Traffic Generation to New Websites

Free Traffic Generation Methods That Work

On my other site, I covered ten proven methods for getting free traffic generation to new websites last month. Here, I’m continuing the series with 10 more. As you know, it can be difficult to drive free traffic to a new website. There hasn’t been time for SEO to kick in, the email list might be skimpy or non-existent and even social media can be an uphill climb at first.

But with these methods you won’t have to wait months to see targeted traffic hitting your site.

I especially love Method #11 because the potential for new traffic is out of this world. I’ve seen six figure businesses built in a very short time using this method. Enough of this introduction, let’s get started!

Method #1A – Give Away a Valuable Tool

This method is something that flies under the radar for most marketers. They don’t think of doing this, and even when they see it being done by someone else, they don’t fully understand how it works or the power of what they’re seeing.

Let’s say you’ve got a valuable software tool that your crowd would love to have. Yes, you can sell it and make some good money. But if you GIVE IT AWAY, you can become rich.

Think of a small stream versus a mighty river. If you redirect the stream then you can fill a pond. But if you redirect the river, you can fill multiple large lakes.

And that’s how this works. Instead of selling your tool (the small stream) and getting a few hundred or a thousand new customers, you’re going to give your tool away to thousands and thousands (millions?) of people. This is going to create a mighty river of traffic that you can then continue to sell to over and over again by capturing their email addresses.

I know a man who built a software tool that online marketers love. He does offer some paid upgrades, but for most users the tool is completely free to use for as long as they like, including updates.

And when he looks at his traffic stats, where is most of his traffic coming from? It’s not from people searching for his name or even searching for his URL. Instead, the bulk of his traffic comes from people wanting this free tool.

They land on his page offering the tool, they sign up to get it, and it’s theirs. If they want deluxe features later, then they can upgrade to a paid level.

Do you see what happens here? This marketer is building a huge list of people in his space. These people love him because they get this tool for free. The marketers who need the deluxe version pay to get it, which covers all of their expenses including upgrades to the software.

This marketer says that this one technique alone, of giving away his best software, has made him millions. He’s made this money selling other products, software and services to the folks who signed up for his free tool.

Now I want you to think about your niche and what kind of tool you can give away for free. No matter what your field is, there’s something that you can offer that people will climb over each other to get for free.

You can hire someone on Upwork https://upwork.com or Toptal https://toptal.com to create the software for you.

Or you can go to Code Canyon https://codecanyon.net and find something that works in your market. It will cost you maybe $50 and then you can rebrand it and make it your own. Choose a clever, memorable name. Then hire someone to keep it up to date and bug free.

The downside of offering a software type of tool is that you need to keep it updated. But the upside is it is much (MUCH!) easier and faster than SEO. Yes, SEO is absolute dynamite at driving traffic once you have a lot of great content, links and so forth. But it takes a great deal of time to create the content and then update the content. And with software, you might only need a new update every few months or so, depending on what the software does.

You might think this won’t work in your niche, but I think it will work in nearly every niche.

Let’s pick three niches at random: Rose gardening, dog training and your home town. Here are three ideas just off the top of my head:

• Rose gardening software idea #1: Input your location, the size space you have and the amount of work you’re willing to do. It gives you a list of all the roses that will grow in your specific climate according to how hardy they are or how delicate, depending on the effort you want to put in.
• Rose gardening software idea #2: Input the name of the rose you have the specific problems you’re having with that rose, such as leaves yellowing, black spots, tiny red insects, not blooming but great foliage, etc. The program then tells you what your problem might be and how to treat it.
• Dog training software idea #1: Input the breed, age, and diet and so forth of your dog, along with the behavioral problem you are experiencing, and the software tells you what the problem might be and what to do about it.
• Dog training software idea #2: Input the dogs information and the desired behavior you would like, and the software tells you how to best train your specific dog to do that specific behavior or trick.
• Your home town software idea #1: Enter the types of activities and events you like to attend and then the software lets you know what’s happening in your town during the next week or month that suits your interests.
• Your home town software idea #2: Enter a job that you want done (pulling weeds, painting, walking your dog) along with how much experience the person needs and other pertinent criteria, and then people can bid to do that job. Think of it like Upwork, only locally.

These six ideas are completely off the top of my head and I know with a little time you could come up with something even better. The point is that almost every single niche can use some type of software tool to simplify things for the user. And in return you can receive a never-ending supply of people who give you their email address in exchange for using your software.

Method #2A – Post on Medium

In case you haven’t heard of Medium yet, it’s a $5 a month site where anyone can post articles for others to read. And if enough people read your articles on Medium, you can get paid, too. But that’s not why we’re talking about it today.

Keep in mind that Google does NOT penalize for duplicate content. This means you can post the same article on Medium that you post on your own website.

However, you’re not going to post the entire article. Instead, post the first 3 to 7 paragraphs on Medium. At the end of these paragraphs, you’ll write, “To continue reading, click here.” And you will link this back to the full article on your own website.

A couple of key points to making this work: Just as anywhere else, your headlines are super important for getting people to click on your article in the first place.

And you’ve got to leave your readers with a cliffhanger, an open loop that they want desperately to close. For example, if you were writing about how to get massive traffic with Medium, then you could start out talking about the benefits of doing this and then letting them know that the secret to making it work is…

And this is where you would have your link to your site. If they want to know the secret (and they do!) then they’ll have to click the link.

When they get to your site, give them a popup or a content upgrade that collects their email address. In our above example, your content upgrade might be an additional 9 methods for driving free traffic to a brand new website.

Why post on Medium? Because even if you’re brand new and don’t currently have a following, you can pick up visitors from the Medium site, drive them back to your site, collect their email addresses and then notify them each time you publish new content.

Method #3A – Post on LinkedIn

This time instead of posting just the first few paragraphs, you’re going to post your entire article on LinkedIn.

Why not just post a few paragraphs like you did on Medium? Because on the social sites people like to stay on site, so it can be a little more difficult to get them to go to your site. You’ll need a bit more incentive, as we’ll cover in second.

Plus, the social media sites like LinkedIn want their traffic to stay on their sites. If you’re trying to get people off the site mid-article, then LinkedIn is going to be less likely to display your article in the search results.
Okay then, how do you get readers to leave LinkedIn and go to your site? First, of course, you’re going to write a great article that is extremely helpful. Second, you’re going to offer a content upgrade such as a cheat sheet. This cheat sheet could be covering what’s in the article in outline formula, or it could be something related to the article. For example, if you have an article about how to set up a sales funnel, then your cheat sheet could be the steps to setting up the funnel or it could be 7 ways to get free traffic to your funnel.
Now here’s the secret to getting twice as many people to click through to your site to get the cheat sheet: Make it visual.
For example, if your 7 ways to get free traffic is in the form of an infographic, then people will love that. Place a picture of the infographic in the article so people can see it’s visual, and make the picture clickable along with the link in the article.

Method #4A – Once Press Social Locker

This is a WordPress plugin that allows you to lock certain things on your site and people have to share your site to get access to the content upgrades.

When someone begins reading your article and they want to get the rest of it, they’ve got to share your content. Or maybe you’ve got an eBook that is only available to people who share your content.

Getting them to share your content does a couple of things:

First, it creates a psychological shift from lurker to ownership. They are now owning the fact that they like your content well enough to share it. Compared to a passive person who simply reads your article, sharing the content increases the odds they will remember you, that they will consume other content you create and that they will continue to return for more.

Second, sharing like this can create a viral effect. While the majority of people won’t generate a lot of traffic for you, a few of them will generate a ton of it.
In turn, these new visitors then have the option of sharing your content in order to get their own content upgrades, thereby creating a viral effect.

Hint: Use a cliffhanger at the point where they have to share your stuff in order to continue reading. Using the right cliffhanger can skyrocket the number of shares you get.

Method #5A – Repurpose Your Content Through Live Video

When someone is watching a video, they are more engaged than at any other time. Notice which of your content is getting the most traction and then discuss it on live video. You can go live on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn all at the same time.

When you’re live and you’re telling people how to do things and discussing different strategies, you can then send people to your site to get the PDF you mentioned or the book or even the product.

You can pitch people on your products and services to generate sales. This is an awesome strategy not for producing a ton of random traffic, but for producing highly targeted and super responsive traffic that will buy your recommendations.

People who come to your site via your live videos are super engaged with you and your content, and thus they are much more likely to convert than someone who just reads a tweet or post and clicks a link.

Method #6A – Post on YouTube

YouTube is the second most used search engine and it can provide you with a ton of traffic if you know how to use it.

When you first post a video to YouTube, you want to promote it like a wild person. Tell your friends about it, ask them to share it, send out the link via social media and to your list if you have one.

Ask people to leave a comment and to like the video. Getting them to leave a comment is easy if you just ask a question in the video.

YouTube’s algorithm gives a tremendous amount of weight to how well a video does in the first 24 hours it’s posted. And they’re not just looking at view count. They also pay attention to how many people like the video and how many people engage by leaving comments.

Let people know on your video that you have something for them, such as a checklist or cheat sheet, that they can grab from your website. Give them the URL in the video and also post the URL beneath the video with a reminder of why they want to click it.

Method #7A – Offer a Free Udemy Course

Udemy gets a ton of free traffic that you can tap into by offering a course for free. And the great thing about Udemy traffic is that it’s highly engaged and motivated to learn.

You can give away something on your site to move the traffic from Udemy to your site. Give away another free course, the PDF’s to the Udemy course, workbooks, checklists and so forth.

You’re building a powerful connection, rapport and trust with your Udemy students that can translate into conversions like almost nothing else. When you’re preparing your course, you might want to make it longer rather than shorter if that is an option for you, because longer courses fair better than shorter ones.

Single hour long courses average 2,100 enrollments per month, while courses whose length averages 20 hours have an average of 11,400 enrollments per month.

The average course rating is 3.1 for courses that are less than an hour long, 3.6 for courses ranging between 1 and 2 hours, 3.8 for those between 2 and 4 hours long, 3.9 for courses between 4 and 8 hours, and 4.1 for those longer than 8 hours.

Method #8A – Pinterest Combined with Tailwind Tribes

Pinterest is the number two driver of social traffic to websites. And with 75% of all the content on Pinterest coming from brands, people are very open to branded content that is useful and attractive.

Your goal on Pinterest is to get a ton of pins because the more pins you have, the more traffic Pinterest will send you.

Start by looking for boards with 20 or more pins on them to do well with this strategy. Add your own images that you’ve created on Canva.com (for free) or even that you’ve hired someone on Fiverr to create for you. These images must be related to your niche and especially to the blog post you’ll be linking to each one.

Now you’re going to improve your reciprocity and collaboration by subscribing to Tailwind’s free trial account. Tailwind will let you schedule your pins throughout the day at the perfect times to help you get exposure and rank higher in the Pinterest algorithm. In other words, it’s a time saver that also gets you a significant amount of re-pins.

Next, you’re going to click the ‘Find a Tribe’ tab inside Tailwind and start looking for tribes within your niche by typing in keywords. Share the best content from other members in these tribes and others will start sharing yours, too.

By doing this you’ll start getting more and more pins, which will get you a higher chance of bringing more people to your own site. And with this added exposure, you’ll greatly increase the odds of getting in front of some of Pinterest’s biggest users. One repin from them and you’ll have thousands of eyes on your content.

Try to share 30 to 50 pins per day for maximum effect.

And, if you’ve had trouble getting group moderators to allow you join in the past, you’ll find that with Tailwind you can join group boards with just a request, gaining almost instant access to most tribes.

Other members will be scheduling your pins in their Tailwind scheduler, which can help you get massive repins and rank higher in Pinterest algorithms.

Method #9A – Host Virtual Summits

Choose a tightly focused topic for your summit. For example, ‘marketing’ is too general, but ‘free traffic from Facebook’ could work nicely. When you get super specific, you’re likely to do much better.

Use a hook to make it really interesting. For example, instead of ‘how to do email marketing,’ you could package it as, ’30 Days to 1,000 Email Subscribers and $500 Weekly Income.” That could be the goal of your summit; to teach people exactly how to achieve that milestone in 30 days.

Offer PDF action guides, templates, interviews with experts, super special limited time deals from each expert, swipe files, checklists, cheat sheets and more.

Your goal is to make it a no-brainer for people to want to sign up with their email address to get all this stuff that will help them to reach their goal.

Your summit format could be something like 20 interviews with 20 experts, or you could do crash courses, videos, slideshows or a combination of things. Decide if the interviews will be live, if you’ll take questions, if you want to add separate Q and A sessions and so forth.

Your first step to hosting a virtual summit is to build relationships with other influencers so that you can have them as guests. Have each guest push the event to their list and tell people about it via social media, too.

You might let everyone into the event for free and then offer a $47 or $97 option of getting everything recorded for future use.

Have all of the downloads hosted on your site to make sure people go to your site. You’ll be capturing the email addresses of everyone who joins the event and upselling to them to get the recorded version. Give each influencer an affiliate link to earn commissions on the upsell.

This can drive a ton of traffic for you. Imagine 20 influencers and experts all telling their lists about the event, pushing it for several days and promoting it via social media, too. While hosting an event like this is a lot of work, the traffic you receive can literally build your business overnight once you launch.

Optional: Let each influencer make a very special offer at the end of their interview from which you get a commission. This offer should take just a few minutes at the end of the call, with the rest of the call being filled with awesome information.

Method #10A – Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups hold huge potential to get traffic to your website.

Your first step is to join Facebook Groups that are relevant to your industry and start interacting with your fellow members. Answer their questions and find ways to be helpful and build relationships. Share other people’s content within the group. Participate and engage by leaving comments to become a recognized authority in the group.

Follow the rules of each group, promoting your own content only when it is allowed. When you’ve established yourself as a valuable member of the group, then you can start posting articles and videos that you’ve created.

Within your articles and videos you’ll be talking about how people can download a cheat sheet or eBook by going to your website. Videos are easier to get seen, since people can view them directly on Facebook. From there you direct them to your site to grab the relevant and valuable freebie in exchange for their email address. Then send them directly to another piece of content on your site that builds on the first one they viewed on Facebook.

Create your own Facebook Group, posting relevant content and inviting people to join. While it will take time to grow, you’ll have full control over your own group. And in time, if nurtured correctly, your Facebook Group can provide a substantial number of pre-sold leads.

Time to Get Started

Okay, I’ve given you 10 different places, ten within this post and the first ten here, to get started getting free traffic to your new website. Now it’s your turn to take action. Choose just one of these tactics and implement it this month to start driving traffic to your site. You don’t have to use all 20 methods; just use the ones you like.

And to get this started today, you only need one method to start driving traffic to your website for free. This is the fastest way to quickly increase your sales and your revenue.

I’m Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author, independent publisher, and serial entrepreneur Connie Ragen Green and would love to connect with you. If you’re new to the world of online entrepreneurship please check out my training on how to sell yourself at Sell Yourself and Your Stuff and learn how to gain an unfair advantage when it comes to building a lucrative online business.