When you start a business – whether it's an online business, or a brick & mortar type – in order to get sales, and start toward success you must have a steady flow of traffic to your offer.
Without traffic your business is pretty much doomed to fail.
While there are ways to jump start your traffic flow using paid traffic generation techniques many start ups have a limited budget for marketing efforts. Fortunately, at least for those starting a business online, there are inexpensive methods you can use to attract visitors to have a look at what you're selling.
Keep in mind that there's always some type of cost though. You can find traffic while spending very little cash, but you'll necessarily make up for that by spending your time.
There are no ways to build a business without some kind of cost on your part.
The key is to persevere no matter which direction you take.
Methods you'll use to generate traffic on the cheap bring you slow results. They work if you learn them, and use them the right way. But they take time.
So you must be patient.
The best traffic generation method that I've found that doesn't cost in terms of dollars is creating content, and there are many ways to use the content that you create.
The real key to content creation is to be sure that you give knowledge to people who have an interest in the niche you're making the content for. That knowledge must be unique as in only existing in the form you create – in only one place on the internet.
You can re-purpose the information inside, as long as you don't make an exact copy of it.
For instance you might write an article, and publish it on your blog, on an article submission site, or on another person's blog in a similar niche as the article subject – but not at all of those places.
Then you can take the information in that article, turn it into a video and/or audio, and then publish those at sites that accept those file forms. (i.e. youtube.com for videos.)
You can take interesting bits of the article, and post it on a blog with a link to the full article. The same for replies on forum sites that are niche related.
Keep in mind that some forums won't allow you to post links, but they do most often give you a space where you can publish your signature (which can contain a link).
By making your content unique, informative, and highly useful you portray yourself as an expert in your niche.
And the search engines will love you when they find your publications. That will persuade them to send visitors to you.
Another use for your content is writing newsletters. You'll want to expand on the content you publish on your blog, or the submission sites. For the newsletter you'll make it longer – more detailed – so your readers get even more of your knowledge.
If they find value in what you send them they'll stay subscribed, and a happy subscriber is a satisfied customer.
Publish your newsletter on a website, or blog, then email your subscribers the address where they can go read it. Here to, if what you give them holds value, and information that they want, they'll stay to look around your site, and the products you offer.
Creating content is an ideal technique for generating traffic for your offers. Like I said, it takes time and costs in respect to time. But this is a very inexpensive method – monetarily.
If your marketing budget is low, and you need traffic, I suggest you give this technique a try.
