By now, you have a content-rich website with some of revenue sources scattered through the pages. You can create a handful of product pages and then channel all the other pages to these set of pages or link directly to the merchant’s product sites if you are promoting affiliate programs. The choice is yours.

To start rolling the ball, we need some traffic. It is the component that allows us to begin earning some revenue from the site, testing things to improve income, and do all sorts of promotion. A perfect website without the traffic is nothing for a marketer.

Especially if you are starting from scratch, this may take time but you should not despair. The strange thing (at least it seems strange) about website promotion is the snowball effect. If you stick to your plan for long enough, you will get results. For most of us, it takes consistent approach to drive traffic so you are not alone.

Here are some website promotion tips:

1. Search engine optimization

This should be your long term traffic plan. Others ideas and tips somewhat contribute to this effort in one way or another. The great things about getting traffic from search engines are quality and availability.

People do search on the Internet. It means if you are visible there, once you get on the top search result pages, you get found using whatever targeted keywords the users search for. If you can keep in there for long, you have a stream of traffic you can count on.

2. Paid search

More or less the same as the first tip, but instead of trying to rank on the free listing, you buy for a position on the paid section. Probably the most obvious one is Google Adwords, which lets you display your ads not only on Google’s website, but also other people’s website.

You have to spend money with this, but you can get started in one hour or less.

3. Article marketing

Write articles and distribute them to article directories. Insterested publishers will re-publish the article on their site. This both drive traffic and contributes to your link popularity (of course, you put your links in the resource box, don’t you?)

Take it to the next step by targeting industry specific publication who receive article submission and contribution from other authors.

4. Blogging

If you have the time and inclination to promote your business, blogging is a great way to increase your visibility. Due to how blogging works, not only you publish your article like a convensional website, but also get indexed in blog search engines and other syndication sites.

Other bloggers and searchers can find blog posts easier, of which you have better chance to be noticed.

Combine this with RSS syndication, you armed yourself with a sophisticated tool that drives your readers back to your website more often.

5. Offer free and valuable stuff

Unique content get pass around. Think viral marketing. People tell others about your site if you have something newsworthy. You can increase the effect by actually participating in giveaway programs, contests, etc.

6. Participate in online forums

A forum certainly is a great place to share ideas, build expertise, interact with others, and learn new things. But put it blatantly, a marketer can take advantage of this by actually stealing other people’s traffic.

Most forums allow you to have a signature at the bottom of your post. If you are contributing and giving some value to the forum, then you can promote your website.

7. Place your website in every places possible

Business cards, advertisement, e-mail signature are just some places you can put your website address on. If you properly communicate with your audience, some of them will visit your site.

8. Networking

Network locally or online with other people in your niche. This activity can potentially bring visitors to your website, generate leads, and lead to future joint venture projects.

I suggest you start with a few strategies instead of all of them. There are countless paid or free website promotion ideas, but you should pick up just one, two or at most three to concentrate on. Focus gives the fastest and best results.