How to increase traffic to your website? One of the most popular questions webmasters seek answer to. Search engine traffic is great, but not every website is lucky to get it. Most new websites have no chance to get Google juice.

So, it is necessary to explore other alternatives available out there to increase your traffic. I would like to share one approach that is likely to work with 90% websites. Let’s call it active forum posting. And it works like this:

If you run a website on some topic then you are likely to be a knowledgeable person in that area. You keep track of the major events and news of the industry, you know tips and tricks, you have experience you can share with others.

Your first step in active forum posting is to find 10-15 most popular forums in your niche. You are likely to know and participate in a few, but it is not enough. You need to cover wider audience. To spot this number of your industry forums, you can:

-    check it with www.big-boards.com
-    check it with www.boardtracker.com
-    search Google

OK, now you have a list of those forums. It is time to check if all allow signatures in posts – a few lines of text, usually with website links at the end of posts. Allowed? Good. Not allowed? Delete the forum from your list.

Next step: register with all forums. Choose one ID and password for all forms to make it easier later to participate.

Once you are registered it is time to join discussions. As a rule, if the forums come from one industry they discuss the similar topics and news. It should be easy for you as a knowledgeable person to be helpful and not to spend much time on every forum.

When you have a few posts you are safe to add a signature to be displayed with your posts. If you add a signature from the very start the forums mods may decide that you are a spammer with egoistic self promotion goals.

Now continue posting with all forums you are registered with and keep an eye on your logs: how much traffic comes from this or that forum. The amount of the traffic depends on the quality of your posts so try to share all you know.

Later you can drop some forums or join a few more. In addition to the traffic you will leave links to your website. It is believed that Google discounts forum links, but I have checked my website backlinks and was surprised to discover that Google has counted some from the forums I participated in. And what about Yahoo! and MSN? There is a chance they will count these links.

Summary: forum posting takes time. And remember – you could spend this time to improve your website. But what is the value of the improved website with no visitors? On the other hand this promotion technique does not cost a cent. Just make a test and see if it works in your case.

[tags]forums, affiliate marketing, generate traffic, home business, work from home, google, websites, blogs[/tags]

If you are in affiliate marketing and do not sell any products directly you need some ad network that will help you to generate income from your website. There are a few types of networks (see below): in some cases you can combine all types on a single page, in other cases you are not allowed to place them on one page. Read the network rules to avoid any mistakes – ad networks will close your account if you do not meet their requirements.

CPC:
Cost per click – you get paid each time a visitor clicks on ads placed on your webpages. The ad networks do not disclose the information what % share you will get per click – the income is divided between you and the network. It is rumored Google (Google AdSense – the most popular service from this group) pays 78% to the publisher from the amount received from the advertiser, but the company did not evr confirmed this information.

Google Adsense
Yahoo Publisher Network (Beta)
Chitika
BidClix
BannerBoxes
Adbrite
AdSonar
Clicksor
Searchfeed
Revenue Pilot
Kontera


CPM:
Cost per thousand impressions. You get paid for views, no action on the part of the visitor. You need much traffic to generate substantial income from this type of revenue. For example, one of TribalFusion requirements is 2,000 unique visitors per day.

Tribal Fusion
Casale Media
BurstMedia
RealTechNetwork
ValueClick Media/FastClick
Buds Ad Network
MaxOnline
24/7 Real Media
Bannerconnect
Mamma Media Solutions
Adtegrity
Ad pepper Media
Rightmedia.com
Advertising.com
Accelerator Media
AdSmart
AdAgency1
Interclick


CPA/CPL
Cost per Action – you get commission only if the visitor buys a product or subscribes to a service advertised. This ad model was the most popular a few years back. Now its days are gone. But it depends on the topic of your website – probably it is the best choice in your case.

Linkshare
Commission Junction
ShareASale
WebSponsors
Advertising.com
Azoogle Ads
Maxbounty

[the ad network list via sitepoint.com]

Summary: obviously, web publishers have a choice. But along with that, web publishers are faced with cut throat competition – it is extremely hard to promote sites nowadays. Monetizing your website is important, but your primary task if you run a new website is to focus on its content, incoming links and traffic generation.

[tags] affiliate marketing, adv networks, Google Adsense, Yahoo Publisher Network, Chitika, BidClix, BannerBoxes, Adbrite, AdSonar, Clicksor, Searchfeed, Revenue Pilot, Kontera, Tribal Fusion, Casale Media, BurstMedia, RealTechNetwork, ValueClick, FastClick, Buds Ad Network, MaxOnline, 24/7 Real Media, Bannerconnect, Mamma Media Solutions, Adtegrity, Ad pepper Media, Rightmedia.com, Advertising.com, Accelerator Media, AdSmart, AdAgency1, Interclick, Linkshare, Commission Junction, ShareASale, WebSponsors, Advertising.com, Azoogle Ads, Maxbounty [/tags]

In my post on types of links you can generate to improve your search engines rankings I mentioned the most desired and valuable called Link Bait (I wonder who of applied this term first). I admire those people who are good at making new and new link baits. They do it regularly and naturally it seems it comes so easy. In my previous post I recommend you to check the new affiliate marketing forum Here comes another sample of link bait type of content.

Darren Rowse, a well known person among bloggers, has posted A-Z of Professional Blogging

This short ‘Encyclopedia to successful blogging’ includes:

• blogging tools,
• platforms,
• services
• ways of making money from blogging

Summary: In addition to the value of the post where I have learnt about new things in blogging this is sort of sample how link bait should look. I guess it is a good idea to start a collection of link bait types and then generate similar to your own websites.

p.s. I should also work more at my own original posts – but there is so much great information that is published by others – I simply have no time for that.