"How Do You Get Website Traffic Without Paying A Dime?"

You've got to get website traffic.  Traffic = Customers = Income.  No Traffic, no Income.

Forget all the Get Rich Quick gurus.  It honestly just doesn't work like that.  If they were really that rich, they wouldn't be trying to peddle stuff to you!

There are actually two major ways to attract customers to your online business.  One is to advertise.  The other is to attract customers generically.

Advertising to Generate Website Traffic

"Traffic" for online businesses is just like foot traffic for brick and mortar stores.  It is a rough count of the number of people who pass by, perhaps looking in the window. 

Some online businesses advertise for clients.  You see ads throughout this site, some in AdSense ads, some in affiliate placements of various sorts.  Those companies are all paying me to put their ads on this site.

When you click on those ads, you go to the advertiser's site.  The advertiser pays me money, and the advertiser gets some traffic.

Tomorrow the same thing happens again.  And again.  And again.  Advertisers need to keep advertising to get website traffic to their sites.  It can cost hundreds, or many thousands of dollars, each month to keep on advertising to generate traffic.  For large, rich companies that is a great approach.  But you and I aren't large, and we certainly aren't rich.

So we have another way to generate traffic.

Get Website Traffic With Generic Traffic

"Generic traffic" means it is traffic that is generated simply by people being interested in your topic. 

When Google, Bing and the other search engines do searches, a list of "results" shows up.  Nobody pays for those results.  They happen because the webmaster has worked to create a strong listing for his site and for that keyword.  This is, in fact, the very best way to get website traffic.

It is called "generic traffic".

There are a number of steps the webmaster must take to ensure that his site shows up near the top of the list.  First it means creating a strong website with a great topic and strong keywords, i.e., the "Content" part of a website.

Then it means promoting your site so that it gets noticed.  Among the millions of websites on the web, that is no small accomplishment.  It has a lot to do with skills like

• Backlinking
• Article marketing
• Blog posting
• Forum participation
• Answering questions
• Facebook, Twitter and all the other social media

... and generally just making a name for yourself in your field.

It Takes Time To Generate Enough Online Traffic For A Real Business

None of this happens overnight.  This is the real time consuming part of building an online business, and it is the part that is most often totally overlooked.

Without building your traffic, there is no business.

Imagine a brick and mortar business sitting out in the middle of a field, all alone.  That is what your online business will be without building the foundation for Traffic.

SBI again has tools to help you on your way.  There are great tools for identifying possible link candidates.  (SBI-ers, look for "Site Info" in the Master Keyword List.  It is an invaluable tool for building links with great websites.)

There are tools to help with social linking.  Do you see that box of social links on the bottom of the page?  SBI created that automatically for this site.  It does it for every SBI site.  (SBI-ers, look in Site Central to create your own social link set in minutes.)

SBI even has a really great tool that everyone can use.  No charge.  No memberships.  No nothing.  Just use this tool to help your get website traffic for your own website:

Value Exchange.  When your site is ready to promote, list it in Value Exchange.  Thousands of sites register here for free, most of them quite good.  The goal of Value Exchange is to match them up, so that the sites can exchange links. Every week or two you will get an email, letting you know that there are more sites that you can link with.  You decide which ones you want to pursue.  Value Exchange will even email the ones you select.  Again, no cost and no obligations.  Just use it when it works for you.

Right here is where most webmasters get very impatient.  With all the speed of the web, it is hard to understand why it takes soooo long to get noticed.  The bottom line is that there are thousands of other sites out there trying to get noticed too, so we need to battle them a bit.

"So How Long Does It Take To Generate Traffic When You Create Your Own Website Online?"

I wish I had a number for you, but honestly I don't.  There are slews of variables, many of them totally out of our control.

Sometimes websites get noticed almost immediately.  Sometimes it takes months.  However long it takes, it feels like pouring cold molasses.  For what it's worth, even I get edgy waiting for the site to "catch".

It's not the money that is the issue.  With generic traffic you can indeed get website traffic without paying a dime.  Just give yourself time, and it will work.  Honest.  The alternative is to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to generate that traffic.  Take your pick.