Wednesday, December 12, 2007

5 Top Places to Maximize Your Traffic and Sales for Free!

Do you want more traffic and sales to your site?

If so, do you want to know how to take full advantage of the internet to get your sales message out there without having to spend thousands of dollars?

There are thousands of high traffic sites on the Internet where you can market for free. The trick is finding these sites and using them effectively to market your business online.

Your best weapon in finding these sites is Alexa. You can use Alexa, http://www.alexa.com, to search by topic and compare stats on sites, as well as get the traffic ranking of a site.

The point of marketing on high traffic sites is that the more visitors a site has, the more likely you are to be seen. The more you are seen, the more likely someone will click through and visit your site.

Marketing on high traffic sites isn't enough though. The traffic has to be targeted. By targeting your market, and marketing on high traffic sites, you can quickly multiply your traffic and sales.

To get you started, I've included five of the top sites on the internet, with tips on how to market your site effectively so that you can increase your traffic and sales.

1. Yahoo - http://www.yahoo.com
2. MSN - http://www.msn.com
3. Google - http://www.google.com

According to Alexa, these are the top three sites respectively. Although you should make sure that you submit your site to their search engine spiders, which is free, there is a better way to market on these sites.

It's called Groups.

Yahoo Groups - http://www.yahoogroups.com
MSN Groups - http://groups.msn.com
Google Groups - http://groups.google.com

You'll find thousands of groups at these sites where you can post your articles, advertise your ezines, and submit free classfieds. You'll also find discussion groups on just about any topic you can imagine, and unlike forums, you can conveniently read and reply to messages in your email.

You can share information and build relationships with potential customers. The beauty of these sites is that they spider each other. Yahoo also uses RSS, which can give you an opportunity to become syndicated, especially if you write articles.

Your promotions can quickly become viral.

4. Ebay - http://www.ebay.com - If you sell products and services on Ebay, you can use your About Me page to offer a subscription to your ezine, as well as advertise your website.

You need to follow the instructions on Ebay when using this feature. Build a relationship with both your customers and fellow Ebay marketers. If you haven't considered marketing here, you definitely want to consider marketing it because this site gets over eight million hits a month. Tips For Bloggers

5. Myspace.com - http://www.myspace.com - Although this site considers itself to be noncommercial, and it has strict rules about promoting your products and services, this is an excellent place to network.

You'll find blogs, groups, free classifieds, and forums. You can send and receive email and private messages. There's a search function that allows you to find others with your interests.

As long as you take the time to get to know the site and follow the rules, you can effectively promote your business here by networking with others. You'll need an account, but it's free. You won't be allowed to post for the first seven days, but this is to keep spammers out.

In fact, there are currently over 2,800 business groups here, some with thousands of members, and you can post quite a bit of information in your profile.

If you're on a shoestring marketing budget, you can use these high traffic sites to help you increase traffic and sales to your site.