According to the goto.com search engine, in September of 1999, there were 51,103 people who searched for the keyword "free." The related term "free stuff" was typed in by 33,556 visitors .
Fast forward to today. goto.com is now overture.com and the keyword searches have skyrocketed.
In August 2002, there were 1,163,251 people who searched for the keyword "free." The related term "free stuff" was entered 236,611 times.
It just goes to show, some things never change, the power "free" is alive and kicking.
Something for nothing is a universal passion and successful webmasters are aware of this aspect of human psychology. A very effective method to increase your customer base is giving something away. The following are several popular items that will draw people to your site and keep them returning:
1) Through the magic of javascript, you can have daily quotes, weather and a world clock displayed on your website. The beauty is, people do not click off your site to get this information. They can stay at your site and still see your services and opportunities. Since quotes and weather are very popular search items, consider adding this feature to your site. This is a free service offered by
http://www.onyoursite.com
2) Join a program that enables you to offer your visitors free software, free e-mail, contests, sweepstakes,
vacations , gift certificates and other merchandise. Two companies that do this are:
http://www.cyberbounty.com
http://www.websponsors.com
They require that you already have 350 visitors a day in order to be accepted as an affiliate. You also are paid a small bounty fee each time someone fills out a form and this itself can be a nice revenue. If you do not have enough traffic to be accepted, http://www.clickxchange.com is a company that may be more appropriate.They have less stringent requirements and will pay you for clicks, leads and sales received from your website. You can offer free travel resources, jokes, or newsletters from all the sites listed above.
3) The latest craze is to give away e-books from your website. E-books are electronic books, usually in .exe
or .pdf files. Just like regular books, e-books cover a wide range of topics. One of the big advantages of
e-books is the ability to use hyperlinks to send readers to your website, an affiliate site, or anywhere else on
the web.
E-books can be downloaded from your own website or offered to other webmasters as freebies to be downloaded from their sites. If you are interested in compiling your own e-book the following resource will be helpful:
http://www.neosoftware.com
http://www.smartcode.com
http://www.webcompiler.com
http://www.bersoft.com
If you write your own e-book, be sure to have it listed at the many websites that have e-book libraries for their visitors. Each person who downloads your e-book will be getting the url to your website within the book and can click to your site while reading it. You can get a free e-mail course that tells you how to create an e-book in 10 days. Just send an e-mail to:
mailto:timsinnerfreedom@sitesell.net
4)The word "Jokes" is a very popular search term. "Joke of the Day " Newsletter has over 37,000 subscribers. You can start an online newsletter (also called "ezine") that focuses on your website's content. Then promote your website in your ezine to increase your traffic and sales.
Then list it at the following free directories:
http://www.liszt.com
http://www.bestezines.com
http://www.e-zinez.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
Ezines, unlike e-books are not files that one downloads (ie zip or exe files), but are sent via e-mail to
subscribers.
If you don't have the background yourself or the time to write a newsletter you can always do interviews. For
example, each week you can have a recipe from a popular restaurant. Call a number of restaurants and you'll find that if you give them credit they will allow you to print one of their top recipes in your newsletter.
Once you have a number of subscribers, you can trade ads with other ezines and/or sell ad space.
5) Offer a contest and have people fill out an entry form. This is good to customize around one's website.
If you have a pet website, give away a book on pets or a free pet supply or free consulting. A website based on music could give away a CD, or concert tickets.
When you receive the entries you can e-mail those who submitted entries in order to announce the winners. You can list in that e-mail some additional items of interest about your services and opportunities in this e-mail.
Plus, don't forget to advertise your contest on sites that list sweepstakes and contests.
Do a search on Altavista or Yahoo for Contests, Sweepstakes and Free Stuff. E-mail the webmaster if there isn't a form to fill out on the site. Because free offers need to be updated often this is a database that constantly needs new listings.
6) You can get free offline publicity for your website by using press releases and announcements. Check your newspaper and find "Community News," "New Products," "Local Announcements" and other areas that might list your contest information.
Remember that giving something away for free is a powerful traffic generator as well as a way to have your visitors gain trust in you. Offer something of substance and your customer base will build significantly, as will the confidence in your services.
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Debra Cohen, LCSW
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