Let’s face it. No matter how long we’ve been operating a home based business on the Internet, we always seem to complain about the same issues. How can I increase my profit? How can I produce more sales? How can I get more exposure?
The answer to all those questions is the same (at least from one point of view.) It always boils down to one word. Traffic. Traffic is the key to success on the Internet. Of course, there are many other elements that play a critical role in our Internet Home Business success, but today we’re going to focus on traffic. Let’s assume, for this exercise, that all other aspects of our home business are fine. How can we generate more traffic?
Create an alliance with 3 or 4 web sites to exchange classified ads or banners at no cost to each other. Include each of your ads or banners on the other web sites. You will all share targeted traffic with each other. For example, you would instantly have 3 web sites selling for you without paying them an affiliate income. You would just be reciprocating by giving them free ad space on your web site.
Create a free e-zine directory. You’ll attract a lot of traffic from e-zine publishers and people who want to subscribe to the e-zines. Your listings could include name, subscription instructions, publishers name, etc. Of course you could put your own e-zine listing at the top of your directory to get extra exposure.
When you offer a freebie from your site, submit it to freebie sites. They provide target categories which means targeted traffic. So if you’re offering free software, you could submit it to the ‘free software’ section. Just remember, some freebie sites want you to link to their web site before they will list your freebie submission.
Allow other related web sites that don’t have a chat room to link to yours. They’ll get use of a free chat room and you’ll draw extra traffic from their site to your yours. Just publish your ad right above the chat room area. Your ad will draw extra exposure from all the other web sites sending traffic to your chat room.
Create your own web ring. You will gain highly targeted traffic to your web site and others will link to your site because they’ll want to join the ring. For example, if you were selling products to Internet marketers, you would want to start an online marketing web ring. You would then draw only a targeted audience.
Allow your visitors or customers to boost your traffic or sales. Ask them how you can improve your business, web site or product. You can ask them from within your web site, in your e-zine, on your message board, in your chat room, in your guest book, in your product packages, in your forum, etc.
Swap endorsement advertisements with other web sites. Endorsement ads usually pull more sales and traffic than regular advertisements because there is a testimonial affiliated with the ad. People have taught themselves to ignore many advertisements because they see hundreds of them every day. Endorsements and testimonials usually don’t look or sound like traditional ads.
Allow your visitors to reprint the content on your web site. Just ask them to include your resource box and a link to your site in exchange. This will turn your content into a traffic machine and the external links will help increase your page ranking in some search engines.
Start a free e-book club on your web site. People could sign up to receive a free e-book from you each month. This method is known as Viral Marketing and it works extremely well. Just include your product’s ads in the e-books. Allow people to give away the free e-books, too. Now your customers and visitors feel like they are providing something valuable to their contacts. All those e-books floating around will increase your traffic and sales.
Offer a free e-book that’s published right on your web site. People would have to stay at your web site to read it. You could have an ad above or below the content on the title page and every other page for the main product or service you sell. Even allow other web sites to link to your free e-book to increase your traffic.
Build a popular directory of freebies. It will draw a lot of traffic to your web site and you can request that people who submit free things to your Freebie Page must place your link on their home page. You could also trade links with other freebie sites or submit your own free items to their web site.
Create traffic generators that people can add to their site without doing all the work. They just add a link to your traffic generating content. It can be an article directory, freebie directory, web tool, etc. You just create it on your web space and maintain it. The only thing other sites would have to do is link to it. Their traffic becomes your traffic.
Increase your traffic by holding free teleclasses. You can refer people to your web site for more information. You can also mention your products and services at the end or during the teleclass. You could offer one daily, weekly or monthly. You could also invite guest experts to speak and teach.
Use holidays as a reason to get free publicity. Write a press release or article about the current holiday. It’ll have a high chance of being published. For example, your title could be, ‘10 Smoking Ways To Increase Your Sales On Thanksgiving Day!’ Another example, ‘How To Turbo Boost Your Traffic On Valentine’s Day!’
Publish a free e-book and give it away from your web site or in your e-zine. This will increase your traffic, sales and e-zine subscribers. For example, ‘FREE E-book Worth Over ($)!’ Another example, ‘Increase Your Traffic By Giving Away This Free E-book!’
Use text links if your banner ads are not pulling traffic. People don’t ignore text links as much as they do banner ads. You should treat your text link like a sales letter headline. For example, ‘How To…’, ‘FREE…’, ‘Breaking News! …’ ‘Warning!…’, ‘…Exposed!’ etc.
Use problems to attract online traffic. Find a common online problem and use your web site to solve it. People will visit and see your ads. For example, you could say, ‘How To Accept Credit Cards Without Forking Over Money For A Merchant Account.’ Another example, ‘How To Get To The Top Of The Search Engines Without Being Listed.’
I could go on and on but you get the idea. Hopefully, I’ve gotten your creative juices flowing a bit. Now, think outside the box and come up with some strategies to add to this list.
