There are several low or no cost ways to drive traffic to your blog or business.   If you have an online business, you need a blog.  This helps people get to know you and your products in a more personal way.  Also, don’t underestimate the power of video blogging (vlogging.)  My friend recently sold me some innovative hair clips.  I had seen them on her website and wasn’t that interested until she showed me how they worked.  A vlog showing new hairstyle tips and tricks featuring the clips will have the same affect but reach hundreds or thousands of people instead of just one.  I can see this idea applied to cooking supplies, decorating items, craft supplies, cosmetics….don’t just tell us, show us.

Before driving traffic to your site, make sure it is ready.  Otherwise all that traffic will be wasted.  To be ready, make sure your site looks great and is easy to navigate with good content and eye catching photos.  Have a welcome page for your new visitors.  If they will be coming from a specific place (like the 700 Club) then make it personal to that venue.  And have a lead capture portion with a great giveaway to your site so you can keep track of who is really interested.  On this site the lead capture is the newsletter subscription with a cleaning recipe giveaway reward for signing up.  The subscribers get a weekly email full of helpful content and no pushy sales.  This keeps most of the subscribers from removing themselves from the list and helps them not forget this resource is available.

1.  Add a link with a short description or motto in your email signature.  Then be active on online groups (such as yahoo groups) where the content is related to your business.  This is not the same as spamming.  You are not actively promoting your business, just offering helpful conversation with the group and having the link there as a passive invitation.

2.    Have a facebook page for your business or blog and invite friends to like it. Set up your blog to automatically post to your facebook page.

3.  Have a twitter account for your business.  Set up a feed to automatically tweet when you update your blog.

4.  Upload helpful videos to Youtube with a link back to your site.  You do not need to have a fancy video camera to do this. 

5.  Write guest posts for blogs with related content that are receiving good traffic.

6.  Offer giveaways on other blogs.

7.  Buy ads on other blogs.  Look for blogs with great traffic and that offer perks, such as end of the post links, monthly features, group giveaways only for advertisers,  or a feature post with 3 months of advertising.  I once took a risk and purchased 3 months of advertising on a popular blog for $300.  It came with a guest post opportunity.  That $300 earned me $1000 a day for the first week! 

8.  In short, be everywhere.  Be on facebook, twitter, Youtube, all over the popular blog world.  Google your own name.  The first page should be covered with all of the places you’ve been.  Find where your target market hangs out and be there too.