Blog and Website owners are always looking for effective ways to drive quality traffic to their sites. For some, this can be a hair pulling effort. For others, it seems no matter what they try, traffic comes rolling in.



Here are 9 Low Cost Ways to Drive Traffic To Your Site

Pay-Per-Click Programs - You should try Adwords and other Pay-Per-Click programs such as Yahoo Publisher Network and Microsoft AdCenter, only if you have a good understanding of how PPC programs work. Newbies should not dive into PPC unless you have a large budget. A better way to use Adwords would be to use the site targeted feature of Adwords and choose sites that are relevant to yours. Site targeted Adwords are charged on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis rather than a per-click basis.

Banner Advertising - In my blog post title "15 Adsense Alternatives", I feature 15 programs to replace Adsense. You can use many of these same programs, such as AdBrite, to advertise on. Speaking of AdBrite, I've seen them on some very specific sites where Adsense was not used. This could be for a variety of reasons, but it's worth checking into sites where you'd like to advertise and see which program they are using to monetize their site.

Sponsored Reviews- Paying for a few site targeted reviews of your site could bring in a huge flood of new readers to your site. Sites like PayPerPost, ReviewMe and SponsoredReviews can be a low-cost goldmine for some site owners.

Private Advertising - You don't have to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars to get your ad on sites like JohnChow or ShoeMoney to take advantage of private advertising. There are a lot of popular sites on the Internet that have very targeted readers where you can buy an ad for peanuts. You can get a nice banner ad on some of these sites for as little as $25 per month.

Buy Links- Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know what Google says about buying text links. When done right, Google or no one else can spot a paid link. They're effective when placed on the right site and when done correctly. I Do Not recommend buying site wide text links in sidebars. I think the best links to buy are the ones in related post about relevant services or products you offer. You can find links on sites such as the Marketplace on DigitalPoint Forums, SitePoint, Text-Link-Ads, tnx.net and TextLinkBrokers. Another effective method is just to email the site owner and offer them some money to buy a one way link to your site. Don't try to be cheap, it'll turn off the site owner and they may never respond!

Blog Networks - I've never used Blog Networks, but I know a few site owners who swear by the traffic from Blog Networks like Blog Explosion, Blog Advance, Blog Soldiers and the new Blog Rush. With these networks, you get credits for sending traffic to other Network members sites. In many cases, you can also purchase credits at a reasonable rate. In turn, you use these credits to "buy" impressions back to your site. As good as that sounds, I probably still bring in more traffic with article marketing and ezinearticles.

Stumble Upon Ads- StumbleUpon sends me a lot of traffic naturally on many of my sites. But for those who just don't have the time or expertise to get that rush of traffic from SU, they do have ads and many can be had for as little as 5 centers per click. This is cheap in anyones book!

Paid Posters - This is another method I've never used, but know some people who swear by it. This works by paying people to post on forums and blog comments and leaving a link back to your site. From the prices I've seen, you can get this done for as little as 10 to 20 cents per post. Browse the Marketplaces on DigitalPoint Forums and SitePoint to find paid posters.

Automobile Ad Wraps - (bet you didn't see this one coming!) These can be very effective if you have a product or service that serves a local market. This program works when a broker pays drivers to drive around with magnetic signs or auto-wraps on their vehicles. People pay attention to ads on vehicles and this can drive some very targeted traffic to your site or local business. Places to look are; Ad-Wraps, AutoWrapped.Com and AutoMurals.Com. I know a small businessman in the Northwest that post "Want Ads" on Craigslist, Kijiji and other local classified ad sites looking for driver. He cuts out the Middleman and saves some serious money in the process.

The important thing is to test, test and test more if you want to take full advantage of any of these programs! I think you'll be amazed at how much traffic you can generate with a little bit of money.

Use any of these methods at your own risk. These have worked for other Webmasters but may not work for you. It all depends on your comfort level and your skill level.