How to Drive Traffic to Your Website Part 05 by Steve Renner

Affiliate Programs

With an affiliate program, you will be recruiting affiliates to advertise your product or link. Every time one of your affiliates makes a sale for your site, they get a percentage of the profits. Affiliate programs are a great ways to get hundreds of people promoting your site for you. ClickBank is probably one of the most widely used affiliate sites out there, so if you want to start an affiliate program for your site, that would be a good starting point. There is a fee to use ClickBank, however. If you want to try out an affiliate program without paying, there are sites like PayDotCom. They are free, but you probably won't get as many affiliates as you would with ClickBank.

Now let's take a look at another way to bring visitors to your site -- by providing them a valuable resource:

Starting a Newsletter. Starting a newsletter, ezine, or community can be a fantastic way to bring repeat traffic to your site. So by all means, if you can provide a newsletter once a week, then do so. A newsletter, ezine or even a discussion community builds a loyal subscriber base and brings more traffic from referrals to your site. You can put a subscription box on your website with some information about your newsletter. Then, all subscribers have to do is enter their email address, which will be sent to your database. There are a variety of programs out there that can help you start a newsletter, some of them for free. To get started with a basic newsletter, check out the free software at the ideamarketers web site. This is a good starting point, although there are many other free newsletter software programs you can find as well. When your newsletter gets bigger with more subscribers, you can always move to a more advanced newsletter program that costs.

Offering Something for Free. Offering your visitors something for free can also be a great way to bring traffic to your site. You could offer a free ebook, for example. If people can obtain something free, they're more likely to visit your site. Not only that, but then you can submit your site to the freebie and free stuff directories out there. People seeking freebies will then come across your site and visit. Not only that, but your link in the free directories counts as a backlink! If you do end up using this tactic, be sure that your site offers lots of quality content. Your visitors may come for the freebie, but they stay, and return, for the content!

In Closing, bringing traffic to your website is an ongoing process. Let's take a look at the steps we've discussed: SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Quality Content Dynamic Content Lots of Backlinks Buying Ad Space Starting a Newsletter Giving Something Away All of these steps can be used together to bring the most traffic possible to your site. Building a great site certainly doesn't happen overnight, so be patient and keep at it. With diligence and attention, you can take your website to the top!
About the Author

Steve Renner, Author, Marketing Expert, Marketing Director, The Affiliate Community http://www.affiliatecommunity.com