Getting Visitors: Promoting Your Website

Most people start online thinking that all they need to do is purchase a turnkey website or website template and put up a few web pages and hey presto! they make money.

It would be nice ... if it were true

It all starts with visitors.....with web traffic

Making money online starts just like an offline business in getting visitors. If no one visits...then no one can buy. There are most common sources of visitors or traffic for your online business:

1. Search Engines
2. PPC (Pay Per Click)
3. Article Promotion
4. Feeder Sites
5. Newsletters and Newsletter/Ezine advertising
6. RSS feeds
7. Banner advertising

Website Promotion using Search Engines

Search engine traffic is by far the most popular, and for most webmasters usually the only form of promotion that they do. It is ideally suited for medium to large content sites but can also be used on mini-websites depending on the theme chosen.

Search engine traffic is probably the most difficult to get but is the most desirable as it is free . Search engine traffic does take time to build and for a new website you can expect to wait anywhere from 2-6 months.

Getting search engine traffic requires that you website and web pages are correctly optimised for the search engines. Although this may sound difficult it is in fact relatively straightforward and just requires that you follows some basic guidelines when constructing your web pages.

Website Promotion using PPC (pay per Click)

PPC traffic costs you money. It is however easy to get and provided you are willing to pay the price. It is an excellent source of traffic especially for a new website and for testing a website idea.

Pay Per Click isn't new; companies like Overture pioneered this area. Google Adwords are relatively new and combine the traditional free search feature and the pay per click model into a single search system.

Google Adwords are easier to use then the other PPC systems and are my preferred choice. There are also many excellent resources available for getting the most from Adwords here are a few:

• Goggle Cash
• Google Adwords Secrets Revealed
• Mastering Google Adwords-
• Google Adwords insiders Guide

Both yahoo and Microsoft will be offering alternatives to Google Adsense/Adwords during 2005.

Feeder Sites

Own Sites

This is a popular technique regardless of your website type. You use other sites that you own and link them to your  website. This can be an extremely effective technique when the themes are closely related.

As an example if you had an existing site that dealt with wireless networks you could very easily link it to a site offering other technical items.

Directories

Theme Directories serve the same purpose but as you don't control the directory they are not as powerful . However they should still be used.

Link Exchange

Similar to adding your sites to directories but this time you approach other webmasters and exchange links.

Article Promotion

This is only viable if you website theme lends itself to writing articles. If it isn't then you have to be a little more creative and use similar/related themes for your articles.

The idea with the articles is to submit them to article directories and they will in turn distribute them to other websites. People who read the articles may be interested to follow your resource link to your website.

Newsletters / Ezines

There are too main areas of newsletter or ezine promotion:

1. Have your own ezine or newsletter
2. Advertise in other peoples newsletters

Your own Newsletter

Newsletter/Ezines or electronic magazines are email newsletters similar to the familiar paper bases ones. Newsletters are an ideal way of building a loyal potential customer base.

Because Newsletters are  focused on a particular area your ad can be targeted at the needs of those readers.

Autoresponders are typically used to deliver  newsletters and  provide the email capture facility.

Advertise in other peoples newsletters

Because I don't try to sell any particular product I don't use this form of traffic generation, if you would like more detail then I suggest visit http://www.ezinehub.com

RSS Feeds

RSS is relatively new and only really popular among the savvy Internet users. It relies on people having  special newsreader software installed. The next release on Internet explorer will have it built in and you can expect RSS to become more popular when it is released.

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