Free Traffic – Here’s How
1First of all let's get real about internet traffic…
Most people think that they can get free traffic when they start their online business…
Then reality usually kicks in after a few weeks.
There is no free when it comes to online, unless you value your time at zero.
…and valuing your time at zero is not sustainable for your business, nor is it really setting up your business for success…
But if you are willing to put in the time… invest the time… there are certain things you can do to drive traffic to your website or business that won't cost you any actual cash.
Let's have a look at one of those today for you.
Out there in the world are people who are passionate about… all kinds of things…
And they like to talk about those things with other people who are also passionate about those subjects.
Thanks to the internet these people can now find each other on forums where they can talk about their subject in as much detail as they like.
In any forum you will find a wide variety of people at different levels of expertise about that subject and this is your opportunity to contribute something of value here.
The great thing about forums is that they allow what's called a signature – which is a bit of text and (usually) a link which get's tagged to the bottom of each of your forum posts.
If you contribute something good and you gain the interest or appreciation of the people that read your bit…
Well quite often people who want to know more will follow the link in your signature to see what else you have.
So your first step needs to be make a page on your site that can receive people and offer them something good…
Maybe you give them some good free information when they give you their name and email…
The rule of thumb for forums is that you participate in the forum on a regular basis and from time to time you can add something like:
“Check out the new thing I made…”
Or…
“download my new free report by clicking here…”
or if you want to promote anonymously…
“I saw this awesome report the other day that could answer your question… hope this helps you…”
the rest of the time you need to rely on good content / contributions and people clicking on your signature…
Which means that you need to have a good call to action in your signature as well.
Ok so now that you get the idea…
Now let me give you an example to show you why it's worth your time to take some time on a regular basis to do some of this forum marketing.
Some time ago I got into a niche that has some very passionate people in it…(no, I'm not going to tell you what the niche is)
So I spent some time on one forum which is quite busy.
Is it the busiest or most active forum on this subject? Actually I have no idea…
So I got on this forum, I set up a signature and I probably posted no more than 20 posts commenting on peoples conversations.
After that I posted one post where I used the third method I just gave you… the anonymous promotion.
I made a new ‘thread' – which is just a new conversation topic… and I also went into some closely related subjects and linked back to the new thread…
It took me all of 10 minutes…
What happened?
I started to get some clicks to the site that I had built around this.
Then I started to get more…
By the end of the week I was getting around 70 – 100 people a day clicking over to the site…
This went on for weeks and weeks without me having to do anything more…
Eventually it started to die off because I had not gone back in and done anything else with the forum…
Actually I got busy and forgot that I was meant to be posting regular comments in the forum…
But over the weeks it was working I got thousands of clicks to the site for free.
The big lesson here is to make sure you follow through making this a regular process that you put into your calendar.
It only needs to be 30 minutes a couple times a week but if you do it regularly, you provide good content, and from time to time you tell people to go check out your page you will definitely be able to drive some free traffic.
*As a side note make sure it's just a link to a website you own… most forums don't like it when you post affiliate links.*
To find a forum in your niche just type into Google: Forum: “keyword”
Give it a try and see how much traffic you can drive from this.
Hope this helps you
good articles