My Top 5 Traffic Sources for Beginners

Hi guys!

I wanted to share with you today some useful ways to drive targeted traffic into your websites...
As you may know already, there are tons of methods to do this job, but some could work better than others, and in this case in particular, I will point only the best traffic sources I found for newcomers and people that is starting in this business...

The problem here is that it is not easy at all to drive traffic to your website being a newbie, there are many things that you will be learning while you do it, trial and error like I use to say...
But if you focus on some methods and stick working on them, you can't fail and in time you will see your effort payed off.
So... let's get our hands dirty, shall we? Time to catch that traffic!



Forum Marketing:

If you are just starting, this is the best method ever. It's really easy to do, but it requires time and patience before you see some consistent response from the audience.
Here you only need to subscribe to forums related to your niche, and place your link of whatever you are selling/promoting with some catchy phrases that attract people's attention in your user signature.
I will point some things that are important in this traffic method, please read carefully:


1) Read the TOS before joining... I know many people don't do this, and that's the reason many of them get banned. Some forums have specific restriction for Internet Marketing, and you should know them before you start posting there. If you find a forum that doesn't allow signatures, just move to the next one.

2) Build your name with the community... You will be a newbie in the forum, nobody knows you, so it's quite important that you start getting to know your audience, post regularly, ask questions, answer them if you can. In time people will identify your brand with you, and you will begin to get recommendations and better traffic response.

There are two types of posts that you should make while using this traffic source... one is replying to users questions, adding value to the forum through your opinions. And the other is creating new topics with relevant and useful information.

The second option will be the most catchy for your audience, but for starters it will be more time consuming, just because you don't know much about the business yet...
But hey, if you are serious about what you are doing here, in time you will learn lots of things that will allow you to add value to your brand and you will make a professional name for yourself.

3) Be nice to the members, and most important of all, have FUN!
If possible never engage with other members, always show a smile, be positive and stay in tune with the community. Share off-topic information in time to time, make people laugh. I assure you this TIP is key in order to make people know you faster. This is not like a full-time job where you lower your head and say "Yes, boss....", you have the opportunity to be yourself here, so take advantage of that and enjoy your work!.







Article Marketing:

This method is more time consuming and will require you to have some basic knowledge in the business first...
You can submit articles to Article Directories and you will have the opportunity to appear in the first page of Google searches. Why, you might be asking? Just because these Article Directories have a good Page Rank and a well researched keyword will allow you to get organic traffic into your website by appearing in the first page.

Before you start submitting any article, I would recommend that you learn the basics about Keywords and how to use them in Articles first. I won't point that here because it's not the aim of this guide. Just make a Google search and you will find a lot of information about this.

A key thing in this traffic source is to have a perfect grammar, show value using your personality, but write your articles properly because people are not attracted to poorly written articles. If you are not that good at writing, then it is a good opportunity to improve those skills for yourself. You will need them anyway because in this business you have to write a lot hahaha.
There are tons of Article Directories, so I will point just a few:


1) http://www.ezinearticles.com/
2) Squidoo : Welcome to Squidoo
3) HubPages
4) Free Articles Directory | Submit Articles - ArticlesBase.com
5) eHow | How to Videos, Articles & More - Discover the expert in you. | eHow.com

Be sure to take a look to eHow, a fantastic website to write step-by-step tutorials, written as articles. It's very friendly and easy to use.
Each of the above have different systems to work with your articles, but the overall idea is the same for all of them.



Guest Posts:

This traffic source is very powerful and will drive a huge amount of visitors to your webpages, but you will have to invest time researching Blogs related to your niche.
The idea here is to create a nice and unique article, that you will send to a high populated blog related to your niche. There are plenty of blogs that accept Guest Posts, but each of them have their rules that you must follow, else they will reject your article...
Some of these rules are listed below:

• Your article needs to be unique. This article has to be made only for this guest post and you can't use it anywhere else. Duplicated Content is forbidden among bloggers.
• No affiliate links are allowed within your article content. You can't promote/sell a particular product with a guest post. But you CAN place a link to your Squeeze Page or Blog, so you will be able to drive the visitors into your website.
• Good grammar and perfect orthography. This is a must, same as Article Marketing you must write properly.

The idea behind a Guest Post is to get right to your fellow blogger's audience... so it's a win-win situation, he will have a high quality article to post in his Blog, and you will promote your business right to his visitors.
If you want to find Blogs that allow people to guest post, go to Google and make a search with the following line:

"guest post by" + <Your Niche>

for example: "guest post by" + "Internet Marketing"
All the search results will be blogs that allow people to make guest posts. You can do a fantastic research through this method. Get ideas about how people write and what do they write using this traffic source.



Guest Commenting

Similar to Guest Posts, but instead of submitting new and fresh articles to these blogs, you will Comment on existing Posts.

I would say this traffic source method is the easiest of all, and very interesting as well because it requires blog research seeking websites with high traffic, and good Posts where you feel identified and can add value with a single comment. With this method, you will learn a lot about your business and you will get in touch with cool people.
If done correctly this traffic source will drive you a consistent amount of visitors to your website.

Always try to find posts that are relatively new, with no more that 5 comments already. The less comments the better visibility your comment will have. This is very important so take it in mind before commenting.

Please beware that this method could be very "spammy" as well if it's not done correctly. You will find lots of people making worthless comments and leaving a link to some website. I assure you that most of these comments get deleted or they didn't even get approved by the blog admin.
When you add a comment, add value to the Post made by the author. Create a 150 - 300 word comment with useful information that people would find interesting. And between those lines you can add your link. You can add your link as well in your Name while commenting, and if desired you can add the brand name as well...

Something like "George of the Jungle - Interesting Monkey Products"... Always put your name first so it does not look "spammy". Remember that you are selling your product, with your brand and your name, so be honest with this and do it correctly, and people will notice you.




Email Signatures

This is a very underrated traffic source. I would like you to do the following... open your mail inbox and see how many mails do you have. Now check all the sent emails by you from this day...
If you use Internet regularly, you will have for sure several emails sent to your friends, family, work, etc.

Do you begin to see the idea behind this method?
Emails use to go viral, not related to a particular niche or even intended, but just look for some of your received emails. Do you have those ugly FW: messages that use to display random/funny stuff? Enter one of those mails and see how many people was resending it to their contact lists. If these mails are cool and catchy, they go viral, always.

If you make a signature, with a nice phrase and a link to your business, you will be sending traffic to your websites just doing what you use to do everyday. Completely passive and it does not require any additional effort. You may be sending more mails everyday if you like, but that's all about it!

I think these traffic sources are really easy to start, friendly for newcomers to get confidence about this business. When you acquire more knowledge and experience you can start using more methods, that in the end will allow your business to succeed in this online world.

Note that I am not even telling anything about Social Media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinderest, StumbleUpon, etc. Those are fantastic traffic sources, and the future of Internet Marketing, but they require plenty of time to get them started...
So... for beginners, these 5 Traffic Sources that I mentioned above will be the best way to start in this business...

Feel free to leave your comments, tell us your experience and don't be shy to share your knowledge with the community. If you have another easy-to-start traffic method don't hesitate and tell us all about it!
Kind regards.