If you're just starting out with an internet business, or have a new website for your brick-and-mortar business, finding visitors—good quality ones that are prospects for what you are offering, and not an automated computer “visiting” script—you face a quite a challenge, especially if you're on a limited advertising budget. (Although web advertising is a great deal cheaper than traditional print, radio, and TV media ads.) Here are some tips to help either leverage similar sites or your existing visitors to grow your website's exposure.



1. Position your web site at the top of pay-per-click search engines. You will only pay your set amount for each click-through you get to your web site. Just make sure your profits will pay for your advertising cost. If they won't, maybe you could share a web site (teamwork) with another related business and split the costs.

2. Allow your visitors or customers to increase your traffic or sales. Ask them how you can improve your business, web site or product. You can ask them at your web site, in your e-zine, on your message board, in your chat room, in your guest book (although those aren't that popular these days), in your product packages, etc.

3. Team up with other e-zines that have the same target audience. Combine subscriber bases and then publish one e-zine together to increase subscribers. You could all include your ads and announcements in the ezine (of course, don't forget the content!). You could also take turns for the top advertising space.

4. Swap endorsement advertisements with other web sites. Endorsement ads usually pull more sales and traffic than regular advertisements. People have taught themselves to ignore advertisements because they see hundreds of them every day. Endorsements usually don't look or sound like normal ads. Forums are a great place to find like-minded individuals with whom to swap endorsements or testimonials with, and to get others to review your site or product to provide valuable feedback.

5. Consider co-registration services. Co-registration is where you place your ad for your website or ezine or newsletter onto a page with 5-10 other advertisers. There are check boxes alongside each offer, and the cost of the combined ad is split among the advertisers, so it doesn't cost you as much. Think of the “more information” offers you see when you sign up for a credit card or purchase a magazine subscription online—those are co-registration offers with the check boxes next to them. There are some services that will do this for free. Using co-reg is a great way to build a mailing list, which is a great way to build credibility and create repeat customers. This has been one of the easiest ways to build my mailing list (and that's a prime example of a testimonial, except I'm not promoting any specific service).

There are other ways to team up with other website owners, such as joint ventures and web rings, which I talk about in the other articles on my website.