With this in mind I'm going to take a look at a couple of the different methods of getting free traffic to your site(s) and then I'm going to have a look at how to get paid for getting free traffic to your site(s) – yes, you can get money for doing it.



Lets start by having a look at three traditional methods of getting some traffic:

1. Articles

2. Solo ads

3. Traffic exchange

These three methods are the preferred methods of most webmasters as they encompass a wide target audience.

Articles.

All of us at some point or another write tutorials of one form or another (this for example) or perhaps we write a review of something. Even better, when you're at university you write lots of reports as part of your course.

These documents can all be used to bring you some much loved traffic.

This is achieved by submitting your article to a site such as iSnare.Com or GoArticles.Com.

How does this work?

Quite simply and without any effort from you.

When you enter your article into these services you also have opportunity to enter a biography section. This section tells the reader a little about you and also allows you to list a url (or two).

The article sites then provide the articles in their database to other sites – your biography always go with them.

This means that suddenly you have a LOT more sites linking to your site and it also means that you have a lot more people (who perhaps wouldn't normally find your site) visiting via your biography. You should however ensure that the subject of the article has some relevancy to your site (if you write about dogs and your site is about tanks most people who read the article are not going to be interested in your site).

Solo Ads.

A solo ad is an advertisement that is sent out via email by a list owner. The price of this service can vary radically and so can the quality.

Anyone offering a solo ad service will never EVER promise a response rate (unless it's a paid to read service).

If you do decide to go down this route there are a few things you should remember/ask:

a. What is the demographic of the list (who are they? Male, 23 – 34, IT professionals, etc)

b. How big is the list

c. How old is the list

d. How responsive is the list (best and worst cases)

e. Will the owner do a 2 for 1 deal (pay for one mailing, deliver two)

f. Is there a way of the list owner splitting the delivery (thus allowing you to test your sales copy)

If you do go this route you should remember that you are effectively only picking up the customers/subscribers once – so make sure your copy is good.

You should also remember one golden rule – do not make the sale, get a subscriber. What a stupid thing to say – I'm trying to sell something not make friends! Yep, that's right – but – it is widely acknowledged that it takes a user 7 views of the same advert in order to act upon it (this is why some marketers will send you the same thing rehashed repeatedly for a couple of weeks). So with this in mind if you send a mailing and don't get subscribers you're effectively blowing your money.

You should also be aware that the size of list has no direct correlation as to its quality or responsiveness.

Traffic Exchanges.

As the title suggests you're swapping traffic, this usually means that you surf a selection of other members sites and in return you get your site added to the rotation so that some of them see your site.

The quality of traffic is sometimes quite poor from this source as a number of people are not really interested in seeing your site – they just want you to see theirs.

So where does the making money from traffic exchanges come in?

Well, simply put, there are a new type of traffic exchange services starting who offer both a free and paid membership, the free service allows you to surf and acquire credits which you can use to buy visitors and then there's the paid member option (normally referred to as ‘pro membership'). With both the free and pro membership levels you still need to surf the site daily but there are a couple of things different:

a. Both membership types display a slide show of other sites for you to surf

b. Both membership types require no intervention (no clicking - just watching)

c. The pro membership pays you money!

Yep, as promised there it is – you can get paid to surf a small selection of sites a day with no action required on your part.

So how does that work and are we talking about pennies here?

Most important question first, no we are not talking about pennies (unless that's all you've paid for). These sites normally pay you a percentage of your membership fee as your daily surfing fee, so my favourite site pays me 12% per day over 12 days (this means I make a profit of 44% every 12 days).

So in real terms, I can choose my investment level, so here's what it looks like:

Pro membership $120 $6 $500 $1000

Percent per day 12% 12% 12% 12%

Cash per day $14.40 $.72 $60 $120

Membership term 12 days 12 days 12 days 12 days

Total Cash back $172.80 $8.64 $720 $1440

As I said the membership level is completely at your taste. But there's more. You not only earn your own money and surfing credits but that of affiliates – so for example if you have a couple of affiliates then potentially you're earning 10% or everything they pay in/surf and also 2.5% of whatever their affiliates do (so a two tier affiliate system).

The affiliate commissions vary but usually they are at least two tiers. The one I recommend is 12Daily, the url is http://www.12dailypro.com/?ref=62998 – complete with my affiliate ID (quid pro quo!).