Traffic is the whole point of a website. You make all of your money through traffic — without traffic a website is dead. Constantly increasing a site’s traffic is the most obvious and sure-fire way of increasing profits.

There are three ways to increase traffic:

Buy Traffic. Buying traffic by literally spending money for ads, links or other things. You get traffic by paying for it.

Buying traffic is the easiest and most expensive way to get people to your website, by far. People like Quality Traffic Supply will insure targeted traffic. If you have a bit of investment money, this can be a great way of establishing your blog early on.

Trade Traffic. Trade links with other websites, or engage in “link exchange programs.” You get traffic by giving it.

This is one of the oldest methods of receiving traffic in the books — the only catch is that you need to make sure you aren’t too obvious about using it, seeing that Google and other search engines frown on it. If it happens under the radar, though, you have absolutely nothing to lose. Try out Traffic-Splash, as they are one of those that Google hasn’t cracked down too hard on yet.

Earn Traffic. Earn traffic by writing unique,beautiful and important content. People will automatically link to you.

This is, by far, the most effective way of making an impact on the Internet. It takes hard work, and there’s no real easy way to do it. There are, however, some tips to accomplishing this:

Content

Write the best website content out there. Look at other sites that are similar to you. You want to be better. You want more information, better information, and more organized information. Be the best, and the links will come.

Friends

Make friends online. We’ve heard it a million times, but it’s the biggest truth out there. Friends link to friends. It’s just that simple. At the risk of sounding in-humane, see other webmasters out there as potential blogroll links to your site. Exactly. That’s why we make friends online.

Social Networking

StumbleUpon is incredible. I absolutely love the program. It’s pretty interesting — basically, people can review and stumble on new websites on topics that they are interested in by just clicking a button. StumbleUpon users differ from Digg and other accounts, given that they appreciate /good/ and /exhaustive/ content more than the other social networking sites. If you want to make it online, you need exhaustive content. But don’t just see SU as a tool, see it as a way to make actual friends and better your internet experience. You’ll find it to be incredibly worth it in the long run.

Link Exchanges

Exchange links with other websites relevant to the topic of your website. This is easy — just create a page that can be seen on every page of your site labeled something like “Link Exchange”, and people who already have a website on your topic will be able to link to you quickly and easily. This is a proven method for increasing Google-juice and traffic.

Do you write about finances, money or making money online? Then by all means, contact me at rationalapologetics@gmail.com. I’d love to exchange links with you.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is where you make sure your website doesn’t break any rules and plays the game right. If you play the game right, your small site could place higher on Google than a big site — you just have to know what you’re doing. I would write an entire page here regarding SEO, but I’ll save time, and just say read the free report from the guy who’s on page one for “Make Money Online”. Yes, he’s a genius. His free e-book is here. This is one of the most valuable resources I’ve ever come into contact with.

That said, in the end, it all goes back to having a great website. Get a nice design, put nice content on it, and make friends. That’s all it takes to get traffic.