Back before the dot-com crash, it used to be easy to find free methods for advertising your website. Many companies offered promotion opportunities at no cost in order to gain market share, popularity, or name recognition.

Things have changed.

The larger sites that "gave away the farm", so to speak, ended up not surviving when things got tough. The vast majority of major sources of free promotion dried up in mid 2000.

Since then, advertisements for free traffic are everywhere. The problem is, you'll find that the vast majority of these programs are a waste of time. Many of these free sources require you to spend your precious time surfing other people's sites, or promoting a matrix or MLM program.

The one exception I've found to this rule is a traffic exchange called Traffic Roundup. You can find it at http://www.trafficroundup.biz If you don't have the time to "surf" for credits, you can buy traffic and banner impressions really cheaply. I recommend the "PRO" level of membership at a measly $5 per month.

There are STILL good methods of promoting your site on the web for free, though. One such method, if you have the time to set up these accounts, is to get free signup bonus accounts from small Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines.

These small PPC search engines don't have enough bidders to cover all the keywords available; so they are desperate for bidders! They'll usually give you a $5, $10... or even $25 and $50 free balances in your account when you sign up.

You won't see a lot of traffic from these little guys, but if you sign up for a TON of them, they can be a substantial source of traffic for your site!

The best list I know of for these PPC search engines is in the ODP. The URL for the category is ridiculously long... so just search for "Pre-Funded PPC Accounts" at http://www.dmoz.org You can find more of these small PPC search engines by searching at the other various search engines with the same search phrase.

As an owner of a small PPC search engine and Web Directory, I can also "chip in" to your efforts with a $10 free account at my search engine - SearchSpot.com. Here's the link: http://www.searchspot.com/cgi-bin/bidsearch/signup.cgi?free=1

Speaking of Web Directories, they can also be a nice source of free traffic for your site. Many Web Directories offer free inclusion of your site in their Directories, though you may have to wait a while to be included.

Search Engine Optimization is another way to get free traffic to your site from the free search engines on the Web like Yahoo and Google.

I've outlined the basics of SEO on my site: http://www.webmarketingguide.com. The basics are easy, and can result in some serious traffic, depending on your site's subject area and the competitiveness of the field.

So if you have some time to use these resources, you should have a nice flow of free traffic to your site in no time!

To Your OnLine Success!

Nathan Anderson