Free traffic is something that we all want, and because this desire is so widespread, it’s often and easily exploited. As you search for ways to get traffic to your site you will inevitably come across some or all of the follow methods. I thought it would be a good idea to save you the time and trouble by telling you that they don’t work. They were around when I got started 10 years ago, and they didn’t work then . . . they still don’t.

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Wastes of Time:

The following “free traffic” sources are enticing because they’re easy, but in the end they generate very little or no traffic while wasting valuable time that could have (and should be) spent elsewhere. Just take my word for it and don’t bother with these.

1. FFA’s (Free For All) sites. These are sites where you can post a link to your site and it shows up in the list. They just end up as a long list of titles and links that no one cares about or clicks. The only time someone goes to one of these sites is to post a link to their site – not to find your link.
2. Start Page and Traffic Exchanges. These seem like a good idea, especially if you can refer other people and get credit for their efforts, too. But again, no one cares about the ads or pages they’re viewing. The only reason people do this is to get traffic to their site – not to visit yours.
3. Free classified. With the exception of Craigslist I would not bother with free classified ads. This is just a waste of time. Who reads free classified ads? Do you? I could be wrong, but there are so many great ways to get free traffic, don’t bother with this one.
4. Banner, Link and Exit Traffic Exchanges. These three methods give you credit at some ratio less than 1 for doing something on your site. For example, you put a banner or link or exit pop-up code on your site and every 2 times that banner or link is displayed or the exit pop-up is triggered, you get 1 credit for the same thing on another member’s site. First, these advertising methods (especially exit pop-ups) are fairly ineffective to down right annoying to people, so they will not get you any good will with your own visitors and will not result in quality traffic to your site. Banner advertising can work, but it’s better to buy it from a high-traffic, high-quality site than to try to leverage your traffic to get banners on who-knows-what kind of site the other members have.
5. Safe Lists. Don’t get me started on this one. No one reads these emails, and if they do it’s because they’re required to look at them for 15 seconds or something, but no one cares. Again, the only reason people subscribe is to send their email – not to read yours.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve tried all of these methods over the years and have always regretted the time I spent on them. So save yourself the heartache and don’t bother – let my mistakes, as well as my successes be of service to you. And just in case you come across something I haven’t mentioned, here’s a simple test you can perform to determine for yourself if something is going to work: Ask yourself if you think the service is valuable. Would you subscribe to a Safe List to get all the awesome emails from other users? Do you visit FFA’s just to see all the sweet links other people are posting up? NO! Of course you don’t. You visit sites that provide you with value. You’ll see this theme of providing value throughout my articles here because it makes sense.

If something is valuable to you, you’ll use it. If you provide value to others, they’ll use what you provide. And if you’re not providing value, don’t expect good results. It really is that simple. We’ll talk more about how to provide value in another article…

I also want to mention a few temptations to avoid.

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Temptations to Avoid:

This is actually just one temptation – SPAM-ing. Now this might seem obvious, and it should be. But it comes in many forms and I don’t want you to do any of them.

1. The first is the one you’re probably thinking of – sending unsolicited email. You probably aren’t even tempted to do this, and I’m proud of you.
2. Equally as un-cool, but somehow people think it’s OK, is to subscribe to newsletters with an email that’s really an autoresponder. First, subscribing to someone’s newsletter does not give you the right to send them your offers, so don’t do this. And second, it never works. Believe me, people try this all the time on my newsletter and even if they had the best offer in the world, I would not do business with them.
3. Blog comments. This is the most widely abused because it seems so innocent, but posting up unrelated comments or fake lead-ins like, “Hey great post. You should check out my site at…” is just plain lame. If you have something to say that relates, or a question or comment or compliment or anything sincere, by all means, post it! And there’s no problem with linking to your site in your signature. But posting a poor quality comment just to plug your site is not acceptable. Again, make sure you’re adding value by joining the conversation.
4. Discussion forums. Again, make sure you are adding the community with valuable comments, questions and information. Blatant advertising is forums will usually get you banned, but even if it doesn’t – it’s not cool.
5. The same goes for newsgroups, usenets, and any other public forum or group. People don’t like ads to begin with, so don’t spam their newsgroups and discussion groups. Besides building bad Karma for yourself, it will never work! The animosity that it creates will have the opposite effect. If people feel they have been spam-ed not only will they avoid doing business with you, but they will also tell other people not to do business with you.

The key is to think about the places you visit as communities and to treat them like communities you want to be welcome in again and again. And that all comes back to providing value and by joining in the conversation.

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How about some good stuff?

Since this entire article is about what not to do, I thought I should probably include at least the mention of some free methods that do work…

1. Social Networking and Web 2.0 Marketing (this is a big one)
2. Free Content Distribution
3. Video Marketing
4. Craigslist
5. Affiliate Marketing
6. eBay (almost free)
7. Good old fashioned SEO (also big)
8. Press Releases
9. Blogging
10. Article Marketing (see my previous post about this)

Don’t worry. I will go into more detail about all of these in another article about more free advertising that works. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t wasting your time with stuff that doesn’t work…