This question has been asked a gazillion times by newbies since online marketing became a “thing. How do I get free traffic for affiliate marketing? Most of them don’t have a clue where to start and they soon realize that without traffic they’ve got nothing. No traffic equals no sales. Period!
The ability to drive traffic is one of the most vital skills that any online marketer should have, regardless of whether they are an affiliate or a product creator. For affiliates this is even more important.
Affiliate marketers send visitors to squeeze pages or affiliate offers they promote. They do not need to create products, sales pages or handle customer support. Driving traffic is their main job.
If you want to be an affiliate marketer, you must learn how to generate traffic. You don’t need to know every traffic strategy on the planet, but you must know at least a few in order to generate consistent traffic.
In this post I’m going to share 2 free traffic sources that always worked well for me. They are easy enough to implement and don’t require an existing following on social media or YouTube.
As a matter of fact, you don’t have to be social butterfly or a wannabee movie star to use these traffic strategies.
So without further ado…
Here’s How To Get Free Traffic For Affiliate Marketing…Or Any Other Venture That You Have On the Interwebs
Traffic Source 1 – Medium
You are probably already familiar with this platform but did you know that over 26% of that traffic is coming from the United States? Now just in case you’re keeping score, that’s over 44 million people in the U.S. alone that frequent Medium every single month.
A few really interesting things about this site that you should know, now these are very important so listen up:
1) Medium will pay you for your content, based on how many people read it and like it.
2) Make no mistake about it, people ARE reading content on this site. It is alive and well, and you can be a part of that action.
3) You can only read 3 articles a month for free on Medium. With 170 plus million people a month visiting, you can safely assume that there are MANY paid readers on the site.
What that means is that the people who will be reading your content on Medium, are proven to pay for content they find valuable to them on the internet. They are proven buyers.
4) You can link out to anything you want in your articles. So if you can create impact and develop a readership on Medium, not only will you be getting paid, but more importantly you will start to develop a steady stream of organic free traffic to whatever you want.
So how do you break into a site like medium and start getting traffic?
Well, first let me just say there is a plethora of information online already about people driving traffic with this amazing free blogging platform, however a few points that will really serve you well here:
1) Strong Headlines – Medium is a blogging platform and many of it’s readers actually pay for the content. They value a great article as much as anyone. But the first step to getting their attention is a great headline for your article.
Now there are a lot of free headline generators, checklists, and tools that can help you come up with great headlines out there. The big thing is to know you need that good headline and to be consciously trying to get it.
2) Niche Specific – Make the conscious decision to be very “niche-centric” with your publishing. Don’t step outside of your lane. Don’t get me wrong, you can talk about whatever you want, however make sure every article circles back around to your niche.
If you are in the health and weight loss niche, sure you can talk about a random vacation trip to the Bahamas, or a seemingly arbitrary trip to the grocery store…but NEVER forget the golden rule:
It’s not about you. It’s about them. In this case, THEM equals the people in your niche who you want to pull around you.
So that random vacation trip or that arbitrary grocery store run that you write about? It needs to have a lesson or a takeaway, that circles things back around to your niche. Something that your niche market can learn or get from it.
3) Publish Consistently – This one is a constant for almost all forms of free traffic. If you want to see results you need to publish consistently. So put yourself on a schedule. Publishing daily will produce maximum results, but publishing 3 to 5 times a week is great.
4) How long should your articles be – Medium’s data scientists found that 7 minutes is the optimal length for a Medium story. Now that translates to around 1,500 words.
Now those last two points…
Does that mean that you HAVE to write 3 to 5 times a week on Medium to see success?
No. But it is the fast track. Does it mean that every article you write HAS to be 1500 words? No. It’s just an average optimal length based on data.
The truth is your articles can be as long or as short as they need to be to create impact. It’s all about getting attention and making a point that people are interested in on this platform.
If you have thought about medium in the past but never tried it as a way to drive traffic, OR maybe you have tried it but failed, I urge you to give it another go and see if this one might be right for you and your business. It’s a huge opportunity.
And this brings us to…
Traffic Source 2 – WordPress.com
Listen, whenever I tell someone about WordPress.com I immediately have to explain the difference between that site and WordPress.org.
WordPress.org is where you can download the website building software that you install on your website. A lot of people use it. I mean a whole lot. Over 455 million sites use WordPress. To put that in perspective, it is something like 37% of all sites on the entire internet. Wow but…
Now, all that success overshadows WordPress’ other platform, and that other site is where the opportunity lies. What we are talking about today is WordPress.com. Yeah, I know it’s a little confusing. Confusion never helps, but in this case, there is opportunity here.
WordPress.com is a free, hosted version of WordPress that enables you to build a simple blog or website in just a couple of minutes. It’s essentially a free blogging platform.
Don’t sleep on this one. WordPress.com gets around 340 million visitors a month. Over 21% of that traffic is coming from the United States. That’s over 71 million people visiting this site from America alone.
That’s all well and good but how can you capitalize on all that traffic? How can YOU get a little taste of the glory?
Well the beauty of WordPress.com is it’s “reader” dashboard. It comes with a simple search bar, that when you type in a relevant niche related keyword, it’s going to bring up recent, related topics that are gaining traction.
So let’s break this down:
1) Use the reader dashboard to find trending niche related articles and content.
2) You can then pick a trending piece of niche related content, take a few bullet points, and think about what your OWN two cents to the conversation would be.
3) Next, write your own piece of content about that subject. Be sure to use a similar, yet not the same headline. Be sure to shout out and reference the original article. Be sure to add your own unique points of view.
For example, if that original article offered 5 ways to get more traffic, perhaps you could summarize that original article, reference it, and then offer two additional ways that you thought would help readers of the original article.
4) Publish that piece of content right there on WordPress.com and be sure to link back to your own assets, products, or website.
As with all these free traffic resources, the key is to be consistent with your actions. Whether that’s publishing consistently or submitting consistently, the free traffic game is all about being consistent with what you do.
Strategies like WordPress.com and Medium, compliment each other very nicely. Imagine publishing 1500 word articles on Medium and then summarizing those articles into 500 word short articles for WordPress that could actually link to the Medium article for a more in depth look.
There are a lot of ways to utilize this kind of strategy, so that you are getting the most out of your content. If I write a 1500 word article, I’m not going to be so quick to move onto the next thing. I want to squeeze every last drop of content fuel out of that thing.
Whether it’s summaries, checklists, cheat sheets, or another form…I think it’s important to get more out of the work you put into something.
If writing a 1500 word article is the equivalent of putting in an 8 hour day and getting paid for 8 hours…then finding ways to get that content in multiple places in slightly different formats is the equivalent of putting in an 8 hour day and getting paid for 16 hours. It’s a winning formula.
In dire need for some more free traffic for affiliate marketing? Well, no worries ’cause your ‘ol pal Dave has got you covered. Here’s another blog post where I reveal 10 powerful ways to drive traffic to your website…or ANY other link that needs more eyeballs.
That’s all I’ve got for you today. So, go get ’em tiger, and I wish you loads of clicks, sign-ups and juicy commissions.
All the best,
Dave
