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"Four Unique Ways to Get Website Traffic"
By Jim Daniels
Website traffic. It is the
cornerstone of any successful business on the web. Sure, you need a
professional website and a proven revenue model, but once you have those
in place, becoming profitable is merely a numbers game...
Bring in lots of targeted traffic and you bring in lots of dollars.
But as any webmaster can tell you, getting website traffic can be tough.
After all, there are millions of websites on the web. Getting customers to
yours can be quite a task.
Sure, you can and should utilize all the proven traffic generators such as
search engine promotion, email newsletter advertising and the like. But
most webmasters with limited budgets usually end up coming to one
conclusion.... they may have to think a bit out of the box if they want to
grow serious traffic.
So today I'd like to share four unique ways to generate traffic to your
website. I'm quite sure most websites have never even considered these
possibilities, let alone tried. them.
1. Use "Expert Sites" to Promote Yourself... and Your Business
When you participate in "expert sites", you develop a reputation for being
very knowledgeable about your chosen subject, and your answers are
permanently posted where they can be seen by potential customers for years
to come.
Furthermore, if you consistently provide quality answers, visitors will
notice and start directing others' questions specifically to you as their
expert of choice.
By using proper etiquette in your responses to questions, you can offer
answers that include appropriate references to your site, and you can
provide your URL in your signature.
A side-benefit of this method of creating traffic is that you get a chance
to "pre-sell" your product or service through your answers to questions.
It's better than just providing a blind link as they'll already have some
impression of you and your site before they actually visit it. And some
level of trust and credibility will have already been established.
These expert sites cover just about any topic imaginable -- consider
joining at least one:
Yahoo Experts: http://experts.yahoo.com
AskMe: http://www.askme.com
ABuzz - New York Times:
http://www.abuzz.com
AllExperts: http://www.allexperts.com
AskJeeves - Ask Other People:
http://www.ask.com
2. Exploiting Residual Traffic from Expired Domains
When domain registration fees come due, but aren't paid, the domain
returns to the pool of available names. And at that point, anyone can
register the name.
Very often, these "expired" domains were once thriving websites that were
linked to from other websites, were listed in search engines, were
bookmarked by previous users, etc. And even though the name is no longer
used, those links and bookmarks probably still exist.
You can take advantage of this residual traffic by registering these
domains again and redirecting these visitors to your "real" website.
There are plenty of sites with information about expired domains, like
Whois.net or ValueNIC.com. Once you have a list of available names, you
can determine how many inbound links each name has by using a link
popularity lookup, such as the one at:
http://www.marketposition.com/linkpopularity.htm
The general rule of thumb for estimating the traffic these domains will
receive is to take the total number of inbound links, divide it by 20, and
that's how many unique visitors you should expect per day. In other words,
if you register 10 expired domains that have a total of 1000 links (the
total across all search engines), you should expect about 50 unique
visitors per day.
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(Now back to this week's tip...)
3. Start an "Offline" Affiliate Program
I'm sure you realize that having your own affiliate program is an
effective way of generating traffic. But the usual methods of monitoring
and tracking affiliate sales don't lend themselves for use in the offline
world. Until now...
You can give your top affiliates an actual section of geography (which can
be denominated as a city, county, a zip code, a telephone area code, a
state or even a country) to conquer, and you can credit them with all
sales that come from that geographical area.
In other words, let's say I decide to "give" one of my good affiliates his
home state of Tennessee. Now, any customers who come from Tennessee (and
do not come from any other referral link) will be credited to him. He will
get ALL commissions from orders originating out of Tennessee.
That incents your affiliates to do all kinds of direct, one-to-one
marketing in their own neighborhoods to drive traffic to your site. As
long as they know that they will be credited with every sale that comes
from their city (or county or area code or zip code or however you want to
set it up), they will promote in ways that would never be cost-effective
if you were to try it yourself.
They can try doorknob-hangers, flyers under windshield wipers, press
releases to their local newspapers, small signs on utility poles, local
telemarketing, bumper stickers, and a thousand other things that you'd
never be able to do otherwise.
4. Using Testimonials - With A New Twist!
Everyone knows that testimonials are nice to have on your own site, but
did you ever think about the value of having YOUR testimonial on the site
of others?
In the course of ordinary business, you undoubtedly use lots of products
and services: ebooks, newsletters, webmaster services, marketing courses,
webhosting, internet service providers, books, magazines, etc.
If any of these work especially well for you, you should consider writing
intelligent, glowing testimonials and submitting them to the people who
create these products and services.
Who can resist putting a great testimonial on their site...?
And don't forget to ask, as politely as possible, that your url also be
published.
If the potential recipient doesn't have a testimonials page, you can still
get him to publish your testimonial if you make the page for him. By
copying the same theme and layout of his regular site, it's quite a simple
matter to make a testimonials page (Where yours is first and at the top!)
and just give it to him as a gift. This will save him time and earn you a
couple of extra points if he's still doubtful about including your
testimonial and/or your URL. And it only takes a minute.
In closing...
There is one more place I'd like you to visit today. It's the very site
where these unique traffic generating ideas came from. A site dedicated to
the "Science of Web Traffic", called appropriately,
"Trafficology"...
Trafficology
webmaster, Wayne Yeager, knows the importance of thinking "out of the
box". As a matter of fact, his site is a great example of this very
theory.
Every month, Wayne pays "cash bribes" totaling $1,350 for the BEST traffic
ideas submitted at his site. And hundreds of them come in every month.
As Wayne's site states, "Some of the ideas are GREAT. Some of them are
lousy. But invariably, a handful of cool traffic ideas you've never heard
of will be submitted every month."
And the best part is you can read the ideas without paying a dime. That's
because Wayne puts all the BEST ideas into his email newsletter which is
100% FREE! While there is certainly a glut of email newsletters on the web
these days, this is one every web business should be reading faithfully.
If you're not reading it, you are completely out of the loop!
So hop on over to
Trafficology and get it. And while you're there, submit an idea or two
of your own. Who knows, you may just earn up to $1,000.
* Tip by Jim Daniels of http://www.bizweb2000.com and
http://www.make-a-living-online.com
If you're starting or growing a business online, Jim can help you through
every crucial step at his new web-based guide...
http://www.make-a-living-online.com
* Article by Jim Daniels of JDD
Publishing. Jim's site has helped 1000's of regular folks profit online.
Visit http://bizweb2000.com for FREE
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