by: Ewen Chia
How would you like to exponentially increase your traffic without investing an extra cent on advertising?
Yes it is true and you can do this through a powerful principle known as LEVERAGE.
Using leverage is really about creating momentum. Your ultimate aim should be to create self-sustaining traffic systems which pay you over and over again for a one-time effort.
Whether the traffic source is completely free or not doesn't matter. You can invest time and money and still multiply your results - or you can start with a zero budget and build a steady stream of traffic that outperforms any pay-per-click campaign.
"What then is the secret to leverage?"
The secret to leverage is in the setting up of efficient, self-perpetuating systems. In other words, the foundation is viral marketing.
You invest your time to create a traffic generation tool, set it loose on the world and then let OTHERS do the work for you. You work only once but the system continues to grow and multiply your results.
So, what qualifies as leverage?
Essentially, any system you set up which allows your links and your sales message to propagate online in "word of mouth" fashion. This can be a free report or e-book, an article with your byline and links, a "refer a friend" feature on your web site and even your affiliate program.
However, for these tools to work their magic, you must include one important feature: incentive.
What is the incentive to downloa.d your e-book or become your affiliate? It will come down to either PROFIT or VALUE. You're either paying someone in commissions for their effort or you're offering them valuable information for free.
Understand this one principle and you'll succeed: give first in order to receive later.
With this in mind, here are five no-cost explosive viral leveraging tactics you can put into action immediately:
1. Viral Report Traffic
If you sell information products, it's almost a requirement to have at least one freebie report to give away from your web site. Free reports are common these days, but many are actually doing it wrongly. So you will need to pay extra attention to your incentive to stand out from the crowd.
Allowing others to re-brand your report with their affiliate links is the basic incentive. The advanced incentive comes through increasing the report's inherent value. Your potential customers may find "free" to be incentive enough. However, your real army of traffic multiplication is made up of other webmasters.
Meaning, the more value you put into your report, the more likely they are to earn commissions by giving it away. It's a simple matter of impressing the potential customer enough to give you the sale.
Here's a powerful resource to have if you want to create explosive viral reports fast: http://www.miniebook.com
To rebrand your reports, the best tool I've used to date is "Viral PDF". You can find more information about this powerful software here:
2. Viral Article Traffic
You've likely heard of this a dozen times alrea.dy, and I'm a VERY big fan of this tactic simply because it works. There are actually TWO potential traffic sources built into reprint articles.
Obviously, the first source comes from re-distribution of your articles and clicks on the link in your byline. The other source comes from the search engines themselves.
Think about it for a moment. Every article you write has a theme which is naturally optimized on certain keywords. Yet, rather than wait for your site to rank on these keywords, your article can rank higher than your entire web site on those keywords.
Why? Because the distribution sites you send your article to already have high ranking in the engines! They get more traffic, period, simply because they're larger - but, and this is important, they serve articles similar to yours with similar keywords, creating a greater overall keyword density which the engines reward with a higher ranking.
I've recently created a 17 page report "Lifetime Traffic" that walks you through the entire process of article marketing quickly and easily. Get it from the below link if you haven't yet:
http://instantmarketingsecrets.com/lifetime.htm
3. Viral Subscriber Traffic
How's this for a clever use of resources: leverage the traffic and leads you already have. You've done the work to build your email list to the level it's at now, so why not put it to work for you?
Again, all you need to do is offer an incentive. For example, you could set up a "pseudo-affiliate" program or some form of tracking system and announce to your list that one lucky member can receive a high ticket item from you for free if they can refer X number of new subscribers to your list. All they have to do is sign up and promote a special link you provide to them.
4. Viral Referral Traffic
Consider implementing a "refer a friend" feature on your home page. All you need is a referral script to accomplish this. You'll need to provide incentive to those visitors, however. You might do this by offering a special bonus (separate from what you distribute to newsletter signups) in exchange for the referral.
You could also approach this from an entertainment angle, and offer electronic greeting cards or games. It will depend on the theme of your site.
An easy to customize refer-a-friend script can be found at
http://www.allthescripts.com/page-457105.htm
5. Viral Affiliate Traffic
Affiliate programs are tried and true traffic generators. The profit incentive is built in and you pay nothing for the publicity until an actual sale is made. However, to super charge your affiliate program, you should provide extra incentive to your affiliates. If you can afford to offer a higher per sale commission, then do it.
Allow your affiliates to get the inside scoop on your products before anyone else. Offer them the support and education they require to better market your product and boost their own bottom lines.
Here's another tip, you should consider implementing a multi-tier affiliate program with an attractive incentive plan. This will build your affiliate base like crazy and generate traffic on steroids for your site. This model typically works best for residual programs like http://instantmarketingsecrets.com/pbp.htm
Another ingenious example of viral affiliate traffic is Stone Evans' Plug-In Profit Site. His is one of the first and probably most successful replicable traffic model that rewards people just to give away free money-making sites. You can find Stone's site at http://turnkeymoney.com/plug.htm
The five tactics covered here are relatively simple to set up and implement, but then most marketers do not use them.
Remember to place value and incentive at the center of your campaigns, and watch your traffic multiply on autopilot like an unstoppable explosion!
Copyright 2004 Ewen Chia