As a solopreneur, one ingredient you need for a successful online business is traffic… and lots of it! But there are so many websites out there, all competing for the same traffic, that it can be difficult to attract visitors to YOUR website!

Today, I’d like to share with you my top five strategies for attracting highly targeted visitors:

1. Offer a Free Taste

Your free taste is something that you give to someone in exchange for them giving you their name and email address, and signing up to your list. Your free taste is also your chance to show off your expertise, and give your new subscriber a sampling of what it is you offer.

It must be something of value to your subscriber, without giving away the whole shop!

Then you simply promote your free taste on your website, in your email signature, in your Resource Bio, and any other place you can think of! Place a call to action and people will read it, and click through to your website to get what it is you’re offering.

2. Get Others To Promote Your website For You

If you have products and programs for sale then you can easily get other people to promote them for you by offering an affiliate program. People will sign up to your affiliate program and promote your products and programs through their website, newsletter, and/or blog. In exchange you offer them a percentage commission for each sale that your affiliate makes – and make it a generous commission so that they have a real incentive to promote you.

If you’re currently using a shopping cart service, check out everything they have to offer – they may have an affiliate program included as part of their service. Mine does!

3. Participate in a Joint Venture (JV)

This is an excellent way to drive highly targeted traffic back to your website, and very easy for you to organize. Gather together some of you colleagues who offer complementary products and services to you and agree to promote each other’s products and services to your list.

I participated in a joint venture earlier this year where the organizer created a dedicated web page for this promotion. Everyone’s promotional ‘blurb’ was listed on the website, and each ‘joint venturee’ sent an announcement out to their list during a specified period directing their subscribers to this webpage. I got a TON of new subscribers as a result!

4. Article Marketing

This is one of my all-time favorites… one of the most successful and cost effective online marketing strategies you can do is to submit your articles to various online article submission websites. This is a great way to:

* promote your services;

* elevate you to ‘expert’ status within your chosen niche; and

* grow your subscriber list.

It has been well documented that one-way links to your website increase search engine rankings more than reciprocal linking, and article submission is an excellent way to achieve one-way linking. It works by creating backlinks to your website, which the search engines love! With each article you submit, you include a resource box that contains information about you, your business, and an active hyperlink back to your website, newsletter sign up page, product, or special offer – you choose where you want to direct your readers. For example, my resource box directs readers to my newsletter sign up page.

5. Host a Free Teleclass

Hosting a free teleclass is a great way for you to get out in front of your target audience. They actually get to listen to you presenting your information, and have the opportunity to ask you questions on the call – all of which can’t be achieved just by writing articles!

And it also gives you to chance to interact with your target market, and find out valuable information about their struggles and pains. It all goes towards building the like, know, and trust factor that is so important when building a solo service business.

All of these strategies work well on their own, and I’ve had a huge amount of success with each one of them! You can choose to implement just one strategy, or use a combination. Whichever you choose, they all achieve the same goal… to drive highly targeted traffic to your website!

Online Business Manager & Virtual Assistant, Tracey Lawton, supports professional speakers, coaches, and authors to operate an efficient, organized, and profitable business. Learn how to create an efficient and organized office in 7 EASY steps, and receive free how-to articles at http://www.OfficeOrganizationSuccess.com.

• 2 Comments

  

Comments

Hey, great post! One way to get good traffic is to title a post the way you've title this one! Great article.

 Posted by: Brandon at October 25, 2008 8:14 PM

Tracey
Good post. I agree with absolutely everything you recommended. I have recented began offering free teleclasses again.
Thanks
Donna

 Posted by: Donna Amos at October 26, 2008 2:21 AM

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