Many of us start of with an idea and then build a website only to find out we don't know what to do next. Well, traffic is what we need. In order to sell anything on our site we must bring people to it. How do we do that without spending an arm and a leg? It's not that hard if you are willing to put in the time and effort.

Forums

Join and participate in online forums and online communities. - Forums are a great marketing platform. By simply participating in a meaningful and sincere way you can drive traffic to your site absolutely free.

Most forums will allow you to join and participate freely. You must sign up and become a member and once that is complete you will have a chance to create your “profile.” This is where you will give some information about yourself and in most cases will be able to create your “signature.” Your signature is a very important piece of the forum marketing process. Your signature will be displayed every time you make a post. It is very similar to a footer on the bottom of a website. This signature can link to your blog or website. Be sure to check the terms of each forum to ensure you do not start off on a bad foot.

When making posts in a forum it is vital that you create good replies or topics. Do not “spam” the forum. This is the worst possible thing you can do. It will damage your reputation quickly and you will lose all credibility immediately. The key to being successful in this marketing method is to be honest, helpful, insightful, and above all credible. If you are honest and provide good answers you can be guaranteed that people will look at your signature to see exactly who you are and what you are about.

Newsletters

This marketing method is a little more involved and requires you to build a list which will become the cornerstone of your future sales. By providing valuable content you can increase the trust between you and your subscribers. You are also creating a viral marketing piece. If your newsletter is valuable, educational and entertaining (depending on your subject) then people will pass it along or provide links to your online version, once again bring traffic to your site.

Link Exchanges

By trading links with like sites you can increase your traffic tremendously. You don't have to spend any money. All you need to do is contact other webmasters and offer them the exchange. This is actually a win-win for both sites. You drive traffic to each other and you create another relationship (with the webmaster) that can prove to be very valuable in the future. Be sure that you only exchange with high quality sites and sites that are in the same general field you are in. In other words if you are marketing dog training books then exchanging links with an oil company will do you no good at all.

Article Writing

Writing articles is a proven and consistently used method of driving traffic to a site. It is simple and effective. All you do is write 300-500 word articles on the subject you are marketing and submit it to some “authority” article directories. If you have your own blog post your article there first, this way your site will look like the authority site to the search engines.

Whenever you write an article that you submit to an article directory be sure to include your “resource box” information. The resource box gives a bit of information about you and in most cases will provide a link directly to your site or blog. You are in effect creating your own linkbacks. Another benefit of this is that there are many webmasters that will use articles from these directories to provide content to their own customers, and guess what, your link is included! How great is that?

All of these methods will drive traffic to your site for free. It does take effort and a few man hours but if you need traffic and have no money to spend then any of these will provide traffic to you. You will also be creating relationships which will greatly benefit you in the future.