You've probably heard a lot about free traffic, social media marketing, search engine optimization, backlinks, guest posting, keyword research, email marketing, engaging online, forum marketing, free advertising sites, collaborations and so much more.
But what you don't know is the fact that most of it, if not done right, will almost always fail. Here I'm going to go over every FREE TRAFFIC source and tell you why (not always the case but most of the time) they don't work.
Email Marketing
If you ever built a list you'd know there's a difference between Warm email and Cold Email. A warm email is when you organically collected the email through a landing page. A cold email is when you didn't use a landing page but instead bought the emails and added them to your email list. Most people who cold email will typically have a negative response that can lead to your email being marked as spam or worse blacklisted.
In my experience typically people mark you for spam or they just never respond or open your email. When this happens it typically means they either subscribed and forgot about you or you bought the emails. The traffic you get would require you to capture thousands of emails to get anything meaningful and would typically require you to pay.
This Free method obviously is NOT FREE.
Social Media Marketing
You know the drill, you make your piece of content, you spent hours creating it, and you share it to all your social media profiles... And then you get nothing from any of it. No traffic, nothing, nada. Why does this happen? Easy, because you don't have an audience. When creating and sharing content on social media you tend to actually have those profiles built up. But if you don't typically have those built up, you won't get any traffic from them. There are tons of methods that go into how to utilize social media and get traffic, but let me tell you why they don't really work.
These things really depend on a couple factors, you have an audience that follows you where ever you go, and you've done something that's caught people's attention and want to see more. That's generally what it means to have an audience, you're doing something people want more of. If you don't have an audience where people want more of something then you tend to not have an audience at all. Then of course there's name and brand recognition. People need to recognize you in order to associate you with the amazing thing you're doing.
In most cases to get social media off the ground, there has to be some kind of paid marketing behind it. Most if not all social media sites don't take off on their own. There typically has to be some kind of influence happening outside the site. Usually, it's whatever you're doing to keep people coming back for more.
Let's go down the list of social media and why they don't work.
Quora
Quora is a social questions and answers website with communities that answer your questions. These questions in turn will show up in google search results which in turn would result in you getting traffic if your answer contains a link back to your website. Right, RIGHT!
Nope, the truth is most people don't go to quora to visit other people's websites, they go to get answers to their questions. Typically if you write long articles with answers that contain your link, the only thing that happens is people see it (maybe), and they keep scrolling until they find what they are looking for. The traffic you COULD get is largely from the fact Quora receives a ridiculous amount of viewers each month who are looking for answers to their questions, not links that go to other websites. That's what Google is for.
Reddit is fantastic for getting traffic but comes with a few unfortunate caveats. The subreddits are heavily moderated. Anything you share tends to get removed by moderators and goes out of sight. If you do manage to share something that doesn't get removed (highly doubtful), then typically what happens is people downvote and scrutinize it, especially if it's self-promotion.
The best you can do is make a subreddit of your own, but just like a Twitter profile or a Facebook page, if you don't have an audience to subscribe to your subreddit the traffic you'd get from sharing to it is mute.
Facebook Pages and Facebook Groups
Let's start with pages. Facebook or META really likes money. If you don't run ads then no one will ever see your posts. Honestly spending money on anything requires you to spend thousands of dollars to make it worth spending any money at all. And with Facebook pages, any FREE TRAFFIC you'd get would have to be from a built-up page with a LOT of followers. And of course, in order to get any followers you guessed it, you have to spend money. I only say that because people tend to never follow, react, or share on any of my pages. And according to my analytics, people never see anything I share throwing any organic traffic out the window.
The only thing I've found out about Facebook groups is that people will join them, and then spam their own links in them. Most things you share tend to go into a flooded timeline of others people's stuff and never get seen if at all. That and if you try to solicit something in a large number of groups, Facebook will shadowban you from posting in groups, and you won't be able to make any posts in them.
Twitter is interesting because it's very different from Facebook. You actually get seen. Unfortunately, it comes down to having an audience. If you don't have one, no one followers or interact with you. People will see your comments and react to them. But any main tweets you put on your main timeline will be met with silence. I managed to get over 150K impressions and 20K profile visits in 30 days. I got maybe 5 to 10 followers to my profile, all of which don't engage with any of my future tweets. So you can only imagine what that means if you're trying to get traffic to your website through Twitter.
Can be fun if you like sharing gifs and memes. But just like Twitter, without a large audience, no one follows you or ever sees or shares your pins. What more is there to say?
Youtube
Not going to lie, if you're really good at making videos, then Youtube can be a fantastic traffic source for your website. The truth is most people aren't and in my experience, it comes down to a couple of key things. One, you have to have an audience, and two, you get picked up by the algorithm. These two things never seem to happen to me. I honestly have no idea how the algorithm works and have no idea how anyone ever manages to get any traffic. Except of course the people who are lying in their videos. Pretty much all make money online method videos are trying to sell you something. That's how they make their money by selling to you through their affiliate links.
Youtube, in general, is a mystery to me probably due to fact that it changes on a daily basis. But if you happen to be Dream, then you're probably already milking Youtube for every drop.
Forum Marketing
Good luck finding a forum that doesn't just ban you or delete your posts. Pretty much the same story as Reddit.
Free Advertising
Much like Facebook groups just about any free site you find is flooded with people trying to share their links and ads. The chances of you getting seen are probably equal to the chances of you winning the lottery.
Writing A Book
If no one knows who you are as an author. Then what makes you think anyone is going to want to read your book? Honestly, who is going to want to read a book by someone they've never heard of unless of course they were recommended by someone else. Which of course would mean you'd have to be already established.
So what are some methods that do work?
I know what you're thinking, ok so what does work for FREE TRAFFIC?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Long posts like the one you're reading are favored by Google. SEO in general involves keyword research and ranking in Google. But if you're writing for a keyword that's flooded in the search results the chances of you ranking at all are slim at best. Most keyword research tools that actually tell you if a keyword is good or not also cost money. So technically this isn't a FREE TRAFFIC source.
Guest Blogging
I don't actually have any experience in guest blogging, but what I do know is that it involves getting a link to the article to backlink back to your website. Much like what I said earlier about Quora, people mostly ignore those links. Be honest, how often do you click on a hyperlink in an article you're trying to read. I best it's almost never. Not saying guest blogging is bad, but the only thing you're going to get out of it is name recognition and not really website traffic.
Blogging (Content Marketing)
Much like what you're reading right now Blogging gives you a platform on which you can get traffic from Google if your SEO is on point. But we already established that SEO research worth a damn isn't free. So Google and SEO are technically not FREE TRAFFIC.
Word of Mouth
Now, this is probably something worthwhile. If you guest post a lot and a lot of people actually bother to check who wrote the article people will get to know who you are. It's also good for you if your website also happens to be your name or is at least associated with you.
Get Interviewed
If you guest post a lot you probably get asked to do interviews too. Ample opportunity to self-promote your website. That is if you happen to actually get asked to be on a popular podcast.
Collaborations
This only really works for one person. And that's the small fish working with the big fish. But if there aren't any big fish that want to work with you then this is kinda out the window.
Ok, but what actually gets me traffic then?
It all comes down to building an audience. How you actually do that is you have to be doing something that gets people's attention. Something people want to see and hear more about and keep coming back for more. The other part of it is getting picked up by the algorithm, I have no idea how it happens but when it does you can bet you're going to be getting a lot of traffic from that. How you keep people coming back is sort of like how a magic trick works. If you can master the illusion then people will crave to know more.
In Conclusion
Most if not all of these FREE TRAFFIC methods obviously come with a huge price tag. Your time, paid ads to build your social media, and even more of your time.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk, That's all folks.
