Free Traffic That Actually Works
There is no shortage of free traffic and advertising services out there. There are traffic exchanges, banner exchanges, link exchanges, safelists, viral marketing membership sites, downline builders, article submitters, search engine optimization wizards, search engine submitters, and a great host of gimmicks, tricks, and tip sites that all say they can start generating massive amounts of traffic to your site very quickly.
Free web traffic does work! And it can work for you!
The unfortunate truth about these methods of free traffic generation is that while many are totally awesome, most are total garbage. You can spend hours surfing, you can send out thousands of emails, you can submit you site to TWO MILLION search engines, you can sign up for every gimmick that comes along, but you still won't see any results.
In order to succeed with free traffic generation, you’ll need to know exactly which services are worth your time BEFORE you sign up for them. The fun part is that it’s hard to know who you can trust on the web. Seriously, do you trust some so-called “guru” to know what’s best for you? Do you think they care about your success? Heck no! They just want your money!
Research is vital to your success. The reality of the matter is that NOTHING IS EVER FREE! If something doesn’t take your money, you can be certain that it will take your time. Be very cautious about who you’re investing your hard earned time in. It is precious. Anyone who is dating, married, has children, or even a hobby knows this all too well. If something is going to be taking you away from those you love, it had better be worth it, am I right?
Now, some free traffic generation sites can be totally worth your time and effort. I have been on the net since I was able to hold a mouse. I’ve been a website owner since I was THIRTEEN! I’m not a greedy person, so I’m not out there to make money. However, I can manage to generate a steadily increasing stream of visitors to my sites every month. In fact, the traffic for any one of my sites nearly doubles every month. All of this is without the help of any guru or goofy overpriced ebook. I’m just some kid who happens to have a lot of experience with free traffic.
So how does one know whether or not a specific free traffic service is worth their time? I’ll lay out a quick list of general guidelines that I follow whenever choosing a new service to invest my time in:
1. Does the site look professional? If the design is ugly or full of formatting errors then you can automatically assume that the author of this site doesn’t care enough about their visitors to even design a decent website. Pass them up, they will almost always be useless. If it’s minor it can be forgiven, it could be a temporary problem.
2. How is their grammar? English is not the first language for many people so don’t be too harsh. However, if the site’s ad copy is riddled with grammatical errors and misspellings, you can assume that the author is either a moron or doesn’t care enough about their visitors to have someone proofread their ads. (I’ve got ADD and Dyslexia, I ALWAYS check and double check EVERYTHING, I’ll often have my wife, or a friend, read over my ads and articles just in case. If I don’t use dyslexia as an excuse for bad spelling grammar NO ONE CAN!)
3. Does the site have a way to contact them? Email forms? Email address? Mailing address? Phone number? If they’ve got a way to contact them, then drop them a line. Ask them a question that isn’t covered by their FAQ (assuming they have one). If they don’t respond to your email, then pass them up. If their tech support is no good, then no matter how good the concept, site, or offer is, the site will eventually fall apart and no one will care. If there is no way to contact them you need to be asking yourself “What are they hiding from?” You’ll certainly want to pass them up if they don’t have a way to contact them.
4. Does their system make sense? If it is confusing and complicated, then it’s probably not going to be very easy for it to work for you. Find something that won’t have you wasting your time. Also, be wary of sites whose system just doesn’t add up. For instance, a traffic exchange that has a 1:1 exchange ratio and offers bonus credits really often for free members… might just be a scam. This is because the way that such a system works, these numbers just could not support a decent exchange (Because your earned credits couldn’t be used up fast enough). That’s why it’s also important to research the specific method of traffic generation you’re interested in as well. Always remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
5. Use http://www.whois.com to check them out. If their information looks fishy, then you might want to be a little cautious. Sometimes their information is private, don’t be alarmed by that. It’s just them trying to protect their identity.
6. Find out what everyone else is saying about them. Take a look at community sites such as http://www.freetrafficworks.com for general free traffic sites. You might also want to check out more specific sites such as http://www.safelistrankings.com for safelists, or www.trafficexchangelist.com for traffic exchanges. It also doesn’t hurt to do a search for “service name scam” or “service name review”. Find out if anyone has anything positive or negative to say about them.
7. Check out a sites Alexa.com ratings. If they are drawing in a ton of traffic, then they will have that much more potential to drive traffic to you. That being said, don’t be afraid of a site with a lower Alexa rating. Often, this simply means that they haven’t been around long enough to build up their traffic. This doesn’t mean that they won’t. In fact, it could be very beneficial to get in on a site that is just starting out and on its way up.
If you can manage to find a site that looks decent, has decent grammar, has an easy way to contact them, has great customer support, doesn’t seem like a scam, and at least doesn’t have that many negative reviews, then you might have yourself a winner. From there you’ll want to just dive right in. Check out the service by trying it on your own. You don’t want to waste all your time researching a company only to find out that you could have been generating traffic that whole time!
Test ALL the features. Dig right into the guts of their system. If you find something that is broken or that doesn’t work quite right, contact their tech support and let them know. Not only will this improve the service, but you’ll be able to test the responsiveness of their tech support. I am a firm believer that if the service stinks, the site stinks. You want to be sure that the site will continue to get better over time and when it breaks it gets fixed. If the tech support is lousy the site will only work well while someone cares enough to keep it running, but ultimately, it will stagnate and fall into disuse.
I also can’t stress the importance community enough. Not only will a community be able to give you advice, suggestions, and tips but they’ll also be building you traffic. Heck http://www.myspace.com is ranked #6 right now on http://www.alexa.com which is proof that community is a powerful free traffic source. I would suggest that you get involved in communities such as http://www.netmarketingforum.com http://www.freetrafficworks.com and http://www.warriorforum.com as each are excellent ways to not only get involved but also to stay up to date on the free traffic and advertising world in general.
In the case of http://www.freetrafficworks.com you have the opportunity to vote on various traffic services, read/write unbiased testimonials, and even write your own reviews. They’re relatively new but they’re growing exponentially. They’ve also got an interesting feature which allows their registered members to utilize the entire site as a downline building tool. Of course, their downlines only builds up in the top rated services, so it really puts a unique spin on the whole concept. On top of that, its chuck full of useful tips and tricks. Also, since the ratings and reviews are made by ordinary people just like you and I, they are completely unbiased, honest, and if a service is ranked highly, you know it is up there because it works for ordinary people like us, not just the gurus.
If there’s one thing I want you to take away from this article it is this: Research is vital to your success no matter what you’re looking into. This concept could easily be applied to any other area of online business. If you don’t do your research, you could easily get burned. At the same time, you don’t just want to be smart, you want to get into good programs quickly. Don’t waste all your time wondering what sites are worth your time. If something looks good, give it a spin.
Also, the internet community is just that, a community. If you want people to know you exist, then get out there and let them know that you exist! Make your presence known. Get involved, contribute, collaborate, and above all else, have fun. There’s no point to all of this if you can’t have fun while you’re doing it.
