When you are just starting out with your Internet business, you want to minimize risk by spending as little as you can. That is because you are practically sailing in unchartered waters - at least while you are still new to doing business online. The problem is, there is just so much information out there, and the new marketer finds it overwhelming. Also, there are many potential pitfalls, and if you are not careful, you could be losing money instead of making money.

So a good way to get started with your Internet business is to focus your attention on free traffic generation methods. That way, you minimize your risk and you can hardly lose. More importantly, you can still be making money as you are learning the ropes. Here are some free traffic sources to help you get started.

Search engines.

When your sites start to rank well in the search engines, that is almost a guarantee for success. The traffic comes to your site every single month from the search engines, and you don't have to pay a single cent. This gives you a huge advantage. You can now try out new products on your site, test out different sales copy and do a lot more. All these activities are happening and you are not paying a single cent on advertising.

Obviously, many new internet marketers quickly learn that traffic from the search engines can be immensely valuable. So competition also increases very quickly. The key is to stay focused and keep on building links so that you don't lose your rankings in the search engines.

Forum signatures.

This is another method to drive free traffic to your site. A forum signature is simply a link at the bottom of your forum posts that goes to your website. This is a powerful traffic generation technique if you know what you are doing.

Please do not think of this method as forum spamming. Forum spamming is when you post blatant advertising on forums and at the same time, being off topic. Signatures are different. They just sit there quietly as you participate in forums and make friends. If people are curious to learn more about what you have to offer, they will click on the links in your signature.

A quick word of caution here. Always observe the rules when participating in forums. Otherwise, your account may get banned. But if you heed the rules and policies, forum signatures are good for driving free targeted traffic to your website.

Recycle traffic.

Recycle traffic is free because you have already captured the email address of the visitors coming to your website, and they have given you explicit permission to email them about the products and services that you offer. If you own a huge email list, you can generate thousands of hits to your site just be sending out a simple email broadcast. And you can do this over and over again - for free!

So you see, there are many ways to drive free targeted traffic to your site so that you minimize risks. To learn more, you can always take a traffic generation course. Such courses will do a much better job of advising you on the mistakes to avoid. You will also be able to learn other new methods that are not mentioned in this article.