"Viral" Advertising Methods

There are lots of websites that can generate free traffic for your own site, usually called "traffic exchanges". As I've mentioned in previous posts here, I haven't been very impressed with the quality of traffic they bring, though. (I guess the old saying about getting what you paid for still makes sense.)

Another way to generate traffic inexpensively or even free is viral type advertising. (Viral, referring to being able to be multiplied and spread by others, of course...nothing to do with illegal computer viruses.) I guess there are many ways to accomplish this, like writing articles, or even larger e-books that include links to your website, and uploading them to the various online article directories where other people can copy and distribute them for you. Any traffic you get as a result of those becomes totally free advertising, and it can grow and grow over time...although it would take awhile to get established.

Remember the old chain letter/pyramid scheme offers that always had a list of people to send money to, which you were supposed to add your name to after doing so? The idea was that if everyone just got a few people to do the same, eventually you'd be in position to collect a huge amount of money when you're at the top of the list. Well, I've found an advertising site that works just the same way, but the only reward is traffic for your website. And the best thing is, it's free to take part in.

Rather than go into TOO much detail to describe it, you can take a look at it yourself and see how it works. It's called FreeViral.com, and you can put your link on the list for no charge, then advertise the site itself to get more participants, etc. They seem to have the right idea because you need to look at each of the sites listed for at least 15 or 20 seconds before they give you the confirmation numbers you need to register with. So people are more or less forced to look at your website in order register. I don't know if that really means they'll look long enough to actually get interested in what they see, but since it's absolutely free to set up I figure it's worth giving a try. If it works as planned, you could possibly get a huge amount of free traffic out of it.

I'm using it to promote that Survey Scout program that teaches you how to earn up to $150/hour doing surveys online on your own computer. I used that because they have a sales page that gets right to the point as soon as you lay your eyes on it, and that's what you need for viewers who don't plan on staying long in the first place. I'll let you know how it works out. So far, the only catch seems to be that you still have to figure out a way to drive plenty of people to THAT site in order to get the process started. So far my only attempt to do that has been TrafficSwarm, and once again the traffic coming from there just isn't responding. Unlike the FreeViral site, they don't require you to stay on the pages you have to click on, so people usually seem to click on and click right back off without doing much of any reading. Because of that, I really can't honestly recommend it, even though for some unknown reason I still keep giving it another try myself. I guess I need to look into some of the other traffic exchanges and see if there's something else that works better...something that brings better quality visitors.

Until then, unfortunately, I'll probably just keep getting what I've paid for!

John