When you are ABSOLUTELY
SURE that your site is ready, you can begin the
important task of promoting it.
I always avoid any method of promotion that requires
payment of any kind. When I first promoted my
site, I did so without parting with a single penny
(Ebenezer Scrooge lives!). Within a month, my site was receiving well
over 50 new members a day, and the number just kept
growing! You can do the same, by using the
following methods...
Advertising on Other
PTR Sites
If you become a member of
another site, you can earn points or cash in your
account to spend on advertising your own site. I
tried this form of publicity with my site in
pre-launch, and gained dozens of members in the
first day alone. You may be surprised at just how
many people will join after viewing a banner,
e-mail or text ad. The big advantage is that it is
targeted publicity; the people who see your ad are
looking for such money-making opportunities, hence
you do not waste time pitching your site to
uninterested parties.
If the writer of a blog or
discussion group gets to hear of your new site
through a PTR ad, and he or she is enthusiastic
about it, it can do wonders for your visitor
count. They will usually put a referral link to
your site to earn referral commission, and if
enough people do this it makes your site a
self-promoting entity. No need for expensive
advertising campaigns! (wrings hands with glee).
Search Engines and Web
Directories
In the early days of the
web, most search engines accepted site submissions
free of charge, but now that the earning potential
of a well-publicized site has been realized, many
of them charge a fee for the privilege. To be
fair, they are in business to and need to make
money, but in my experience you only need to do a
moderate amount of search engine submission to get
your site noticed.
If you are going to submit to any
one search engine, it should be Yahoo!, because
at the time of writing they still accept free
submissions. Also bear in mind that an increasing
number of search engines now use Yahoo! to gather
their search results in any case, so it is
generally a waste
of time submitting your URL to those as well.
Autosurf and Manual
Surf (Traffic Exchange) Programs
With this type of site
promotion program, you earn credits by viewing a
succession of web pages one after the other, with
a timed interval between them. The credits earned
can then be allocated to your web site as exposure
credits, so that members view it in their surfing
sessions.
Manual traffic exchanges
are a much more effective proposition than
autosurf programs, because the site viewer has to
manually click on a security number or similar
before he or she can progress on to the next site,
ensuring their full attention at all times.
Autosurf programs merely
present the sites one after the other with no
manual intervention, meaning that the surfer can
look away and do something else, open another
window, or simply leave the room, without viewing
a single site! As a consequence, the traffic
received from such programs is, to say the least,
of very poor quality.
Three manual traffic
exchange sites that I can recommend are:
Jackpot Hits (my own traffic exchange!). Manual surf only, with a starting surf ratio of 2:1. Features free credit lotteries, surfing contests, credit giveaways etc.
Best
British Traffic (manual surf only, plus
games, lottery, surfing contest, etc.)
and
Hits
UK (manual surf and autosurf, games,
downline builder, etc.).
Free Banner Exchanges
These can be useful if you
are careful about which category you choose for
sites that will display your banner. You should
avoid general interest sites, and concentrate on
those dealing with money-making opportunities,
working from home, freebies and site promotion.
Make sure that you choose
a scheme that offers a good banner display ratio,
i.e. as close as possible to the elusive 1:1
ratio. This means for every banner you show on
your site, your banner is displayed on another
site in the scheme, like for like.
Because Cash Crusader has
rotating banner advertising in place, you will
need to create another banner position
specifically for the banner exchange ads, as the
code you will receive from them is not compatible
with the rotating ads system. You will probably be
able to find room on the index.php page below the
Member and Advertiser benefits. Just copy and
paste the code supplied by the banner exchange,
and paste in into index.php in the appropriate
place.
Exchanging Links
Incoming links are invaluable when it comes to achieving a good
search engine ranking. To the average search
engine, they act as indicators of the popularity
of your site, so the more you can muster, the
better.
You should approach the
owners of similar or complementary web sites, and
ask them politely to exchange links with you. It
is probably best to undertake this kind of
promotion once you are receiving a few hundred
visitors a week, because no-one will want to swap
links with a site that has yet to attract any
significant traffic.
When asking for a link
trade, don't just say, "Hello, I've got a new
web site, do you wanna swap links?"; you will
probably get a frosty reply, if any at all.
Express an interest in your prospective linker's
site, and explain how trading links would be
beneficial to both parties.
Discussion
Groups/Forums
These can be one of the
most valuable sources of traffic for a new website. You will be surprised at just how quickly
you can gain new members if your site offers good
payout and referral levels.
Become an active
contributor to groups that your site has relevance
to (such as a "Make Money from Home"
forum) and always include your URL in your
signature. Refrain from the hard sell though, as
most groups will kick you out for spamming if all
you do is promote your own site. Just mention the
launch in a low-key, but informative way, perhaps
offering group members a month's free banner
advertising, and this appeal to their
self-interest may persuade people to join.
Free Online Classified
Ads
A few online companies offer free
classified advertising systems, and site owners incorporate these onto their web pages as a way of
adding extra value to their sites. Although these
will bring some results, you will need to spend a
lot of time filling in online submission forms.
Just a few submissions to some sites with
relevant content will do the job (freebies,
working from home, internet marketing for
example). Take care to post your ad to one single
category (multiple entries may be removed by the
site owner) and ensure that the category is
appropriate (i.e. avoid "Baby Care" and
"Bed and Bath").
Online Articles
If you are deft with a quill, you could do
worse than consider writing short online articles,
with your site address in the footer, for
publication across the internet.
Because content is king when it comes to
websites, and there is a limited supply of free
content available for publication, submitting some
words of your own is a great way to attract people
to your site. One good, relevant article could
soon find its way onto thousands of sites,
bringing you valuable traffic via your link.
It is best to submit articles that relate to
the same subject as your site (i.e. internet
marketing, site promotion, homeworking), so that
the reader is more inclined to click on your link
to see what your website has to offer.
One site
I can recommend is Free
Article Headquarters, a place where you
can submit free articles for publication on other
people's websites, and download others, free of
charge, for inclusion on yours (I do not have any
connection with them, other than as a satisfied
user).
