There is a single prime directive you should focus on that is geared toward generating income for your website and internet business – and that is a continuous stream of website traffic visitors. If no one visits your site, how do you expect to collect leads on your capture page? No leads mean nobody to contact through your autoresponder system. Many websites are set up but fail when it comes to driving the traffic.

When setting up your new internet business with a website designed to generate leads, your lead generation strategy will entail a two-pronged approach: paid leads vs. free or low cost methods to generate those leads. Obviously, the more advertising budget you have to spend on leads, the faster you will build your internet business.

When starting out, your available cash for advertising may be limited, that’s fine, start out using these methods until you have some income, then ratchet up the advertising budget when you can afford it.

I recall when one of my mentors first started out in his internet business, he said spent all his available cash on paid advertising. He was told it was what the top gurus swear by, so he followed suit. The problem was he didn’t realize how complex it can get and if you don’t use certain secret methods, you can lose a lot of money before you realize what you were doing didn’t work. At that point, he was forced to use low cost and free methods.

Here’s a secret: Just because you get people to your website, don’t expect them all to sign up with you. Expect very few, in fact. Having this low expectation which is not necessarily a pessimistic view, will actually drive you to focus more on traffic generating efforts as opposed to sitting back and assuming the website alone will do all the work.

1) Reciprocal Links

This is a solid and proven method that will help your internet business. Rarely would you see a site where there is no link to another site. Many webmasters are willing to trade links with one another so that they could produce more public awareness about their sites. You’ll soon experience an upsurge of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

A key factor in exchanging your internet business links with other sites is having the same niche or content as the other sites. They should share a common subject or demographic so that their site and its contents is complimentary to your site and/or your niche.

Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking in search engine results. It is common knowledge that search engines ranks high sites that have inbound and outbound theme-related links. With a good ranking position in the search engines, you will generate more traffic in your website without the high costs.

2) Write and Submit Articles

There are many article directories online that compile articles for every category and subject you can think of. It is free to join the article directories and set up an account. The article directory with the most traffic (most popular) is EzineArticles, so submit to this directory first before any other.

Since you are an expert in the internet business, write articles that produce tips and guidelines to the subject or niche relating to your business. Your purpose is to write in such a way that doesn’t necessarily pitch your primary opportunity so much as your knowledge and helpful advice.

The whole point is to 1) get lots of links out onto other sites (article directories) and 2) compel the readers of your articles to visit your site via your link.

Make sure before you write a lot of articles, you have a strategy for the articles. You will want to identify a specific target group who may be searching for a particular keyword and then write a series of articles centered on that keyword. Then include the keyword in the headline, the description and the first paragraph and repeat it throughout the article but no more than 5% of the total words of the entire article.

3) Create a Blog.

This may sound like duplication of your primary website, but it is a way to leverage all the articles you write for your internet online exposure. A blog could be business based which has content related to your business and industry or it can be more focused on branding you as an individual so that people can get to know you, find out about you and relate to you on a personal level and not just “all business all the time”.

The Blog would have links back to your main site(s) or landing pages. You could make blog posts that are frequently published and then elaborate on these blogs to create informational articles that you post to article directories. You can even set up an opt-in box on your blog so people can subscribe via email list to your posts without having to go directly to your blog site.

4) Broadcast Videos

This strategy will help you get backlinks by cross linking your videos to your other websites and blogs. Videos provide another level of marketing that can convey a certain mood or excitement that is hard to do with written articles. In addition, videos on your website and blog as well as YouTube will add a more interesting visitor experience to the site. Of course, if you don’t feel you come across effectively on camera, then consider using screen capture type videos instead by using flash movies or how-to videos using your desktop.

5) Social Media

Do not neglect to get a Facebook account. If you can add Twitter, do so. Make sure you take the time to set up your profile properly. Be authentic and don’t come across as just trying to promote your business. Share and contribute as you add fans and followers. Join groups to leverage your presence. You can also set up a widget so that your blog posts are automatically posted to your social media pages, saving time and adding content. There will come a time when if you don’t have a Facebook account, you will be seen as out of touch, so be savvy and start up a page and keep it updated.

So those are five fairly fundamental methods for attracting visitors to your sites. Knowing all of the components of driving traffic is one thing, but having a systematized approach will target the traffic to your website in a manner that is known as a marketing campaign. A campaign is a strategic plan that you develop in advance of getting out all your links, targeting specific websites to drive traffic to and knowing where the traffic is coming from so that you can test the results and effectiveness of your campaign.

By: Lana Dee Leslie