Does anyone know any solid, reliable, FREE ways to promote a website?

I'm pretty sure we would all love something that does that for us.

I'd just reccomend Article Marketing, Angela's Links (look it up on this forum. not free). Beyond that and physically asking people to visit your website (physically? is that right?), I can't think any quick, free traffic generators.

I highly recommend you to stay away from traffic exchange or any type of click credit sort of traffic. THese are highly not targeted traffic and pretty useless.

If you can write, go for bum marketing of writing your articles.
Once you have identify your keywords within your niche, write it and submit to ezinearticles.com

And then start doing SEO and add in these keywords into your website, and then start building backlinks for these keywords.

Article Marketing - Short term traffic
SEO - Long time Free Organic Traffic.

Hope this advice helps.

Warmest Regards,
Winson Yeung

As others have mentioned:

Article marketing
Video article marketing(Powerpoint slide show with your main points and read the article)
Document sites (Upload your articles and even slide shows for distribution)
Mini-link wheels
Blog commenting

Software you need (But is all free ):

OpenOffice--Full Wordprocessing and Powerpoint-esque functionality
CamStudio--Video and audio capturing for your Video articles
Comment Kahuna--Blog locating and commenting software

Post to all the web 2.0 properties - Squidoo, HubPages, Blogger, Wordpress, Scribd, Weebly, and a zillion others, then bookmark every time.

Post in forums and blogs.

As for as I am concerned, I have not come across any free traffic tactics "that won't cost me more than an hour or two of my time every week". Article marketing is a very good and free way to drive traffic but takes time. Outsourcing will free your time but it is not free.

Have your site SEO friendly and then start building links. What you do is:

Submit your site to directories
Do social bookmarking
Submit RSS feeds
Have a fresh and relevant content for your site

There's a series of 6 articles on promoting your site for free on my blog, starting with this one:

http://www.wealthydragon.com/blog/20...r-site-free-1/

The other 5 are listed (and linked to) in the related articles section at the bottom of this first one.

Cheers,

Martin.

Video marketing is free and easy... Just use windows movie maker... and post a few videos a week for key words on your niche...

In my experience, a lot of the free traffic generation methods (i.e. article writing, video, social networking etc...) tend to be time consuming. I discovered that you either have to sacrifice time and/or money to build your traffic.

I get the vast majority of my referall traffic from link exchanges I set up via email with webmasters and bloggers on others sites high in the serps in my niche. Thats what exactly what Googles own webmaster guidlines say to do and it works.

You can try contributing to forums, and linking to your site in your signature. You can also try commenting on relted blog posts, then linking to your site. You can also try making videos and submitting to video sites.

I would seriously consider trying Traffic-Bug. This may solve your problem.

Free is never free. There´s time involved in all the free traffic methods I´ve ever seen. It´s really a question of what your time is worth to you.

A couple hours a week without any money input is going to be a very long and slow way to build a business. You either invest the time or outsource it to someone else. In my opinion outsourcing the tedious tasks is money well spent and frees me up to run my business and get creative with new ideas.

If it takes 100 hours to get all the SEO optimizing, article writing, posting etc. done, by the time I´m done I´m burnt out and it could take a couple of weeks. On the other hand, paying someone a couple hundred bucks to do all that can have me earning revenue enough to recoup the expense in a fration of the time and get into the black in days as opposed to weeks.

Once again, if you value your time then the only way I can justify all that work is if it makes me a good chunk of change in exchange for it, and if that´s the case then I could afford to outsource most the work anyway.

The first thing I would do is make your blog the front page of your site, at least for a while. When I go to your website all I see are some links to stuff for sale. I have no idea who is selling them, why they are selling them or why I should buy from them or other designers.

I know that sometimes IM looks like people just slap up a few graphics and rake in the dough, but it takes quite a lot more work than that!

Unfortunately my services are not free or I would offer to help you out. I do have a couple of WSOs running right now (links in my sig) that you might be interested in if you decide that outsourcing is a good idea.

Good luck!

here is a list some free ways that have proven to work over and over again if you work it (them). now i wrote this on my blog for bloggers, but of course you can adjust many of them to use for websites as well. but again just knowing them wont help, it really takes hardwork and persistency to get a good result which in my short time experience is not going to be a very quick result but it will happen. i hope it helps.

Submit Your Blog Wherever You Can!
1. Submit your blog to directories in your niche.
2. submit your blog to all the free directory and search engines.
3. Submit your site to free website review sites like coolsiteoftheday.
4. submit each and every post to social bookmarking sites using onlywire.
5. submit your articles to article directories like article base and associated content (change the article 20% to 30%, so it wont be picked up by SE as a duplicate content).


Make Use Of Free WebSites To Promote Your Blog!
6. write related articles on WikiPedia with your blog url in it.
7. make a hubpage for your blog, with a little bit information about your blog.
8. make a wiki page for your blog.
9. make a squidoo lens or more with a link to your site.
10. sign up at 43things.com and write things related to your blog and what you want to accomplish.(you'd be surprise by the number of people, just reading other peoples list)
11.create a myspace page for your blog.
12. create a facebook page for your blog.
13. create a hi5 page for your blog.
14. join blogcatalog and do the same as with mybloglog.
15. use MyBlogLog to create a community around your blog. join other peoples community, so they do the same for you.
16. create an account with Technorati and with every new post, ping it.
17. post related how-to videos on you tube with your blog address on the bottom of the screen or at the end or beginning of the video.
18. use yahoo answers to answer questions related to your niche, leaving your link in the resource box. (believe it or not, 10% of my traffic comes from 20 minutes a week answering questions on yahoo answers)
19.create an account on stumbleupon, and stumble each and every article you write. (one of the best ways to drive traffic to your site for free)
20. join as many forums as possible, especially forums related to your niche


Take Advantage Of Free Tools And Plug-ins!
21. place a "digg it" button right after your post, to make it easy for your readers to digg your post.
22. use a comment notifying plug-in to let your readers know about new comments. believe it or not, most people read more of other peoples comment on your post, than your post itself.
23. use social bookmarking plug-ins to make it easy for your readers to submit your post to social bookmarking site
24. install "tell-a-friend" plug-in to make it easy for your readers to let others know about your post.
25. make use of "all in one SEO" plug-in to make your blog search engine friendly.
26. use a forum plug-in to create a forum for your blogs readers to talk and discuss related issues.
27. use a free keyword tool to find and use good ranking keywords in your niche.
28. use sites like vista print to make free business cards ($5 shipping for 250 free BC which is worth it) with your site url on it and pass it around.
29. make a free favicon to be easily found in your readers favorites file. (people like to find what they want fast. i myself sometimes give up finding a particular article or site in my huge favorite file, simply because i don't want to spend 5 minuets to go through the whole list. a favicon is like big spot light focused on you between hundreds of other people!
30. use free press release services to gain visibility.
31. Use pingomatic to ping RSS aggregators.
32. use free advertising sources like craigslist and backpage to post ads about your articles or blog in related categories.


Other Bloggers Can Help Too!
33. talk about or if you can interview a trusted person in your niche
34. Leave comments on blogs in related niches or any niche for that matter.(don't spam, leave genuine comment, as you would like others to do so for you)
35. make a banner ad for your blog and exchange with other interested bloggers.
36. use blogroll to link to other bloggers in your niche in exchange for a link to your blog on their blog roll.
37. ask other bloggers to write a review of your blog in exchange for a link to their site from your site.
38. dedicate a post about a top bloggers in your niche. it will catch their attention and they may link to you
39. whenever appropriate, link to other bloggers articles in your post. they will return the favor.
40. use your best articles to post on other peoples blog as a guest writer (it'll gain you visibility and new audience)
41. another blogger to post on your blog as guest (while he enjoys some new readers, it will brings his readers to your site as well)


Use Your Blog/Site As A Tool To Attract And Keep Visitors!
42. provide freebies, like free ebooks, free downloads and etc, to your readers.
43. once in a while run a contest related to your niche and encourage visitors to participate for a prize, and do give a prize to the winner, no matter how small. it will help to establish your persona as a trusted blogger, and once people see you as a trustworthy person, not only they will keep coming back to you, but they will bring other visitors as well.
44. use common questions related to your niche for the title of your article.
45. use keywords in the title of your post. keywords in title is one of the easiest and most important techniques of search engine optimization.
46. use a small place on your blog to have your blogs complete url ready for those who wish to link to your blog.
47. keep your blog clean and easily navigable.(how many times you have left a site, because you weren't able to find what you came for?)
48. use numbered list for your informative posts, like "5 ways to...". people tend to like these kinds of post.
49. shocking and surprising articles will draw people to your site.
50. be on the look out for new developments and news related to your niche, the first person breaking a new story, gets the most traffic.
51. videos are increasingly becoming popular, use them on your blog to your advantage.
52. use tags for your post, as its becoming a very popular way of finding related content.

53. Post frequently. search engines and readers like fresh content.
54. if you have any other blog or site, place a link to your site. (you can even create a blog to talk about your journey with your blog/site).
55. read and respond to your readers comment.(if i feel that what i say is important to the writer, i am more likely to came back for more and encourage others to do the same)


Extra!
56. Put your blog URL in your forum signatures.
57. use your blog name for your user name in forums and when leaving comment on other blogs.
58. ask your friends and family to Digg and stumble your posts. a post with more diggs or stumble, means more visibility.
59. put your blogs name and url on a bumper sticker or something like that, and attach it to your car. big corporations pay people to place their ads on their car, you don't have to pay anyone, use your own car and also give some stickers to your friends and family and ask them to stick it on back bumper.
60. make flyers with your blogs name and a short captivating headline style description and pass it in the mall or parking lots. if you use a good headline, at least 60-70% of the people will visit your blog out of curiosity, and who knows how many will become your diehard fans!(readers)
61. and last but not least, be patient and give it some time. no one goes from 20/30 visitors a day to hundreds and thousands of visitors, over night.

Satrap has done an amazing job! Great reply man