Advertising your online business and generating traffic to your site can be challenging and expensive, especially when you are still starting in internet marketing. If you are on a tight budget, you will need to know about various relatively inexpensive ways of generating targeted traffic so that you get the word out about your site.

Copyright 2006 Nikki Mhlanga

You have built your own website and you are looking forward to start making money on line. But the first thing you will need to have is a lot of traffic.

Advertising your online business and generating traffic to your site can be challenging and expensive, especially when you are still starting in internet marketing.

If you are on a tight budget, you will need to know about various relatively inexpensive ways of generating targeted traffic so that you get the word out about your site.

Are there any effective, easy, inexpensive ways to generate traffic? Yes, there are.

Create viral tools: Create a report or an e-book that is related to what you offer on your online business, and give it away for free. Place your website or links to your affiliate program or products in this e-book.

You can enhance this strategy by making it possible for webmasters or other affiliates to brand the report with their own URL and give it away too. You will need to have a link somewhere in the report which points back to your URL too. If this is a very useful report of good quality, it will get distributed all over the internet, and the links back to your site will increase, which is what you need to get more traffic.

Write and distribute a lot of articles: One of the best strategies to get traffic to your website is through writing and distributing articles on the internet. The internet is a huge place, and you will need to regularly write and distribute articles in order to get more links back to your website.

What subject is your online business focused on? What is it that people would like to know more about? What can you teach them? It is important that your articles provide useful and valuable information. Publishers and ezine owners appreciate quality articles with useful information, and they will publish your article if it meets this criterion. In your articles, include an author's or resource box at the end, and invite readers to visit your website.

As your articles get distributed and reprinted online, you will get targeted traffic, and your search engine rankings is also improved, which will further help bring in more traffic

Forums and Bulletin Boards: Participating in forums and discussion board, offering help and answering questions can help increase traffic to your website. These forums are indexed by search engines, and therefore participating on them will also increase your link popularity and earn you extra traffic. Most forums allow members to add their signature and URLs and some have a free advertising section. This will give you an opportunity to promote your business and also interact with others and encourage them to visit your website.

Which are the forums and bulletin boards that relate or focus on your target audience? What are their rules and regulations regarding posts and participation? Once you know this, visit these sites on a regular basis and offer some genuine help, answer question and include your signature with your URL while doing that.

Trade Links With Other Websites: Having some links with other websites of similar topic can help increase the link popularity of your website. You will need to trade links with sites that offer similar products but are not direct competitors, that is, do not offer exactly the same product or service like yours.

Although two way links help, one way links are even more effective. You can get one way links by registering your sites several directors, participating in forums and writing articles as stated above.

Publish an ezine or offer an email course from your website: Website surfers appreciate free information and tips. By having an ezine on your website, you can keep in touch with visitors who may otherwise never return to your site. This will build the relationship with your subscribers, and they gradually become confident to do business with you.

Alternatively, you can also offer a small email course to your website visitors, which is related to what your website is about. You can structure the course so that your subscribers will come back to your site to check it out. This generates repeat visitors to your website, and eventually these subscribers will be converted to customers.

Follow these 5 strategies and drive traffic to your website.