piece of that pie! One note of caution to begin with: the users of Craigslist are very good at spotting and reporting spam. It must be used wisely to benefit from their traffic. Some hints:

  • Pick an appropiate category to post in.
  • Become a member and get involved in their discussion groups.
  • Don’t SPAM!
  • Instead of selling an item, create a freebie to give away. Collect name/email with opt-in.
  • Don’t post too many things at one time. Spread it out over time.
  • Use a Google Gmail account.
  • DO NOT TRY and sell affiliate products - those are very easy to spot and will get your ad deleted.

One thing you can try to do is lurk around the “wanted” section (inside the For Sale category). Find people that want to buy a certain item you are interested in. Then go to Ebay, do a search for what they want. If you find items that would meet the Craigslist user’s needs, join Ebay’s affiliate program, insert your affiliate id with the item for sale, and email the Craigslist user with what you found. You are not selling an affiliate product. You are offering them a way to find the item they WANTED to buy!! Just an idea!

4) Use your 404…..404 error pages I mean! So this is not really a “traffic generation” tip, but MANY webmasters do NOT make use of their 404 pages, which is WASTING TRAFFIC! You can edit them and send that traffic to any place you want….send them directly to your home page; send them to an offer; send them to an affiliate page….the main point here is to take advantage of that traffic. Here is a Google Search for 404 Error - as you can see there are many resources you can check out to learn how to create a custom page.

5) Blogs. I know I mentioned submitting your site to directories, but in case you have a blog (and YOU SHOULD), you should also submit your blog to the various blog directories. Not only that, you really need to make sure you utilize your RSS feed that is built into most blogging platforms (Blogger and Wordpress being the two most popular.) I would also suggest that you “burn” your feed with Feedburner’s free service! (oh by the way, did you know that Feedburner is now owned by Google?) Burning your feed allows your feed to be easier to subscribe to. When a user clicks on your Feedburner Feed link, they are taken to a page that offers them several ways to subscribe to your feed. Ok…and WHY do we want to have a way for people to subscribe? So they are updated via their RSS Reader whenever you update your site! RSS Readers are becoming VERY popular and if you don’t utilize this feature, you are wasting traffic. RSS feeds provide users with a convenience…a simple way to stay informed of when a site is updated. It makes it easier for them to find niche-specific sites that they feel are valuable to them…if you can’t see the value in that, I give up! ;-) Only kidding!! You WANT niche-specific traffic. You NEED that niche-specific traffic….because it is MUCH easier to make a sale to those people that are already interested in your niche. Make sense? I hope so!

Anyway, here are some resources:

6) Email Advertising - Solo Ads. While many may find this to be non-effective anymore, I say poppycock! Email advertising (Solo Ads in particular) can be a very effective and cheap way to drive traffic to to your site…if done properly and if you make sure you are dealing with a reputable company or list owner. There are MANY places that will sell you an email list - 75 million for $29.95 … are you that gullible?! If so, just send me the money instead…I can use it to help the hungry! Anyway - there ARE some good places to buy from…and the best way to find them is ask your fellow marketers that have used them! Many say that they tried and didn’t like them - probably because they used them wrong or their offer was not targeted. As in other methods, you can try and sell via an email ad, but you may have better success offering a freebie in exchange for a name and email address. Get them in your own traffic funnel before you “sell” them. Make them want to buy from you by offering them quality products and information.

Here are a few resources that I see mentioned by well-known marketers:

7) USFreeAds. While they are not as loved by Google as they once were, they do still get indexed by Google fairly fast. USFreeAds has three different ways you can post an ad - Free, Gold Membership, and Premium Membership (check out that page for more information on each level.) The best way to use them is to create ads that are designed to drive traffic to your site or blog. What is nice about the Premium version is that you can run an unlimited number of ads at a time….while you are limited to 25 ads at a time with the Gold version. Unfortunately, their Free version, according to their own site, does not allow you to run ads for a commercial purpose. The Gold version is only $10 a year…very affordable! Worth a test drive anyway!!

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