Getting traffic to your website, especially for free, is getting harder. And – sorry to be the bearer of bad news – that’s likely to get worse.

What most people won’t tell you – maybe because they’ve got their head stuck in the sand, maybe because they’re trying to sell you an all singing, all dancing program, maybe some other reason – is that the days of the mass market for anything are long gone.

Television no longer has a handful of channels. So you don’t get nearly half the country watching the same program often (if at all).

The internet has stupidly large numbers of websites and pages. The latest reliable estimate I could find put the number at over 633 million websites in December 2012. Which does explain why you can’t find that elusive domain name.

But it also explains why there are just so many search results for any query you care to make.

And it means that searching for any specific page – unless you type it directly into your browser – is like searching for a needle in a haystack.

Of course, the 80/20 rule applies here but you can investigate that more another day.

So what has this got to do with getting traffic to your website for free?

Well, for a start, it means that whoever is promising that kind of result is almost selling the modern equivalent of snake oil.

Sure, free traffic is still here.

It’s where I get most of my website traffic.

But it comes in dribs and drabs rather than floods or torrents.

Sure, you may hit lucky every now and then.

But it will be rare.

Maybe golf “hole in one” rare (professionals apparently have a 1 in 2,500 chance and average golfers closer to 1 in 12,500).

Maybe a bit better, maybe a bit worse.

So when you hear that getting traffic is a numbers game, that’s what people are talking about.

Going viral doesn’t usually happen by design. So you can rule that out as a consistent way of getting free traffic.

It’s a boring answer but the best way I’ve found to get free traffic to my websites is to be single minded and accept that each piece of content you produce will – at best – only provide a trickle of traffic.

Some content may just as well never have been created. You won’t know ahead of time and you may get a pleasant surprise months or years in the future when it suddenly blossoms. Or you may not.

But targeted correctly, most content you create will bring a dribble of visitors for months and years to come.

To get traffic for free you’ll need to “spend” time on it. Writing this page will likely take me maybe 20 or 30 minutes in total. So I’ve paid for it in my time.

I did a minimal bit of keyword research.

Then I started typing – pretty much as if I was talking to you face to face.

You could do that on your website – and should.

You could also do it on a forum related to your niche – often worth doing.

You could create a YouTube video – often worth doing.

You could create a podcast – not something I’ve done much (yet) but I know people who’ve done nicely from those.

You could write articles for article sites – still worth doing.

But the crux of the matter is that you should be creating content that your niche will enjoy.

And you need to create that content on a regular basis.

Create one new piece of content a day for the next year and you’ll have 365 new items of content.

Which is likely 365 more than most of your competition.

If – on average – each of those pieces of content drew in one visitor per day then you’d be happy.

Maybe even ecstatic.

But you really do have to create the content in the first place.

Either yourself (free at the usual slave-labour rate we pay ourselves) or by paying someone else like a cheap writer.

If you need help creating your own content, check out my crash course here.