Having a web site itself is not enough if no one is going to visit it. Hence, being able to generate traffic to one’s web site becomes important. There are many ways to generate traffic to a web site but the key thing to note is that you only want to generate targeted traffic. The reason is simple: Untargeted traffic is useless!

There are countless ways to get traffic to your web site. Some ways are time-tested and proven to work. Some are newer ways that sprung up along the way as the Internet evolves. With all the talks about Web 2.0, new ways of generating traffic are popping up every single day as new ideas online became popular.

What most people are interested to know about are free ways to generate traffic to their web sites. While there are paid and effective ways to get traffic to a web site, not every individual or business has the marketing budget to spend on doing paid online advertising such as Pay-Per-Click advertising etc.

The focus of this series of Traffic Generation articles will be mainly on using free methods to generate free and targeted traffic. I am writing this series of articles based on my first-hand experience of using these free methods to generate few hundreds opt-ins to my newsletters, several hundred dollars of online profits to one of my web site projects within 2 months of using them. These methods really work but the key is for you to consistently apply them and do it on a continuous basis.

If you are not willing to spend money on getting traffic, then spending your time is the next best thing to do. Nothing spectacular ever drop from the sky for any one, most of the time. If you disagree, I welcome you to prove to me otherwise, on a perpetual basis, that everything drops from the sky for you every single time.

Here are the various free traffic generation methods that I adopt. They are not exhaustive of what one can do because there are really many other ways of getting traffic:

1. Find and do postings on relevant forums (make use of your signature to do the marketing, or write it in your forum posting. However, do not do blatant advertising. This will not get you anything except bans from forum moderators.)

2. Find and do postings on relevant blogs

3. Put comments on YouTube videos. If you are more IT-savvy, create your own videos and upload them onto youtube.com. You can try Google Video as well. Remember to link back to your own site.

4. Create a MySpace.com profile and use it to gain online exposure. Post your comments on myspace videos, blogs, friends’ profiles etc. Add friends to your MySpace.com profile.

5. Find free classified ads and do your free ads posting.

6. Sign up for social bookmarking sites such as http://www.del.icio.us, http://www.simpy.com, http://www.diigo.com etc and put your bookmarks online to share with everyone.

7. Sign up for free memberships at Web 2.0 web sites such as www.stumbleupon.com, www.squidoo.com, www.thisnext.com and exploit the power of word-of-mouth and social networking/collaboration sites to drive traffic.

8. Sign up at articles directories as a writer/author, write your articles, then submit your articles to them. Get ready for your articles to be plastered all over the Internet to drive traffic to your web site.

I welcome you to apply those traffic strategies above because they work well.

To help you people know what it is like to set up an Internet business, I have written this post here to give you an idea on what to expect. These are the typical cost of starting an Internet business:

1. Domain name from a domain registrar = under USD$10 per year

2. Reliable hosting from a web host = USD$10 per month ($120 per year)

3. Professional Web Design = USD$200-$500 (one time design work excluding maintenance fees)

4. Professional Autoresponder = under USD$20 per month

The above easily works out to a total cost of at least USD$570 to $870. This may be a lot of money for newbies.

However, if you are willing to listen to me and continue reading, I will show you how you can do the same for about USD$300 or less, depending on how much you are willing to spend on setting up an Internet business. You can even do it for under USD$100. (Some of you may be thinking of using free resources, I am actually able to guide you through that too but I will not do it because using free resources will often cause you to end up spending more money on fixing problems that many of these free resources will throw at you. I do not want you to repeat the mistakes of many others. Sometimes, money have to be spent to save yourself from all the nonsense and trouble. Remember this: Never go find Trouble, if Trouble never come and find you)

Sign up with this web host that I am recommending here and you can save on your annual domain fee. On top of that, you can even save on web design costs and I will show you how you can get a professional looking web site/blog up in under 1 hour even if you do not know anything about HTML or FTP. Also, you will be given PPC advertising credits of between USD$50 to USD$100 if you want to take it up.

This is what you can get for less, if you follow my instructions above:

1. Domain name from a domain registrar = FREE

2. Reliable hosting from a web host = USD$6.95 – $7.95 per month

(between USD$83.4-$95.4 per year, depending on how long you sign up for the package)

3. Professional Web Design = FREE

4. Professional Autoresponder = USD$17.95 per month

(USD$145.40-$215.10 per year, depending on how long you sign up for the package. This is optional but very highly recommended because it helps to automate your Internet business)

Following my instructions on this post, you can start up a professional Internet business the right way up for only USD$240.80. However, if you are really on a tight budget, then you can get started for USD$95.40 without the autoresponder.

If you need help, please contact me via this blog so that I can help you set up your site for you if you are willing to sign up using my special link so that I can get compensated by the web host for my referral. I think this is a win-win situation for you and me.

My mentor Stephen Pierce mentioned about the importance of one’s mindset in doing Internet Marketing. I found it to be very true as most people gave up halfway before they can achieve anything worthwhile online.

I have learned one very important thing from Stephen, that is to focus, be persistent and patient.

If any one of you are reading this now and you think that you are not achieving the results that you want online, please persevere on. You will see the light at the end of the tunnel if you continue driving. But if you give up, you know what will happen to you. At best, it will only affect yourself. At its worst, you could be affecting all the others behind you. Does this make sense to you?

Technical and marketing knowledge is easy to acquire. You can even outsource them. Mindset, however, on the other hand, is harder to be trained and the unfortunate part of it is that you cannot outsource your brain to someone to think and internalise stuff for you.

During the World Internet Summit 2007 in Singapore, Ewen Chia mentioned about himself shamelessly promoting himself on the Internet when he was doing Internet Marketing. This is something that I did not want to do for many years in the past. However, I decided to make a change today. If it is working well for him in terms of branding himself online, then I guess I can take a good lesson from him. After all, he is the one that is making millions online, I am not. Not yet I mean but I can do it.

My short term goal for the next 6 months is to earn my first USD$10,000 online this year, excluding those money that I have made online prior to 2007. Looking at my results this year so far, it may be possible. Just from one program alone, I have generated USD$65+ in April, USD$383+ in May, and USD$108+ in June so far. This excludes the other programs that I am promoting so far this year. Conservatively, all the other programs should add up to a few hundreds US dollars in pure profits for me. Not bad for a start.

I have done up this special report for you guys:

You can view and/or download the report at http://donaldlim.com/downloads/googlemoney.pdf

If you like it, please leave your comments here.

Thank you

Doing FTP is easy.

FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. Basically it is to transfer computer files from one computer to the other. For example, you have a web site and you have done some changes to your existing web pages. For others to view your updated web pages on the Internet, you need to transfer those web pages onto your server. This process of files transfer from your computer/notebook to the server is commonly known as FTP. You can use FTP software to do this. There are many such FTP software available on the Internet. Some are free, some are not.

Here is a link to a free video that shows you how to perform FTP using a free FTP software called SmartFTP:

http://www.donaldlim.com/freevideos/how-to-ftp

If you want to register a domain name yourself, please check out this link:

http://www.donaldlim.com/freevideos/how-to-register-domain

The video will show you how to register a domain name with Godaddy.com!

Just in case you do not know, domain names are cheap and it costs less than USD$10 per domain per year!

Google has a very popular revenue-sharing program known as AdSense. It is a fast and easy way for web site publishers of all sizes to display relevant Google advertisements (ads) on their web site’s content pages and earn money from Google.

Because the Google ads are related to what your visitors are looking for on your web site (or matched to the characteristics/interests of the visitors that your web pages content attracts), you finally have a way to both monetise and enhance your content pages to make some money from Google online.

It is also a way for web site publishers to provide Google web and site search functionalities to their site visitors, and at the same time, to earn some money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages.

Google also provides many tools for their publishers to increase traffic, provide smart analytics, or add interactivity to their web sites when you are accepted into their program.

How does it work? Read full story »

Hi all,

Do you know that you can make money on the Internet legally? Do you also know that you can actually make money online even if you DO NOT have any product, web site or mailing list? Sounds impossible, but it is true and many people are doing it without you even knowing! And why should you believe me? Because I have already tested it and made a few hundreds dollars online without my own product and mailing list! If you want to see my cheques, please contact me and I will be happy to show you!

OK, let’s get started!

So, you have heard of “word-of-mouth” marketing I believe? If not, then never mind, let me explain to you in simple terms. Assuming you saw the movie “Spiderman 3″ and you liked it so much that you started telling every single friend about it to go and watch it. So, your friends did but what do you get in return? Does the movie company pays you for referring each of your friends to go watch “Spiderman 3″? You and I know the answer, the answer is ‘NO’.

Now, the Internet has a proven business model, similar to what the offline world called the “word-of-mouth” marketing. The online world called it “affiliate marketing”. Basically, you get paid by a company for referring a buyer to buy their products and/or services. For example, Amazon is using this affiliate marketing business model as well. When you put a banner on your own web site and someone clicks on your banner to go directly to Amazon’s web site to buy a book, Amazon will pay you for referring that buyer. It is that simple!

There are countless of such affiliate programs on the Internet and you can sign up to be part of such affiliate programs. Some of these affiliate programs will impose a fee for a person to sign up as an affiliate. But MOST of the affiliate programs will allow you to sign up for free and start promoting their products/services.

Also, I must let you know that some of these affiliate programs pay you recurring commissions for referring a customer to them. So, you just need to refer a customer one time and get paid a lifetime as long as the customer remains a customer with the company. This is especially true for companies that provide services to the marketplace.

In my opinion, this is the easiest way to start making money online even if you are a newbie. How much you can earn from affiliate programs will depend on many factors including your own motivation, the selection of good affiliate programs, how creative you can be with your marketing etc. But one thing is sure, you can make money online using affiliate programs.

One of the best affiliate marketer in the world happens to be Ewen Chia, a Singaporean, who was recently featured in the local newspaper The Sunday Times. Ewen has quietly made millions in sales on the Internet in the past and now he is out to teach average individuals like you and me to make a living online. I have been to his events a few times in the past and this humble guy knows what he is talking about! If you want to learn affiliate marketing, Ewen is the guy to go to!

Hi Friends,

Many people are skeptical about making money online. I think the reasons are simple:

1. They do not know how to do it, so they say that it cannot be done.

2. They are not taking action on the right things and they are not focusing on the right things to see the results that they want, so they say that it cannot be done.

3. They are too lazy or too busy to make it work and when they see someone claiming to make money online, they have this lousy feeling inside of them and they start to throw out all the negatives inside them onto others in order to vent their frustrations. Tens of thousands of people online have started making money, some of them even made their millions online, and yeah you are right, money cannot be made online, but this only holds true for you, and only you.

Starting today, I am going to share with everyone who is motivated enough to learn about some of the proven ways to make money online.

Just like the offline world, there are some proven business models that the online world has to offer to you to help you make some money online and I will be talking about them. I have already made some money from them as part of my testing campaigns to shut up those people who keep telling me that money cannot be made online. Yeah, you are right, you cannot make money online. Not me. Period! Full Stop!