Does anyone know how to advertise a personal web site with little or no cost that drives quality customers?

Question

I have operated a couple web sites for almost a year. Tried advertising in my local paper. Listing to free classified ads. Listed to major search engines. Also perform surfing sites to cause traffic to be sent to my sites. So far, I have only had a few sales. Does anyone have any ideas they can suggest at little or no cost to me? I am looking for quality potential customers rather than just more traffic. My sites are set up with huge discounts to attract sales. Please help. Thank you.

Answer 1

Getting traffic is a combination of a lot of things. The key to success is to create great content that visitors want to use, search engines will love and other websites will naturally link to. Of course, it's easier said than done.

You can use pay per click advertising in the search engines to reach audiences looking for your products. You can use Google Adwords http://www.google.com/adwords or Yahoo http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com

Here are some shoestring marketing ideas that can help you get the visitors you need at the least cost possible:

1. Create the best content you can with the best products you can possibly offer. Your content is your best advertisement - if visitors love your content, then they will go back and spread the word to others.

2. Make it easy for users to recommend your site. Viral marketing is very important -- and easy to tap on the Web. But give your users the tools. Get a Recommend this Site script from websites such as cgiscripts.com and similar directories of scripts. Some even go as far as giving incentives to those who recommend the site to their friends. If only 10 people go to your site, but these 10 people invite 10 more - that's additional traffic that you get for FREE!

Recommend Site Scripts (various) http://php.resourceindex.com/Complete_Scripts/Website_Promotion/Recommend_Site/
Big Nose Bird Recommend this Site http://bignosebird.com/carchive/birdcast.shtml
CGI Resource Index http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Programs_and_Scripts/Perl/Website_Promotion/Recommend_Site/
Hostscripts http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Site_Recommendation/index.html

3. Rank well in the search engines (organic search results, not the pay per click). SEs can be a big source of traffic. The key is to create the best content in your niche. If you have good content, other websites will gladly link to you and offer your site as a resource to their audience. Check the on-page factors and be sure to get linked from authority sites in your topic area.

If you are going to read only one piece on search engine optimization, I suggest you read Brett Tabke of WebmasterWorld.com's "Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone: 26 steps to 15k a day." http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum3/2010.htm


4. Send out press releases. While outfits charge as much as $650 per release, there are free press release submission places on the Web. Press releases allow you to (a) attract media attention; (b) get more back links to your website without sending each website an email request; and (c) get more visibility especially if your press release gets in Google News or Yahoo News.

http://www.prleap.com/sign_up.html
http://i-newswire.com/
http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/
http://www.pressbox.co.uk/cgi-bin/links/add.cgi
http://www.pr.com/press-releases
http://www.prfree.com/
http://www.clickpress.com/releases/index.shtml
http://www.theopenpress.com/
http://www.przoom.com/
http://www.prweb.com
http://www.newswiretoday.com/
http://www.free-press-release.com/

5. Submit articles. Write articles and submit them to websites accepting author submissions. You get exposure for your business; establishes you as an authority in your field, and allows you to get backlinks for your website. If 50 websites publish your article and it contains a link back to your website, then you easily get 50 links from a single article. The more links you have, the greater your chances for increasing your search engine rankings.

Here is a comprehensive list of where to submit your articles http://answers.yahoo.com/question/;_ylt=AhzreGmnCUicOoyedqypscUjzKIX?qid=1006022407481

6. Post a link to your site for free where it is allowed (always read the Terms of Use). Examples are:

Craigslist http://www.craigslist.com
Google Base http://base.google.com
Classifieds for Free http://www.classifiedsforfree.com/...
Text Link Exchange http://www.txtswap.com/
Recycler.com http://www.recycler.com/
Yahoo Classifieds http://classifieds.yahoo.com/
US Free Ads http://www.usfreeads.com/

Answer 2

What if I told you that you could produce 15 thousand unique visitors a month, That the visitors would be highly targeted which means that they have a current interest in your products or services, and that it would be 100% free. Would you take the time to at least read to find out?

Now, Would you believe you can get to this level in about 3 months with less than 30 hours a month in labor.

Article marketing is your huckleberry if you want this mush targeted traffic for free. Article marketing has the ability to make your site highly popular not only in the general publics eyes, but also the major search engines. Lets cover some search engine information first.

The first thing we need to do is dispel a few myths. The first myth is that links from related sites are better than non related sites. This is part true , Each page within a site is its own entity. PR is a way to prove it as a rank is assigned to each page, not one rank for the entire site, so a link on a related page is effective. Like an article directory.

The reason I say this is because the value of a link is rated by PR of the page the link is on, notice I did not say site? Having your keyword or some of your keywords in the title and content of the page. Number of outbound links from the page and the text or keywords close to your link. This is just a few of the factors. There are many other factors like position of the link on the page.

The beauty of articles is that you control the content and the title of the page it is published on. If you go to any article directory and click on an article you will notice that the title of the page is the title of the article. Most bloggers and web-site publishers also use the same practice. So, if you write your title right you just acquired links with your keywords in the title of the page. That just helped the power of the link. Now, if you manage to get your keywords of phrases in the content you just made it more powerful.

This is starting to look pretty good now, Lets keep going and see if we can find some more places to find advantages of articles.

The whole reason of articles is to gain targeted traffic, Right? Well, I am going to blow your mind here, Let me show you some stats from just one article.


Article id 328196 on ezinearticles.com has had 241 views, 16 publishes and emailed 1 time. And this is just 1 article in one directory. With a 1% click through ratio that is 2 clicks to the site. Not very impressive. Lets investigate a little deeper.

This article was submitted to about 100 directories and is showing about 150 times in Google. To see this get an article title and past it in a search engine and you can see how may times it is indexed by that search engine. Now with an average of 2 clicks per publish, that just brought the traffic to 300 clicks from one article.

I can write an article in about an hour, What would 300 clicks cost on adwords? Are you starting to get the picture?

Now lets start writing just 1 article a day and now we do 300 times 30. That is for 30 days in a month. Now what does your traffic look like? It still gets better. What does month 2 do, what about month 3 and so on.

These figures are not counting what you get from Google, Yahoo and MSN from the higher rankings in the search engines. The natural search traffic varies depending on your keywords.

Now, the page you get your article on starts as a pr0 page, what will it be in a few months, you just increased the value of the links again, plus the traffic. Then you might have some bloggers or website owners that put your article on a pr 5 page.

The entire internet marketing game is nothing but math. Keep playing the numbers and you will soon win your game.

Articles are the most effective and cost effective way to get traffic and high search engine rankings. You have to stay consistent to make it happen.

Where else can you generate that kind of traffic and links in only 30 hours a month?.

If you want to succeed in the online marketing game, you had better make articles just as regular as your fluid intake. You are doomed to have a weak business without articles.

You say you are doing well now? How would another 15 to 20 k uniques a month help your bottom line?

It does not happen over night, but by month 2 you will start seeing a good increase in traffic and links and you know the traffic is targeted and the links are quality and are only going to get stronger.

Answer 3

More relevant material will increase your standing in search engines. Use the readers you do have and short notes about your daily activities to create more relevant content about your subject matter. Add a latest news page, and post headlines and links to any news about water sports or jet skis. Add a notes section, and post regular updates about your activities -- did you just visit a supplier? did a customer send you a compliment? With permission, post these items and other material. Ask your readers for comments. Post the appropriate comments.

Answer 4

Start a blog at Blogger.com and make postings about your site and put in links to your site.