There are a lot of ways to get the word out about your site, whether you're trying to sell something, have a new game hack, coded a way cool unix tool, or whatever. You want people to come and look.

Any newer techniques will be appearing on my How to Build Your Website blog.

So here are some ways to get the word out:

• Get listed in the search engines. If you can get your site on the first or second page of google then you'll have plenty of people coming to visit. Here are some search engine tips on what to do before you submit your site.
  
  
• Put up pages on remote sites such as Squidoo.com and Hubpages.com and include a link back to your site. If you make quality pages on those remote sites then traffic will happen.
  
  
• Commenting on blogs can get some traffic, if you write a good comment, appropriate to the page you're looking at. I get, and delete, a lot of spam comments that are in no way appropriate to the topic of the page and are little more than spun gibberish.
  
  
• Write good articles and get them posted on sites such as EzineArticles and StreetArticles. Get a few of those links and then anything you post on your site or blog should appear in Google within hours.
  
  
• Join a blog network and get lots of automated keyword links back to your site(s.) You can even get free content, though you'll probably have to re-write most of it. This is vastly superior to getting reciprocal links.
  
  
• Free URL Submit tips. Google and the other engines won't find you unless you get some links to your sites. Here's some information on how and where to submit your URL to the Search Engines, FFAs, bulletin boards, and more!  
  
  
• Buy traffic. You can buy ads on google, overture.com, and a number of other search engines. You only pay when people click on your ad. If you want to know how these PPC search eangines work, go here.
• To buy a nifty ebook which will show you how to make google's adwords (and other PPC programs) work, go here. Or you can get that book as a bonus by joining Wealthy Affiliate.
  
  
• Traffic exchanges. These are usually free, but you can pay to upgrade and get a lot of bonus goodies. The idea is that you, and the people you refer, look at member sites or ads and your site or ad is added to the general circulation. You follow the program and get free website traffic. Some people have had very good results with these. The two big ones seem to be TrafficSwarm and InstantBuzz.
  
  
• Allan Gardyne, who's newsletter you should subscribe to if you're into affiliate programs, has a PDF called 77 Traffic Tips. 100% free and the tips are really good.
  

Email

Spam! Well, not really. All the legit marketers and email systems (Aweber, Getresponse, 1shoppingcart, others) add the sender's contact info and include working links to opt out of the system. The spam emails have neither. If you join a list then it isn't spam when they send you email. Don't like the content? Opt out.

The fact is that email is still, and will be for a long time, a perfectly legit means to communicate with your customers and people who want your info. Are you a lean, mean, "all code should be free" coding machine? Cool. Let people opt into your list and send them free code snips and references to other cool code pieces and tools. 

Here's a quick overview of how autoresponders work.

RSS feeds are a great way to get the word out, too, but for those it helps to have a blog. Make a prominent "rss feed" link and then people, like me, will grab it and put it on our feeds page to keep track of your posts.

You can also go to Feedburner.com (owned by Google) and make a "subscribe to this blog by email" form. Anyone on that list will get your new posts by email.

If you want to know how to make money with your list then here's the book by the Wealthy Affiliate group. These guys have been around for awhile and make a boatload of money.  

If you're going to doing a newsletter or any business emailing than you'll want to offload the technical chores to the experts. Aweber has been around for many years and is the #1 choice for a lot of people. They only do email so they have to do it right. Great price and great features. Get yours now.

Getting Paid

There are a ton of places that will let you put their ads on your site. You get paid when people either click on the ad (adsense,) click through and fill out a form, or click through and buy something. I've found that using these ads has really helped my income from my site. Here are places that I use.

Clickbank.com
You'll see Clickbank's name mentioned a lot, and for good reason. Clickbank's been around for many years and is extremely reliable with payments. They are a digital marketplace for all kinds of ebooks, software, and other digital products (no hard goods.) A buyer buys the product and can have it in minutes. Another big advantage is the built in affiliate program. Here's a post on how to use clickbank.

CJ.com
The biggest of the affiliate networks. Sign up and then choose from many different merchant's products to display on your site. Some programs have automatic approval, others will look at your sites first. CJ offers text, banner, and other types of links. Vendors include: Gifttree, Golfstore, Ultimate Promotion, Virtual Stampede, Monitor Mall and many others.

LinkShare.com
Similar to CJ.com. Earn money from hundreds of advertisers.

ShareAsale.com
Another one that's similar to the above two.

CBmall
Read this before you even consider CBmall. While CBmall is a slick system that lets you browse through the thousands of ebooks in the clickbank marketplace, there are a couple of things to know, first.

Your attitude towards you goals will greatly affect your outcome. If you want people to come to your Myspace page, your hacks site, your way cool code snips, or your sales page it helps if you get your goals in the right place. You can use various goal setting techniques if you need them or follow whatever plan works for you.

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