Title: My Advertising Budget Looks Like a Shoe String Word Count: 798 Summary: An aphorism used saying it takes money to make money. And it is obviously true in case of starting a business. A business cannot be started without a capital. And after starting it, you require money to expand it too. But now, with the coming of the internet, many ways have sprung up using which it is possible to expand your online business, or more specifically speaking, generating traffic to your site, without spending even a cent. Keywords: internet advertising, website promotion, advertising on the internet, advertising, free advertising, free methods of advertising, site promotion, free site promotion Article Body: An aphorism used saying it takes money to make money. And it is obviously true in case of starting a business. A business cannot be started without a capital. And after starting it, you require money to expand it too. But now, with the coming of the internet, many ways have sprung up using which it is possible to expand your online business, or more specifically speaking, generating traffic to your site, without spending even a cent. In the internet, you will find many ways to jumpstart traffic flow to your site, most of which are paid services. There are, however, free methods too to generate traffic. These, when used alone or more profitably in conjunction with other paid services, can help generate more and more traffic. To use these free methods, however, you need a lot of perseverance and hard work. However, remember that the free methods are not going to work like miracles and get you huge traffic overnight. If you do not have the patience for that, you are better off spending money on advertising and banners. But if you like challenges and would like to generate traffic to your site without spending for it or if you would like to have the maximum traffic possible, then the following guidelines are for you to follow- Message Boards Talk about your products on online forums and communities. The best thing about forums is that you can choose a forum or a part of the forum where you feel like getting the right type of people who would buy your products. There, you can discuss about lots of things about the niche that you represent or your special offers. Another great advantage is that you know what you are getting into and you can go prepared. With online communities, you can build up your reputation for your company. You have to impress the people by showing your expertise about the subject and your knowledge about it. The more reputation you have, the more is the chance of people buying your products. Newsletters You can also make use of newsletters. You should provide people with a catalog of your products and highlight interesting and entertaining products. If you make it really interesting and entertaining, more people will sign up for your newsletter and recommend it to other people. The more people who signs up for your newsletter, the more people will go to your site and increase your traffic. Link Exchange You can also trade links with other similar sites. For this, you don’t have to spend a cent. All you have to do is reach an agreement with another webmaster. With exchanging links, both sites will benefit each other by redirecting traffic. All the traffic that goes to one site could potentially click on the link of the other site and visit the other site as well. This works well especially when both sites feature the same niche. Write Articles Try writing articles that features your product. This could catch the attention of people that have interest in your product. Try writing articles that will provide tips and guides to people that might be interested in your product. Writing articles that provide good service and knowledge to other people would generate a little more traffic. Many sites offer free posting of your articles. Write and submit articles to such sites and do not forget to add a link to your website at the bottom of the article. If people find interest in your articles, they might go to your website and buy one or two of your articles. Fill your site with content that is optimized for search engines. Many search engines track down the keywords and keyword phrases that your site uses and how they are used. It is not always necessary that the content should be made by a professional content writer. You can write the content on your own, but try to make it entertaining as well as informational. It should be easily comprehensible and people should be able to easily find what they are looking for. Generally, internet users use search engines to find what they are looking for. Search engines in turn use keywords to rank their search results. If you use the right keywords, you could get high rankings in search engine results without any costs. If used correctly, all of these methods will drive more traffic to your site for free. All it takes is a bit of effort and a little time. You are free to learn all you can about the methods depicted here and you can also research some more on your own. Using such techniques, you can soon have a site with a great traffic flow without spending on costs that usually come with it.