Especially when you’re starting out, costs need controlling. So the idea of promoting your website for free is very attractive.

And even when you’ve been in business for a while, it’s still a good idea to use some of these methods even if you pay someone else to create the necessary content for you.

In all these methods, you’ll be trading your time for money. So although you’re not paying yourself (initially at least), you should still take into account your time and once you’ve got to the stage where your income is increasing, delegate any tasks you don’t enjoy.

Written content

This is far and away the most effective way to promote your website.

Once you know what you’re doing, you can create a post like this one in around 20 minutes or so.

It can then be placed on your own website or on an article directory such as EzineArticles.

Although it’s tempting, don’t put the same article on both your site and an article site. It’s far better to keep both of them separate and the content on your site unique to you, which it won’t be once the article directory starts to do its job of syndicating the content.

If you want to increase the use of your content, put anything that you’ve submitted to an article directory onto a document sharing site as well – scribd, slideshare, etc.

I’d suggest a roughly 50/50 ratio between your own site and elsewhere. There’s no precise logic in that figure but I’ve found that kind of mix keeps your site regularly updated whilst the article directory side of things gives you the often needed boost of some traffic whilst the SEO side of things starts to work its magic.

Videos

These can be free or very cheap to make.

A simple PowerPoint style video works OK.

I turn quite a few of my articles into videos that way, using the PowerPoint presentation (or, in my case, the Word document) to submit to the document sharing sites.

Simply read out the article – I seem to average around 100 words per minute but obviously that will depend on how fast you speak.

Then upload the video to YouTube, add a link back to your site and a reasonable length description – I don’t use the same words as the ones in the article – and some tags.

Until recently a lot of products were suggesting that you buy views for your videos but they seem to be clamping down on that, so just let the videos sit there and use a few links from your articles to promote them instead.

Forums

If there’s a popular forum in your niche, join it.

Lurk for a while – reading the posts, working out what the “tone” of the site is and what’s allowed/not allowed.

Then start contributing.

Don’t try to sell – that’s not what forums are primarily for – they’re there to help people.

If you’re allowed a signature link, let that do any selling for you.

Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn

All of these allow you to promote yourself, albeit in slightly different ways.

If they’re appropriate for your style and your business, they can all be very good ways to promote your website.

LinkedIn tends to be business-to-business but the other two sites work for near enough any niche.

If you’d like more help to get traffic to your website, click here.

And if you’d like to share your ideas, feel free to add your comments below.