Just leave a comment that answers the following question and you’ll get a shot at winning one of three $100 cash prizes:

“What’s your favorite traffic getting technique?”

I’ll give out a prize for the best answer, one for the most creative and another for the funniest – so have some fun with it and give details

Also, be sure to check back in a few days – I’m sure they’ll be some great traffic generation techniques you can apply to your business.

I’ll pick the winners in a week… GOOD LUCK!

Update:

Congrats to our 3 winners:

• Daiva
• Elisabeth Kuhn
• Lapeer county

Please keep an eye on your inbox – we’ll get in contact with you shortly so we can get you over your $100 cash prize.

Thanks to everyone else who participated – we’ll probably do some more of these, so keep posted

One of the big advantages of this technique is that there is little competition – unlike competing for top spot in Google, it’s much easier to achieve top spot on YouTube.

Here’s how it works:

When someone watches a video on YouTube, when it’s over, often they’ll watch a similar related video.

So what you need to do to take advantage of this is to latch on to a new, but very popular ‘viral’ video in your niche market as a related video. By being one of the top responses or related videos to a really popular video that’s getting tons of views and is going viral, you’ll basically feed off their traffic to generate your own which in turn means website visitors.

There are some videos on YouTube with over 30,000,000 (that’s 30 million) views. Just think – if 5% of those people clicked over to your video and then 2% of those clicked through to your website, you’d get 30,000 new visitors to your website, which when monetized properly can mean hardcore profits.

I know most popular videos don’t get that many views, but even if they only manage 3 or 5 million and you hitch on for a ride at the right time, you could still end up with several thousand new visitors.

So, to take advantage of this technique, all you need to do is go to YouTube and find a video in your niche that’s new and on it’s way to becoming popular and getting a lot of views. Since you want a popular, but new video, go to the advanced search options and sort the results by ‘View Count’ and under ‘Uploaded’ choose ‘Today’ or ‘This Week’ and look for a video that’s gotten thousands or 10’s of thousands of views that you can tag along with.

Under the video, you see ‘Video Responses’ – click on that, then the ‘Post a Video Response’ link. Then create a video as a response to the popular one you found, and post it as a video response to feed off its traffic.

This way if / when that popular video you posted a response to goes viral, your video is going to show up as a ‘Video Response’ to that one and often as a ‘Related Video’ as well (if you copy the other videos’ tags and make them similar to your own).

So, when someone finishes watching that video, there’s a good chance they’ll click on yours as a response or related video and watch it next, which can make your video popular and drive a lot of traffic to your website.

While the quality of the video you post does matter and should be good, it doesn’t have to look like a fancy studio production and it doesn’t have to be very long either. As long as you have good content and provide either useful information or entertainment, that’s what really matters. Think along the lines of article marketing content. Make a video that gives them interesting, useful information in your niche in an entertaining style… or even a video that’s pure entertainment.

If you’re stuck on ideas, check out some other popular videos in your niche (or even a different one) and see what people are doing and what seems to be popular.

Hardly anyone uses this technique (I’ve seen videos with over 10 million views and no video responses), yet it can be insanely effective. Though… it can be a little hit or miss – but even if you miss, you’re still way ahead of the game.

If you happen to tag along with a video that ends up getting a million views or more, you can still get thousands of visitors to your website. If the video only ends up with 50 or 100 thousands views, you still can squeeze a few hundred visitors out of it and if you’re good at creating a video, that’s not bad for an hour or two’s work.

Just remember to put in a link to your website with your video and in your profile!

I just took my Traffic Tips Report from www.TrafficTipsReport.com and put it up for free at: www.LemonadeHere.com

If you have a website, blog, Squidoo lens, Hub page or ever plan on putting one up, make sure you grab a copy before I pull it off the market at the end of the month.

Here’s the link: www.LemonadeHere.com

There’s also a special bonus in there that will allow you to start profiting from it almost instantly!

By the way, I’m working on a complete redesign of this blog / website which I hope to have ready soon- that’s why it hasn’t been updated in a while

With the help of others and my thread on the Warrior Forum the following is what I consider the top 5 creative, overlooked and underused ways to get people to your website. Some of them are fun, some are silly and others are just plain bananas. Take them for what they are:

1. Buy a pair of sandals; get your website engraved on the bottom and walk on the beach, stomp in the mud or play in the snow.

2. Go to baggage claim at a busy airport and put an empty piece of luggage on that has your URL on it. With luck, it will circle around and around as it won’t be claimed.

3. Find someone on eBay who is willing to tattoo your URL on a visible body part. For maximum impact, the forehead is the most highly desired location.

4. Print your URL on large pieces of sticky back paper and then stick it on the backs of busses and trucks, preferably at night.

5. And finally, go to the beach and as you’re walking along, drop stencils of your URL on unsuspecting sleeping sunbathers. Then they’ll get a nice tan of just your URL, and for the next week they’ll be walking billboards.

1. Email joint ventures This is the absolute best way because it is quick, and easy and can get you tons of target traffic which can make you a lot of extra money.

2. Article writing If you write ten articles and place them on ten websites with a link to your site, within a few weeks you’ll have thousands of inbound links to your site.

3. Search engine traffic Both free and paid search engines are a good way to get lots of traffic. It usually takes a little while to get free traffic from search engines, so if you’re just starting out, you might want to pay for it.

4. Online advertising This encompasses things like banner ads, ads in ezines, text ads, PPC ads and more.

5. Press releases Sending out a press release to the media is another great way to promote your site. Distribution methods are both free and paid.

2. Write timely posts- ones on topics people will be searching for right now.

3. Write timeless posts- ones with information that people will always be looking for.

4. Provide links to resources that your readers that will find useful or very interesting.

5. Write long blog posts.

6. Get readers to digg your posts.

7. Allow comments to your blog posts (make sure you moderate them).

8. Post comments on other blogs with a link back to your site.

9. Encourage readers to subscribe to your RSS feed.

10. Search engine optimize your blog.

11. Make sure you are always writing high quality content.

12. Include your blog in forum signatures.

13. Submit your blog to all the blog directories, including Technorati.

14. Participate in blog carnivals; this is very similar to submitting articles (use a multi-carnival submission form http://blogcarnival.com/bc/submit.php).

15. Use Wordpress (use the “SEO title tag” plug-in to better optimize your blog for search engines).

16. Provide email subscriptions, this allows readers to be notified by email of new posts (use the plug-in “subscribe2″).

17. Ping the blog directories (pingomatic.com).

Under no circumstances should you ever purchase a CD of millions of email addresses. These emails have been harvested from the internet and if you contact anyone on these lists, you will be spamming them. Also avoid opt-out lists where recipients are placed on a list involuntarily and then invited to unsubscribe if they want to.

It’s important to note that the lists are always rented, never bought. The list owner is the only person who ever sees the actual list. You rent the one-time use of the list, send your promotion to the list owner, who in turn sends it out to the list.

Since you only get the one-time use of the list, instead of trying to directly sell the recipients a product or service, pull out all the stops to try and collect their email address. Since most people are unlikely to buy from the first contact, this allows you to contact them again and again until you eventually sell your product or service to them. Offer a free gift or ethical bribe, get their email, then sell to them later. This way, not only can you try and sell one product to them later, but over the span of their lifetime with you, you can sell to them again and again,

The average list rental will usually cost between $0.01 and $0.50 per name with an average of about $0.20 per name. Additional specifications, including postal/zip codes, ages, gender and job types carry an additional cost of about $0.05 per name. A typical response rate from a rented list hovers around the 0.5% mark; of course it depends on the list, the copy and the offer, but 0.5% is average.

List Brokers

It’s not always a simple and easy task to find the right opt-in email list to rent for your business. In fact, most of the time it’s a very difficult task and takes lots of research, patience and time. That’s where a list broker can help. Their job is to help you chose and acquire the properly targeted list at the right price. They will even sometimes negotiate for you with the list owner. And the great news is that it won’t cost you a thing. The broker earns an industry standard commission of around 15-20% from the actual owner of the list. Most brokers have a minimum order value of $1,000 (or 5,000 names at $0.20 a name) to make it profitable for them.

Since list sales reps usually work on commissions, they may sometimes try to sell you more names than you want or need, instead of the best names for your campaign. However, you should remember that it is list quality, not quantity that counts.

Here are some tips on choosing a list broker:

• Make sure you have a specific definition of your target audience for them to work with.
• Having a budget in mind will help as well.
• Find out if the list is single or double opt-in. How did they opt-in?
• Ask the list broker if they will review your offer / copy.

Although they will most likely not be a copy editor, they should have a good idea if it will be successful based on previous offerings.

It would also be worth it to insist that there be a warranty built into the contract that will protect your business should the rented list fall foul to spam or data protection legislation.

Perhaps the most important thing about purchasing email lists is to test them first. That means sending a test email to 5-10% of the list before purchasing it to test your response. Be wary of list owners that won’t allow you to test their list. Most will charge you for it (or include the initial rental charge if you do decide to rent the list) so don’t expect it for free. It’s also not a bad idea to send a couple of test emails testing different elements of your email before you blast it to the entire list.

If you’re just starting out, or looking to grow quickly, purchasing a list can be a very viable option. Always remember to research list owners to make sure they are reputable. If they have testimonials, or email/phone numbers of past clients you can call, all the better. Just remember, you’ll get what you pay for.

A blog is essentially a mixture of what is happening in the blogger’s life, and what is happening on the web. There are really no set rules as to what defines a blog, but it is generally accepted to be some kind of personal thoughts combined with any other number of elements. Blogs are sometimes refereed to as “web logs,” however this can cause some confusion as “web log” can also refer to a web server’s log files.

Blogs are forums for voicing opinions and developing communities with common interests. It is human nature to communicate. Each new form of communication and revolutionized the way the world interacts. Right from the day of when the telegraph was invented to the day when internet was made public, the way people communicated has gone through a sea of change.

To smart marketers, blogs offer more than the communication of thoughts on the internet. Blogs are becoming an increasingly popular advertising medium and another source of revenue for marketers. There are two ways to market with blogs, the first is to use your own blog to build relationships, customer loyalty, branding, and subtly mention your products or services in them. The second way market with blogs is to place ads on or in other people’s blogs.

One of the reasons that blogs are popular with marketers is that they often rank high in search engines because the content is usually updated daily.

Blogging

Since blogs are personal, a company or business can’t technically have its own blog. However, the president, CEO, owner, or an employee can have their own personal blog. The business that the blogger works for can use the blog to advertise their products or services subtly throughout the blog, or less subtly as graphical or text ads through the blog page.

A blog is also an excellent way to popularize products and services. It serves an informal medium for getting across to potential customers, and if they validate your product or service. And blogs are an excellent tool for viral marketing, or free word of mouth publicity.

To ideally achieve the optimum search engine ranking, you should really update your blog 4-6 times a day. Since that’s often not possible, you can settle for a couple times a day, or use an RSS feed to add content.

Rich Site Summary, or RSS feeds allows you to post content on your blog automatically from any website with an RSS feed or vice versa. Types of content include could be news feeds, events listings, news stories, headlines, project updates, excerpts from discussion forums etc. You’ll need to ask your website designer to do this for you, as it does get a little technical.

Search engines look for change. If the search engine sees that you have new information, they will see that they need to visit your website more often, to keep its listings current.

Blog Ads

Blogs ads work because blogs serve as watering holes for like minded people. Blogger’s are vocal and influential, and people read them with passion, and tend to give them more influence in their lives then they should. Blog advertising is appropriate for new launches, new products, newsworthy material, and other things or relevant value.

Blog ads require different creative tactics than most of the rest of the internet. There are 3 ad options: They can be graphical in nature, solo text ads, or text ads intertwined into the actual text content of the blog. Like the blog itself, successful blog ads rely heavily on content. Humor and sarcasm tend to work well, as do ads with a timely newsworthy hook and/or some thought-provoking text.

Some of the best blog ads are placed right into the blog, so as appear to be part of the blog itself. These types of ads don’t actually appear to be ads to the casual reader, so they have some extra credibility that you couldn’t get from any ad, no matter how good it is.

Blog ads pricing is all over the place, but is usually priced by CPM, but can be priced by PPC, and rarely PPA. Prices usually go up from $5 CPM to $50 CPM, or range any where from $0.10 – $1 + if you go the PPC route.

Getting started with a blog of your own does not take a lot of technical know-how, and almost none if you use a site like www.blogger.com. Today blogs are spreading across the internet like wild fire and there does not seem to be any sign of abating.