If you have a website I am sure you already know that a website with no traffic does no good at all. To begin generating income from your website you are going to need a steady flow of site traffic.

If you do not have a budget for advertising what are your options? Actually you have many! There are ways to generate free traffic to your website.

Since you can find good free advertising, all you need is the proper mindset and a lot of eagerness. You also must have the perseverance to do hard work and do a lot of research to generate traffic for your site. Free advertising does take time and also takes patience and the willingness to work. But, if you need the exposure, what do you have to lose?

Today I want to talk about a few ways I have used for years to generate free traffic to my websites…

Exchanging Links:

Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more public awareness about their sites. You’ll soon see and feel the sudden upsurge of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

A major prerequisite in exchanging links with other sites is having the same niche as the other site. For example, if you have a candle website exchanging links with a dog bakery is not going to help you very much. You want to make sure any links you exchange are with a site that has a common subject so that there is continuity in the providing of service and information to what interests your target traffic.

Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking in search engine results, but you must make sure you exchange links with relevant and quality sites.

Traffic Exchange:

In a traffic exchange, you earn credits via visiting websites in a given network. You can then use those credits to place your website into the given network, which thus would increase traffic to your site. There are also banner exchanges, whereby you place banner ads on your site and earn credits each time the banner gets viewed. You can then use those credits to have your banner ad displayed on other websites.

Traffic Swarm is a popular traffic exchange website.

Write Articles:

There are many e-zines and online article directories that accept articles. Webmasters use the articles submitted on their websites and newsletters.

You should write articles that are themed similar to the niche of your website. Write something that you have expertise on so that when the users read your article, they can see your knowledge about the subject and will be eager to visit to your site. Write articles that produce tips and guidelines to the subject or niche your site is about.

Include a resource box at the end of your article, which you can use to publish your link which will help with traffic and your search engine rankings.

Here is an article that talks more about article marketing

Create a Newsletter:

This may sound like hard work because of all the articles you may need to use to build a newsletter but on the contrary, this is not so. There are many writers and sites that are willing to provide free articles as long as they can get their name published within your newsletter.

As your newsletter gets passed around, you can widen your public awareness and build an opt-in list that may regularly visit your website.

To get subscribers to your newsletter, offer a discount for all new subscribers or some kind of goodie to excite people to join.

Join Online Communities and Forums:

You can share your knowledge and expertise with many online communities. You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche within your site.

At the end of each post you make on a forum, you can list your website as a link in your signature. This way, each time someone reads one of your posts on a community or forum, they will also see a link to your website.

Share your two cents and let them see how knowledgeable you are within the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site, making it a reputable and honest business that could be frequented and trusted by users.

When it comes to getting free advertising, you have nothing to lose at all! Take some time on day and check out these resources!