Your website ‘door’ is wide open and nobody’s walking in. Here are 5 ways to generate more traffic.

As I entered Grand Central Station a few years ago, I was literally overwhelmed. I wont mention my crowd issues at this point. But suffice it to say that when we walked into the lobby and my mind registered all of those people, everywhere, in one place I had to take a few seconds to regroup. Some sat and some stood. Others were moving through the Station with a purpose and on a mission. No time was wasted.

Wouldn’t it be ‘grand’ if your website generated steady traffic like this? Targeted traffic from every direction with a distinct mission and purpose. Traffic that had in mind the purpose of finding you so they could get help accomplishing a task or reaching their goal.

This is definitely possible. Best of all it can be done for F*R*E*E.

The traffic sources are only limited by where and how you choose to market yourself and/or your products.

Social sites can be effectively utilized to market yourself, your business, or your product. Sites like:

1. Facebook - This is the #2 trafficked site just behind Google. People by the thousands are joining every single day. You do want to remember not to use your personal page to conduct business. But you can create a fan page. Joining groups and talking to like-minded individuals or at least those who have similar interests is a key to this strategy.

2. LinkedIn - This is a professional site. Not one for family pictures and witty statuses. People are about business and professional matters on LinkedIn. You want to respect that and use it to your advantage. The median income of LinkedIn users is ~$109,000 and about 40% of the members are business owners.

3. Youtube - Video marketing is huge. Youtube is another top 3 trafficked site. Whatever can be said with words can be said even better and more readily with a video. People like videos. If you check out youtube you’ll see that the quality of the video is really irrelevant. The content is what matters. Virtually everything you’re looking for can be found on youtube. Why not include your business in the line-up?

4. Twitter - You can update your followers all day long with your tweets. This site currently holds the #5 ranking for amount of traffic. Because it processes millions of tweets daily, it’s a great place for marketing.

5. Article writing - This is one of my favorite. You can write about whatever topic you choose and publish your articles on free article sites, LinkedIn, and/or your blog. Article marketing is great because the written word is eternal. Be sure to have value-based content. Give people what they need. Be concise. Don’t pitch your business in the article, though. Use your resource box for that.

This list is definitely not all-inclusive, as there are many other options. You can use myspace and free classified ads, to name a few more. In each of these aforementioned venues, you have the opportunity to tailor your profile to inform your visitors about you. Be sure to add a nice professional picture of yourself because people like to be able to put a face with a name.

All of this generated traffic is to be sent to your primary site. You want to be sure to update it regularly and make it inviting and easy to maneuver. Driving traffic to an outdated site is like marketing suicide.

Arlissa Pinkelton

Find Out The 7 Mistakes Most Network Marketers Are Making And How To Do It Right And Increase Your Leads. Arlissa Pinkelton is a leader in the area of Internet Marketing Via Social Sites. You can find additional articles on this subject written by her at Arlissa Pinkelton Blog.

Is it true that any kind of traffic will help you to succeed online? Unfortunately the answer is “no”. You can’t simply afford to make this mistake, and you do not need all the traffic that could be thrown at you at “discount”. Quite too often discounted traffic is nothing more that auto-hits, or in other words, hits automatically generated on some server through the use of back-end scripts. Those hits can mess up your stats since you’ll be thinking you’re getting a lot of real visitors and no conversions. And you might even change the offer that in reality converts with good rate for the real visitors to the offer with low conversion.

The only kind of traffic you are looking for that will work for your business is the targeted website traffic. Ideally, you want website visitors who are already pre-sold, and are ready to buy what you have to offer.

You do not want people who are just browsing the Internet who are not looking for your product or service. In 3 seconds that you have to “make an impression” you will not be able to convince a person who is on the way to buy something different to spend another 20 seconds reviewing your special offers. This type of visitors will not sign for your list. When speaking about visitors, quantity is not always equal quality. So you do not need just a1000 visitors who landed on your site by mistake and can’t wait to go somewhere else. It’s much better to have 10 potential buyers who are at your website because they are looking to obtain something you have.

Hence, your plan should be to acquire targeted traffic only. You need people who are looking for products that your site promotes. You do not won’t people that are looking for free products in your field. You do want people who are actually planning to use the product that you are selling. You want visitors who are interested in what you have to offer.

How to get such kind of traffic? Here are a few thoughts on attracting “hungry” or “interested” visitors:

1. Writing articles promoting your product in such a way that shows how your product will help your potential customers, make their live easier, make them feel at ease, look better, enjoy live more, or supply them with the information that they absolutely need.

2. Advertisement should be placed in the strategic spots popular among the people from your targeted niche. This way your potential customers can see those ads.

3. Posting your link in as many places as you can to increase your website and product visibility. Of course you should watch out for bad neighborhoods and don’t post your links there. And certainly you should avoid link farms. They will only hurt you, and are not trustworthy at all in the eyes of the search engines.

4. Visiting blogs and forums pertinent to your market and placing signatures and comments with your information. Your potential customers hung out there, listen to their questions, they can mention quite a few good spots and forums that you haven’t thought of before. Participate in discussions, offer your expertise through advises. Communicate only on topics that are directly related to your business.

Make sure that all these activities will lead to the opt-in page, so you can capture your customers and visitors information and can continue the dialog with your potential customers and current customers. Communicate with your subscribers on a regular basis sharing useful tips with them. This will increase website traffic and a loyal following of repeated visitors providing more options to generate additional income.