If you are just starting your Internet business, you need to keep expenses down to a minimum. Yet, you must still attract people to visit your website. Without traffic, you have no business. Fortunately, there are many free or low cost ways to attract visitors to your website. Following are several free and easy techniques to build traffic and increase sales.

1. Internet Forums

Internet forums are websites that focus on the exchange of information. Some people are asking questions and some provide answers. Others just want to vent or discuss topics that are related to their niche. Most forums are targeted to one particular area. An advantage of using forums is the fact that almost all of the people on the site are interested in the same topic so you have a targeted audience.

Register with as many forums in your niche as possible and post information every day. Develop a signature (sig) file that reads like a small two or three line classified ad promoting your site or product. Add your sig file to each posting that you make on every forum. You will be quite surprised at the amount of traffic that you can generate using forums.

2. Traffic Exchanges

A traffic exchange is a system where members enter the URL of their website. Members must browse among a number of other members' sites in order to receive credits. After you have earned a certain number of credits, other members will view your site (and thus see your ads). This increases the number of visitors to all the sites involved in the traffic exchange. Some are free and some may charge a monthly fee.

A nice feature of this method is that it will create a large amount of traffic in a short amount of time. However, you should note that this traffic is not targeted and may be less responsive than targeted advertising methods. It also requires you to commit a fair amount of time viewing other sites.


3. Free Classified Ads

There are many free classified ads available on the Internet. Some of them work better than others and much depends on your skill in writing ads. If you can write effective ads, this may be an extremely effective method to advertise you new Internet business. If you are using free classified ads, place a tracking code along with your URL as you place each ad to determine which ones are working for you and which ones are ineffective. The advantage of this method is that it requires an investment of you time just once and can then run on autopilot for quite a long time.

4. Article Marketing
This is one of my favorite methods of advertising. Write articles and publish them in the largest article submission sites. By doing this on a regular basis, your articles become viral and can be viewed by thousands of people. Make sure to add a resource box that file that reads like a small two or three line classified ad promoting your site or product. The only drawback to this method is that you must submit at least one article each day to achieve significant benefits.

As you consider which of these strategies is best for you, think about the time you have to commit versus the potential benefits. By using two or more of these techniques, you can establish a good foundation for your Internet business.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide on how to easily make money by developing your own product.