Promote your site if you don't have a budget

by Bruno Delepierre

Lots of people want to set up their own money making website but few people have thousands of dollars to do this...Is a big budget necessary? No, absolutely not...I also started as a small webmaster that had no budget and still I got my traffic...Let me share with you what I learned and give you some tips on getting visitors to your site...

When your site had been designed you probably wondered where to start. There are so many possibilities to start : Search engines, exchange links, banner advertising campaigns,FFA, classifieds...There are millions of sites who offer such free advertising possibilities but of course you don't want to waste your time on sites that won't generate traffic to your site.

The general rule is that you use combinations of promotion : Let me give a short list of good methods to begin promoting your site...

Start with E-mail

1.discussion lists

E-mail discussion lists are available for lots of topics. First of all you need to find a list or a forum that focuses on topics that you are familiar with and are related to what your site has to offer Lots of people have questions or remarks . If you offer helpful information not only you will be appreciated more but you will genereate some good traffic. How ? Well the trick is to add your name and sites url below the description.

2. The same principle when you send an ordinary e-mail. Every decent e-mailclient has an option to standard add a message to each e-mail you send. If you incorporate your sites name and url along with a short description people may visit it...

The newsgroups

3.Although Newsgroups aren't that popular any more as they used to be they can still send you some quality traffic... Rule number one in here is not to spam ...

Stick with relevant newsgroups ! Respect the newsgroups rules and you will be respected in that community...My advise is to search for a FAQ in the newsgroup that normally explains what the do's and dont's are in that specific newsgroup...

Free classifieds and Free for all

4.Many sites run one of these services and they are pretty popular with webmasters...However... Statistics show that this is not a very effective way to promote your site unless you are dealing with a very related site...e.g. Suppose you are running website on lets say fruit. You can understand it's unnecessary to waste your time with FFA on webmasters resources. However suppose you have a webmaster related site posting on a webmaster related site like ours can generate some qualified traffic...

Your sites contents

5. Your sites contents can be generating a lot of traffic ... Sounds strange to you ? Adjusting your website is a very important way to get repeated visitors : This is an aspect that lot of people forget : You are not only after visitors but you should be after repeated visitors...
Make sure your site is worth to come back to. give people a reason why to return to your site : Do you offer a unique service or you offer updated information... Be creative, no method is stupid as long as it gets traffic to your site...