Let others help with your marketing efforts. You can have strangers pass your site to others and span the globe with viral marketing. Create viral marketing with a free e-book or inviting email, it is powerful and free. To start a viral marketing campaign that grows exponentially and without effort send a witty or clever joke, picture, or poem to people in your address book. If enjoyed the recipient will pass it on to those in their list and so on. You may have received the Bill Gates free offer in your own box. This email has been circulated around the world for over three years and seen by countless. Be sure to include your url with a heading, either near the bottom or in a signature file. Do this once a month and watch your web traffic grow.

Pass on a free e-book with your contact details inside. Encourage others to add it to their websites and offer your branded e-book to everyone. As part of your introduction include your website and a message stating that the e-book is free and is to be passed along, so long as nothing is changed or altered. This includes your bio, contact information and links to your site. Cannot write? No problem. There are thousands of books available for you to co-brand and start your viral trail.

Free Traffic and Joint Ventures

Setting up joint ventures may be the most powerful free method available to increase targeted traffic. Joint ventures are simply colorations or partnerships between two or more people or businesses. It is not essential that the partnerships even be in related businesses, though helpful. Just about any combination will work. Obviously competing businesses are not a wise or practical option for a joint venture. That still leaves plenty of other partners. There is no limit to what can be done with this marketing technique. The venture can be as simple as trading client databases, or it can be an elaborate cross promotions with contests and giveaway. A joint venture is only limited by the creativity of the parties involved. If you have the right partner this will do wonders for your credibility and, the know, like, trust, buy formula for success.

Free Traffic and Meta Tags

Meta tags are very important. I am not an expert on tags so I highly suggest you research Meta tags optimization techniques. To have a Google spider find you and have you listed will do wonders for your traffic. Never pay to have your site listed, there are too many ways to have it listed. Too often these pay sites will not do what is promised or what you could do with a little effort.

Free Traffic and Offline Marketing Techniques

To maximize your online presence you have to go offline and bring foot traffic to the web as targeted web traffic. Here are a few low cost offline marketing techniques that will give you added visibility and translate to a more powerful web presence. Turn your automobile into a mini billboard. Place bumper stickers and magnet signs on your vehicle. Leave a business card wherever possible. One suggestion is to leave it with your tip at a restaurant. Hang flyers on high traffic bulletin boards, be sure to leave a pull tab. Change your body into a walking billboard for your opportunity and products instead of someone else’s. How often do you promote Nike, Polo, Guess, or a professional sports team? Start promoting yourself and get your clothes embroidered. It does not have to be anything fancy, a good descriptive url will work.

Free Traffic and Your URL

One last tip. As I mentioned before, I get traffic from posts that are over a year old. Once something is on the internet it is there for good. The url you promote should be permanent. This is important because anything could happen. What if you are no longer with the same company? All previous links to that business are now useless. If you have one url and it either links or redirects to you business opportunity and products you simply have to change the link or redirect page. You will always get a hit when someone clicks on your link.

I hope you enjoyed the article and wish you all the best with you business venture. I am sure you are well on you way to becoming a successful internet marketing professional.

No matter what opportunity or product you promote via the internet you do not have a business unless you have customers. One way to increase sales is to increase your customer base, this means more visitor traffic. If you are not interested in free web traffic, congratulations, you must have deep pockets or all ready have more than you can handle. For those who are interested in free web traffic, read on.

Just getting large numbers of visitors to websites is not enough. These visits have to turn into sales. A chance or uninterested visitor is little better than no visitor. Every site needs targeted visitors. Your site needs people who have seen your message and have had their interest peeked. With a targeted market approximately 3 visitors for every 100 will make purchases. Without targeted visitors this conversion rate drops significantly.

Throughout this article you will encounter numerous ways to increase your web traffic. This traffic will be well targeted free leads, all through online marketing methods.

Do you like to be sold, or pushed into a sale? Like most the answer is a definitive NO. One of my mentors has instilled in me the importance of building relationships as apposed to selling someone. Once the person gets to know, like, and trust you they will be more willing to join you in your opportunity or buy product from you. Remember, know, like, trust, buy!

Free Traffic and Message Boards

Relating this principle to free internet marketing, I suggest you visit message boards. These boards are so effective that I still receive requests and referrals from posts made over a year ago. Visit various boards post messages, meet people, ask questions, share your wisdom, and words of encouragement.

Suggested tips to keep in mind when posting to message boards. Remember you are there to build relationships, you want people to know, like and trust you.

Do not spam:

- do not post the same thing over and over

- post something meaningful and relevant to the conversation

- do not advertise unless otherwise specified

- do not participate in negative postings about others (criticize or flame)

To make the most of message boards and insure highly targeted traffic to your website:

- select boards that pertain to your product or opportunity

- get your name out and popularity up, post a response to a question or simply post a question yourself

- include a signature file with your name and URL, no email. This can be placed in the profile page. It is a good idea to set-up a second email because, you will get spam

- spend one or two evenings a week posting on several different message boards

- be genuine, helpful, and try to learn a few things

- HAVE FUN and MAKE FRIENDS

Free Traffic and Traffic Generation Sites

Traffic generation sites can be good and bad. Most are not worth your time, however, there are a few good ones, so choose with care. I recommend Traffic Swarm. This site is better than most because people select a site from a list in topics they have selected to view ads from. An ad is then chosen based on a tag line and a short description you have written. If the visitor wants credit for their selection you have their attention for a minimum of 20 seconds. After that they may click another site without penalty. Again this is that target traffic so necessary to success.

Free Traffic and Viral Marketing

Let others help with your marketing efforts. You can have strangers pass your site to others and span the globe with viral marketing. Create viral marketing with a free e-book or inviting email, it is powerful and free. To start a viral marketing campaign that grows exponentially and without effort send a witty or clever joke, picture, or poem to people in your address book. If enjoyed the recipient will pass it on to those in their list and so on. You may have received the Bill Gates free offer in your own box. This email has been circulated around the world for over three years and seen by countless. Be sure to include your url with a heading, either near the bottom or in a signature file. Do this once a month and watch your web traffic grow.

Pass on a free e-book with you contact details inside. Encourage others to add it to their websites and offer your branded e-book to everyone. As part of your introduction include your website and a message stating that the e-book is free and is to be passed along, so long as nothing is changed or altered. This includes your bio, contact information and links to your site. Cannot write? No problem. There are thousands of books available for you to co-brand and start your viral trail.

Free Traffic and Joint Ventures

Setting up joint ventures may be the most powerful free method available to increase targeted traffic. Joint ventures are simply colorations or partnerships between two or more people or businesses. It is not essential that the partnerships even be in related businesses, though helpful. Just about any combination will work. Obviously competing businesses are not a wise or practical option for a joint venture. That still leaves plenty of other partners. There is no limit to what can be done with this marketing technique. The venture can be as simple as trading client databases, or it can be an elaborate cross promotions with contests and giveaway. A joint venture is only limited by the creativity of the parties involved. If you have the right partner this will do wonders for your credibility and, the know, like, trust, buy formula for success.

Free Traffic and Meta Tags

Meta tags are very important. I am not an expert on tags so I highly suggest you research Meta tags optimization techniques. To have a Google spider find you and have you listed will do wonders for your traffic. Never pay to have your site listed, there are too many ways to have it listed. Too often these pay sites will not do what is promised or what you could do with a little effort.

Free Traffic and Offline Marketing Techniques

To maximize your online presence you have to go offline and bring foot traffic to the web as targeted web traffic. Here are a few low cost offline marketing techniques that will give you added visibility and translate to a more powerful web presence. Turn your automobile into a mini billboard. Place bumper stickers and magnet signs on your vehicle. Leave a business card wherever possible. One suggestion is to leave it with your tip at a restaurant. Hang flyers on high traffic bulletin boards, be sure to leave a pull tab. Change your body into a walking billboard for your opportunity and products instead of someone else’s. How often do you promote Nike, Polo, Guess, or a professional sports team? Start promoting yourself and get your clothes embroidered. It does not have to be anything fancy, a good descriptive url will work.

Free Traffic and Your URL

One last tip. As I mentioned before, I get traffic from posts that are over a year old. Once something is on the internet it is there for good. The url you promote should be permanent. This is important because anything could happen. What if you are no longer with the same company? All previous links to that business are now useless. If you have one url and it either links or redirects to you business opportunity and products you simply have to change the link or redirect page. You will always get a hit when someone clicks on your link.

I hope you enjoyed the article and wish you all the best with you business venture. I am sure you are well on you way to becoming a successful internet marketing professional.

Sites like digg.com, reddit.com, stumbleupon.com etc can bring you a LOT of traffic. How about getting 20,000 and more visitors a day when your listing hits the front page?
Getting to the front page of these sites is not as difficult as it seems. I have been successful with digg and del.icio.us (and not so much with Reddit though the same steps should apply to it as well) multiple times and have thus compiled a list of steps that have helped me succeed:

add to del.icio.us

1 Pay attention to your Headlines

Many great articles go unnoticed on social bookmarking sites because their headline is not catchy enough. Your headline is the first (and very often the only) thing users will see from your article, so if you don't make the effort to provide a catchy headline, your chances of getting to the front page are small.
Here are some examples to start with :-

Original headline : The Two Types of Cognition
Modified Headline : Learn to Understand Your Own Intelligence

Original headline: Neat way to organize and find anything in your purse instantly!
Modified Headline : How to Instantly Find Anything in Your Purse

Here is a good blog post that should help you with your headlines.

2 Write a meaningful & short description

The headline is very important to draw attention but if you want to keep that attention, a meaningful description is vital. The description must be slightly provocative because this draws more attention but still, never use lies and false facts to provoke interest. For instance, if your write “This article will reveal to you the 10 sure ways to deal with stress once and forever and live like a king from now on.” visitors will hardly think that your story is true and facts-based.

You also might be tempted to use a long tell-it-all paragraph to describe your great masterpiece but have in mind that many users will not bother to read anything over 100-150 characters. Additionally, some of the social bookmarking sites limit descriptions, so you'd better think in advance how to describe your article as briefly as possible.

3 Have a great first paragraph

This is a rule that is always true but for successful social bookmarking it is even more important. If you have successfully passed Level 1 (headlines) and Level 2 (description) in the Catch the User's Attraction game, don't let a bad first paragraph make them leave your site.

4 Content is king

However, the first paragraph is not everything. Going further along the chain of drawing (and retaining) users' attention, we reach the Content is King Level. If your articles are just trash, bookmarking them is useless. You might cheat users once but don't count on repetitive visits. What is more, you can get your site banned from social bookmarking sites, when you persistently post junk.

5 Make it easy for others to vote / bookmark your site

It is best when other people, not you, bookmark your site. Therefore, you must make your best to make it easier for them to do it. You can put a bookmarking button at the end of the article, so if users like your content, they can easily post it. If you are using a CMS, check if there is an extension that allows to add Digg, Del.icio.us, and other buttons but if you are using static HTML, you can always go to the social bookmarking site and copy the code that will add their button to your pages.
Here is a link that should help you add Links for Del.icio.us, Digg, and More to your pages.

6 Know when to submit

The time when you submit can be crucial for your attempts to get to the front page. On most social bookmarking sites you have only 24 hours to get to the front page and stay there. So, if you post when most users (and especially your supporters) are still sleeping, you are wasting valuable time. By the time they get up, you might have gone to the tenth page. You'd better try it for yourself and see if it works for you but generally posting earlier than 10 a.m. US Central Time is not good. Many people say that they get more traffic around 3 p.m. US Central Time. Also, workdays are generally better in terms of traffic but the downside is that you have more competitors for the front page than on weekends.

7 Submit to the right category

Sometimes a site might not work for you because there is no right category for you. Or because you don't submit to the right category – technology, health, whatever – but to categories like General, Miscellaneous, etc. where all unclassified stuff goes. And since these categories fill very fast, your chance to get noticed decreases.

8 Build a top-profile

Not all users are equal on social bookmarking sites. If you are an old and respected user who has posted tons of interesting stuff, this increases the probability that what you submit will get noticed. Posting links to interesting articles on other sites is vital for building a top-profile. Additionally, it is suspicious, when your profile has links to only one site. Many social bookmarking sites frown when users submit their own content because this feels like self-promotion.

9 Cooperate with other social bookmarkers

The Lonely Wolf is a suicidal strategy on sites like StubleUpon, Digg, Netscape. Many stories make it to the front page not only because they are great but because they are backed up by your network of friends. If in the first hours after your submittal you get at least 15 votes from your friends and supporters, it is more likely that other users will vote for you. 50 votes can get you to the top page of Digg.

10 Submit in English

Linguistic diversity is great but the majority of users are from English-speaking countries and they don't understand exotic languages. So, for most of the social bookmarking sites submitting anything in a language different from English is not recommendable. The languages that are at an especial disadvantage are Chinese, Arabic, Slavic languages and all the other that use non-latin alphabet. German, Spanish, French are more understandable but still they are not English. If you really must submit your story (i.e. because you need the backlink), include an English translation at least of the title. But the best way to proceed with non-English stories is to post them on where they belong. Check this link for a list of non-English sites.

11 Never submit old news

Submitting old news will not help you in becoming a respected user. Yesterday's news is history. But if you still need to submit old stuff, consider feature articles, howtos and similar pieces that are up-to-date for a long time.

12 Check your facts

You must be flattered that users read your postings but you will hardly be flattered when users prove that you haven't got the facts right. In addition to sarcastic comments, you might also receive negative votes for your story, so if you want to avoid this, check you facts - or your readers will do it.

13 Check you spelling

Some sites do not allow to edit your posts later, so if you misspell the title, the URL, or a keyword, it will stay this way forever.

14 Not all topics do well

But sometimes even great content and submitting to the right category do not push you to the top. One possible reason could be that your stories are about unpopular topics. Many sites have topics that their users love and topics that don't sell that well. For instance, Apple sells well on Digg and The War in Iraq on Netscape. Negative stories - about George Bush, Microsoft, evil multinational companies, corruption and crime also have a chance to make it to the front page. You can't know these things in advance but some research on how many stories tagged with keywords like yours have made the front page in the last year or so can give you a clue.

15 Have Related Articles / Popular Articles

Traffic gurus joke that traffic from social bookmarking sites is like an invasion – the crowds pour in and in a day or two they are gone. Unfortunately this is true – after your listing rolls from the front page (provided that you reached the front page), the drop in traffic is considerable. Besides, many users come just following the link to your article, have a look at it and then they are gone. One of the ways to keep them longer on your site is to have links to Related Articles / Popular Articles or something similar that can draw their attention to other stuff on the site and make them read more than one article.

16 RSS feeds, newsletter subscriptions, affiliate marketing

RSS feeds, newsletter subscriptions, affiliate marketing are all areas in which the traffic from social bookmarking sites can help you a lot. Many people who come to your site and like it, will subscribe to RSS feeds and/or your newsletter. So, you need to put these in visible places and then you will be astonished at the number of new subscriptions you got on the day when you were on the front page of a major social bookmarking site.

17 Do not use automated submitters

After some time of active social bookmarking, you will discover that you are spending hours on end posting links. Yes, this is a lot of time and using automated submitters might look like the solution but it isn't. Automated submitters often have malware in them or are used for stealing passwords, so unless you don't care about the fate of your profile and don't mind being banned, automated submitters are not the way to go.

18 Respond to comments on your stories

Social bookmarking sites are not a newsgroup but interesting articles can trigger a pretty heated discussion with hundreds of comments. If your article gets comments, you must be proud. Always respond to commends on your stories and even better – post comments on other stories you find interesting. This is a way to make friends and to create a top-profile.

19 Prepare your server for the expected traffic

This is hardly a point of minor importance but we take for granted that you are hosting your site on a reliable server that does not crash twice a day. But have in mind that your presence on the front page of a major social bookmarking site can drive you a lot traffic, which can cause your server to crash – literally!
I remember one of the times I was on the front page on Digg, I kept restarting Apache on my dedicated server because it was unable to cope with the massive traffic. I have many tools on my site and when the visitors tried them, this loaded the server additionally.
Well, for an articles site getting so much traffic is not so devastating but if you are hosting on a so-so server, you'd better migrate your site to a machine that can handle a lot of simultaneous hits. Also, check if your monthly traffic allowance is enough to handle 200-500,000 or even more visitors. It is very amateurish to attract a lot of visitors and not be able to serve them because your server crashed or you have exceeded your bandwidth!

20 The snowball effect

But despite the differences in the likes of the different social bookmarking communities, there are striking similarities. You will soon discover that if a post is popular on one of the major sites, this usually drives it up on the other big and smaller sites. Usually it is Digg posts that become popular on StumbleUpon and Reddit but there are many other examples. To use this fact to your best advantage, you may want to concentrate your efforts on getting to the front page of the major players only and bet on the snowball effect to drive you to the top on other sites.
An additional benefit of the snowball effect is that if your posting is interesting and people start blogging about it, you can get tons of backlinks from their blogs. This happened to me and the result was that my PR jumped to 6 on the next update.

One of the many challenges that most new internet entrepreneurs face is receiving payments via their site. When starting out most of us don't have a bottomless sack of money. How can you cheaply and securely receive payments? There are many payment processors on the internet. Some are cheaper than others. I'm going to highlight just one today. This one is free.

We're going to look at:

Where to get free reliable and safe credit card processor.

How to place the payment button into the web page.

A free, secure and reliable payment processor is PayPal. The only cost with PayPal is a small charge for each sale that is made. You only pay out of your profit when a sale is made. Go to PayPal.com and open an account. You will be required to verify this account. PayPal will tell you how. You will be expected to supply your credit card details. This is quite safe with PayPal.

Before you begin to think about creating your payment buttons, there is one thing you will need.This is the URL of the download page. You will need this information as this is where PayPal sends your customer after payment has been completed.

After opening an account and verifying it you will now be able to set up your payment buttons. Log into your PayPal Account and click on "merchant Tools" You now have a choice of "Shopping Cart", "Buy Now Buttons" and "Subscriptions and recurring Payments"

You would choose the shopping cart if your site had a number of products available. The customer can pick and choose as you would in a super market. After choosing the items wanted the customer finalizes their sale by going to checkout and paying for the items in the cart.

The Buy Now Buttons are for a single product on a sales page. This is the only product that is being sold on the page so the button sends the purchaser directly to PayPal for payment.

As is the case with buy now button, the subscription and recurring payments button is for just one item. Payments continue to be made at intervals specified by you. These can be weekly, monthly, yearly or any period you specify. This payment system also allows for a trial period and then the payments at the specified intervals.

Once the details are filled in PayPal provides you with an encrypted script that you need to install on your sales page. You will need to position it where you want the payment button to appear.

Using a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) HTML editor, scroll down the page to where you want the button to appear. Now click your mouse here so that the cursor is blinking where the button is to appear. Create a table. Click your mouse inside the table, and change the view to code view. You should now see the cursor blinking in the code. Make sure you have copied the PayPal code to the clipboard of the computer. Click on "Edit" and then "Paste". This will insert the PayPal code into your page. If you need to center it just use center as you would text.

You can test it by switching to browser view and see how your page will display on the internet.

That's it! You are now able to receive payments on your site.

I got an e-mail a couple of days ago from a guy who wanted to know how to increase traffic to his weblog - god only knows why he chose to ask me, but there you go. I'm not entirely sure that my advice was quite what he was looking for, because I didn't give him any revolutionary tips about secret search engine strategies or ways to control and influence the minds of young, hip and trendy scene-setters. In fact I can summarise what I said to him in just a few points:

1. Search Engines: You can get traffic off search engines, but is it the kind of traffic that really interests you? The people who seek your site by running a search about "Sex with lubricated badgers" are going to be disappointed with your thoughts on identifying the gender of the black and white animals. And if you're hoping to catch people who are just looking for a good weblog, remember that there are hundreds of thousands of other weblogs which are just as likely to appear in their search results. My opinion? Don't bother.
2. Site of the month/day/week etc Again - why bother. Most of the sites that give out awards do so to get traffic, not to give it to other people. And if they're easy to win, they're essentially useless, and will clutter up your site with badges and logos and buttons. If they're not easy to get mentioned on - such as Blogger's "Blogs of note", then your chances of getting a link are almost ridiculously small - and frankly would be enhanced by paying attention to the only really important parts of the weblog process... Which are...
3. Good quality design and content It may be dull, but it remains true - if you write good stuff and present it elegantly, then you'll be well read in no time at all. Case in point - Trabaca is a site that I stumbled upon fairly recently. I've got quite entrenched in my weblog reads of late, and don't tend to wander that much. But this site had an immediate visual impact for me - and it stuck in my head because of that. And then I discovered that it was a delight to read. So now it's a regular destination for me. That's the best model for encouraging regular visitors to your site - give them something worth coming to.

And even though I told myself I wouldn't do this - here are a few ways in which you can up the quality of your design and content:

1. What's your site about? You don't have to define yourself too closely, but if you can identify a spirit or a set of subjects that matter to you or that you have opinions about then you're one step towards developing a weblog that people will be able to relate to.
2. Branding It sounds really corporate, but just think about it for a minute - if you were building a site about hamsters, then you might do something kind of cutesy. If you were building a site about body-building, then you'd probably go for something really macho-looking. If it's about the things you care about then it should have an appropriate look - one that is right for the discussion of the things you care about. Identify colours, images, themes and a name that works for you and is easily memorable. Make the name short!
3. Opinions There are a thousand sites on the net which duplicate the popular links of the moment. Since the appearance of Blogdex, this has started to happen even more regularly. But this is not necessarily a problem unless those links are all you have to offer. What's your opinion of the link? What's your opinion on the story? These are the only things that people can't get on any other site but yours. You may as well play to your strengths!
4. Story-selection You went to the shop. That's nice. You had a cookie. Great. You picked your arse. Excellent. Why are you writing this down? A hundred thousand things may happen to you in a day, or maybe nothing will have happened at all, but there will always be something worth talking about. And for everything worth talking about, there will be dozens of things that you did during the day that no one gives a damn about! Today I went to the loo, took two painkillers for my toothache and drank pink grapefruit juice. Do you give a damn? No.
5. Good quality writing This one's a bit tedious - check your grammar, check your spelling, feel comfortable going back and re-editing posts that don't make immediate sense to your when you re-read them.

I'm not going to pretend that I do all these things all the time, or that I do them very well. Still - that's my two-penneth. Hopefully you'll find something useful in it.