Advertising without a budget

[dawg]

Most of us that have just built our websites and created new businesses just dont have the money to advertise at that point.

There has to be a way to drive traffic to your site without breaking the bank.

I have achieved it one time about 2 years ago I had a site that was getting 10.000 unique visitors a day. But I have never been able to match that again.

I started out jsut asking friends of mine to put a link on there site to mine before i knew it a bunch of sites had links to my site. Heck to this day on link popularity sites it is still listed with links to it on sites and the dang site is dead and has been for about 2 years.

I gues what my question is, Does anyone have any advice on getting traffic or any links to where we can learn how to do it on a small budget?

 

[Cindy]

Word of mouth... if your site is worthy it will grow, trust me. However, you could always submit your links to free directories, take advantage of traffic programs (like http://www.shareadspace.com) that promotes your site. Or the easier of them all, join a banner exchange/link exchange program!

 

[Elefekt]

Yes word of mouth is probably. the best thing to do and just ask to exchange links with different sites.

 

[painperdu]

Join forums where they allow links in your sig line and say or ask interesting stuff. People are curious and will go to your site so it follows that the more you interact in forums the more visitors and exposure your site will recieve. Also, don't only join sites that are related to your website; you don't know who will be needing your services or when they'll need it.

Build a small, or even a bunch of small internet directory sites on various topics but work out a way to put a small paragraph or two along with a link to your main site. Google and other search engines love this and will pick up on it, especially if the index site spans into individual topic pages.

Join various internet portals where they allow you space for your profile and include a few words and links to your site. A few of the search engines spider Yahoo, for instance, to pick up on these links.

Write or syndicate short articles on various topics to feed the ever hungry search spiders. They love text and will go into a frenzy when they find it on your website.

Along the same lines of web based forums, find a few good Usenet topics to check in to every day. One thing I've found with this is that there are a few sites that index and post to the web various news group postings. Google of course already indexes Usenet but because these other websites copy news group articles to the web also it becomes a double whammy when they copy your postings with your links.

Find a good text-link exchange program to join. There are a few out there, just do a search.

I guess the idea is to scatter your links across the internet in such a manner as to allow people and search applications to find you.

 

[Elefekt]

Originally posted by painperdu
Join forums where they allow links in your sig line and say or ask interesting stuff. People are curious and will go to your site so it follows that the more you interact in forums the more visitors and exposure your site will recieve. Also, don't only join sites that are related to your website; you don't know who will be needing your services or when they'll need it.

Build a small, or even a bunch of small internet directory sites on various topics but work out a way to put a small paragraph or two along with a link to your main site. Google and other search engines love this and will pick up on it, especially if the index site spans into individual topic pages.

Join various internet portals where they allow you space for your profile and include a few words and links to your site. A few of the search engines spider Yahoo, for instance, to pick up on these links.

Write or syndicate short articles on various topics to feed the ever hungry search spiders. They love text and will go into a frenzy when they find it on your website.

Along the same lines of web based forums, find a few good Usenet topics to check in to every day. One thing I've found with this is that there are a few sites that index and post to the web various news group postings. Google of course already indexes Usenet but because these other websites copy news group articles to the web also it becomes a double whammy when they copy your postings with your links.

Find a good text-link exchange program to join. There are a few out there, just do a search.

I guess the idea is to scatter your links across the internet in such a manner as to allow people and search applications to find you.

yea having your site in a few forums through your sig or profile helps a lot.

 

[Delete]

I use a spam bot on Yahoo that my buddy made. Spams yahoo chatrooms and gets me LOTS of hits.

 

[onspec]

Some would take a jaded view of this type of tactic Deleted. But, if it works for you ...

 

[DSL]

Jackal is it free?

 

[The Equivocate]

I don't think many of the spam bots will work for a while, as Yahoo just updated their chat protocol and therefore chat clients and other automated things are having a hard time connecting.

 

[Josh]

Word of mouth is a great method! Our site has flourished because of word of mouth only. We have never advertised on any site, or with any network.

Dawg, what was your site?

 

[Lord]

I think the best would be by word of mouth, or by getting links on with other sites.

I don't consider spam is a good idea, but you should definetly describe your site, that way people who want to visit it will click on it, and people who don't prefer the kind of site you have, will stray away from it.

 

[Jamie_net]

Something that has worked in the past for me has been to put a link in my signature on an online community.

If your part of a community with 10000 members and you have about 1000 post's, well that makes 1000 free adds and they are all going to get clicked at least once.