The lifeblood of any internet marketing business is the amount and quality of traffic it gets. Get enough people who are already interested in what you have to offer, and your business will flourish. Try to succeed without traffic, and you are completely alone in the world.

The trouble is, most people just starting out can’t pay for Google Adwords or other paid traffic solutions. That’s ok. There are any number of ways to attract people to come look at your site that cost nothing at all.

The trick is in how you think. Let’s imagine for a moment that you are walking through the mall, and someone stops you to talk to you about their MLM business they want you to join. Would you be interested?

Of course not. You may even call security to come over and take them away. On the other hand, if you know someone who seems to be well off, and has earned your respect, you may actually go to them and ask them how they’ve succeeded in life, and whether there might be a way for you to join them.

This principle works for internet marketing as well. Your goal is to get to know people, and wait for them to get curious enough to come find your sales funnel on their own. People actually love to get involved in projects and buy things. They simply hate to be told what to join or what to buy. If they feel they have thought of it themselves, they’ll not only be more apt to respond in a positive way, they’ll be much more committed to the product or company after they join as well.

So how can we achieve this phenomenon? The concept is really very simple. Give people what they are currently looking for. They will see you as the source for information or help that they need, and come to you when they need a business or product you may be able to provide. You won’t have to sell them anything, they’ll be begging you for the opportunity.

Free traffic is often the best traffic you can get, because people are already looking for what you want to offer them. Here are five of the most powerful methods for getting yourself known, and attracting people to your website.

Craigslist

Craigslist.org is the world’s largest classified ad website. Your goal, of course is to get people to visit your website, but Craigslist has a ton of checks and balances to keep people from simply using them as a traffic source. There are ways to trick Craigslist into sending you traffic, but that’s not the best method. You’ll eventually get caught, and they will block your IP address forever.

A much better method is to find something for free that people will really want. It’s easy to find a free autoresponder or other software to offer people in the free section of Craigslist, and also in the business section. Set up a capture page where people will type in their name and address to be able to download the software. Then you will have a list of people in your autoresponder to email valuable content to.

Don’t just send sales or recruiting messages. Find something that will be useful to them, and add your link at the bottom. Just bear in mind you can only post one ad to one city at a time. If you want to cover more than one city, you’ll have to change both your title and some of the text in order to post another ad somewhere else.

Videos

Videos used to be hard to make, but not any more! You can use your pocket camera to record a short video with sound, or you can just fire up your video camera connected to your computer. Once you’re set up, you need something to say. Identify your target audience, decide what message will generate attraction, speak clearly, confidently, and hold eye contact with the camera. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just have fun, and the people who listen will enjoy it too. Create a clear purpose and call to action. Once you’re video’s done, bump on over to youtube and upload it with some relevant keywords. Be sure you’ve got your web url actually in the video, and also add it to the about section when you upload it. This is one traffic source that will generate leads indefinitely for a one time effort.

Press Releases

Online press releases may seem a little daunting. I mean really, what about you is newsworthy? Believe it or not, people are constantly looking through press releases to fill that small space at the end of their column. They are in a hurry, and have to come up with something fast. Other people simply browse for entertainment. A well written press release will bring in great traffic. Simply write a few paragraphs of newsy content. Decide on a title, Create a summary of 2-4 sentences, add your content and create a call to action. Then submit your release to one of the submission services such as prweb.com.

Blogs

Starting a blog is actually a rather serious commitment. You can get one up and running in 10 minutes or so, but adding valuable content on a daily basis is a major challenge. The plus side is that once your blog is established in Google’s search engines, you will have a stead stream of really targeted traffic.

Find a very specific group of people who you want to target, and think about whether you may be able to do research and write consistently about something they will be interested in repeatedly. You can get detailed information on blogging from the 30 Day Challenge which used to be available only in August, but is now up all year round.

Social Sites

MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, and hundreds of similar sites have given us a ready made platform to attract traffic to our sites. You can make this as complicated or as simple as you like. Some people spend hundreds on custom made profiles etc. and others just type in their name, upload a photo and get started. The secret is to refrain from advertising in a spammy way. Simply let people know who you are and what you do. Add one or two unobtrusive links if allowed, and just get to know people. This is actually the most powerful method in the list here, and I will be posting more info on social sites later. Many people base their entire campaign on one or two social sites alone.

Now, here is the secret. Don’t spread yourself too thin. In fact, you need to choose only one of these methods and do a bit more research on it. Work it until it is bringing you good traffic. Once you have it down, then move on to another method, but don’t try to start more than one at a time, as chances are neither of them will produce results.

Enjoy your success!