When I first started building websites, I wanted to make money. I am not ashamed to admit this, it's true. I wanted to put up simple websites that would provide the visitors with a little information and a lot of Adsense ad traffic for me. I eventually found out that building more informative, indepth websites worked much better. I also found out that creating the website was the easy part, getting the traffic was the hard part. I have tried several method to get some initial traffic flowing to my sites, PPC Advertising, search engine optimization, newsletter advertisements, blogging, forums, and the like. I was very frustrated with these method because either 1) they produced only small amount of traffic or 2) They take too long to get the amount of traffic I am looking for. Not to mention that some of them can be quite expensive.

After much trial and error I found something that works surprisingly well, is totally free, and produces focused traffic. What I am talking about is discussion groups. Online discussion groups are groups of people that share common interests that prefer to be notified of the latest developments via email. The best part about discussion groups is that most are completely free to join and some have literally thousands of members. All you have to do is join the group and you have permission to send them emails whenever you like!

I know what you are thinking - I'm a spammer! No, I am not advocating spamming. I am advocating that you get involved in these discussion groups. Actually respond to the messages with your honest opinions. The trick to getting the traffic is to put a link to your website in your email signature. This will then be sent out to every member of the group when you post. You are not spamming, you are simply giving people a way to find your website more easily.

Another quick way to get massive amounts of traffic is to join several groups and send them all the same question using the BCC email address field. Ask an honest question about something related to the topic of your website. Two things will happen: 1) you will get a lot of answers to your question which you can use to improve your site content and 2) you will get a ton of traffic for your site from people that are curious about who you are and what you have to offer.

That's it, I wish you the best of luck in marketing your website. Thanks for your time.

Chris Shireman