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You need a strong flow of traffic to your web page if you want to make money from it. Even if you have the most beautiful, sophisticated site on earth, if no one is visiting, you won't make sales or commissions.

We've all heard the adage that it takes money to make money. In the world of the Internet, you do not necessarily have to spend a lot of money to generate traffic. There are a number of ways to generate low cost web site traffic without having to spend what you don't have or can't afford to spend. Some enthusiastic newcomers to the Net have spent a lot of money on advertising and have regretted it later.

There are many ways to develop traffic, but here are five simple techniques to generate low cost and/or free web site traffic that could help you start seeing some activity on your web site. Even if you only get a small percentage of paying visitors compared with your overall traffic, that small percentage can pay off healthy dividends to you if you have a high volume of web site traffic.

Exchange Links with Quality Niche Sites

Link exchanges are a proven way to generate traffic so long as you are receiving strong links from reputable web sites. Rarely will you see a highly-visited site where there is no link to another site or a site linking in. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more public awareness about their sites. If done right, you will see a boost in traffic from other sites. Be careful with your link exchanges. Go for quality, not quantity. For example, if you have a site about auto repair, you don't want to exchange links with a site that is obviously a machine generated site with tons of reciprocal links to bad looking and nonsensical sites.

A big consideration in exchanging links with other web sites is to make sure that the site you are exchanging with has the same general topic as your site. The sites you exchange with should share a common subject so that there is something of interest to your target audience. If the site has a links page, be sure that it is a quality link page that is indexed in the search engines. The link page should be accessible from the index page of the site, not buried in an obscure subdirectory.

Exchanging links with informative web sites can boost 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 strong ranking position in the search engines, you will generate more traffic to your web site without the high costs.

Get Creative with Articles

There are many groups, ezines, article directories and other resources on the Internet which will publish your articles. Writing articles yourself may take time, but it will save money. However, there are many freelance writers who are willing to write for you for a small fee. If you are truly interested in your niche, you will probably want to write your own articles.

Make sure that your articles are relevant to the niche of your site. An example is if you have a site featuring healthy eating. You can write articles about nutrition, cooking or recipes. Write something that you have expertise on so that when someone reads your work, the reader feels that you know what you are writing about and will be eager to visit your site for more information. Writing articles with useful guidelines and tips is an invaluable practice.

Include a resource box at the end of your article that links to your site. Write a little about yourself and your site. If you provide a light, informative and interesting article, people will go to your site for more.

Publish an Online Newsletter or Ezine

At first, newsletter publishing might sound like hard work because of all the content you may need to use to publish an informative publication. However, this is not true. There are many authors willing to provide free articles so long as you provide the author's name and resource in on your newsletter. This provides free advertising for your authors and you get free content.

As your newsletter gets passed around, you can expand your popularity and build an opt-in list of people who regularly visit your site.

Become a Member of a Forum or Community

This traffic building option requires some time but does not involve a lot of effort. You can share your opinions with many online groups and can promote your web site. You can get free advertising when you go to groups that have the same subject or niche as your site.

Follow threads that are interesting and then share your opinion or knowledge. As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site, making it a respected resource that could be visited by many people.

Blog It!

Blogs are a great way to generate web traffic. Like the articles and forums discussed above, blogs are a way to share your expertise. You can submit comments containing your site address to blogs. When doing so, make sure your comment is not 'spammy.' It should be thoughtful and well written, which will build your reputation.

Some services on the Internet allow you to post 'mini articles' or blurbs onto their blogs. This is an easy way to get backlinks to your web page.

If you're more ambitious, you can start your own blog that ties into your niche. For instance, if you have a site offering psychic readings, you can set up a blog about astrology, spirituality, tarot or some other topic that is related to your psychic site.

Obviously, the above five tips are just the tip of the iceberg. But they are easy to do and for the most part, are free.