Most of the big dogs are spending a ton of money to get all their traffic or spending a ton of time doing Search Engine Optimization. Either way we are looking for something that won't break the bank or use up all our days.

Well there are plenty of ways of getting traffic, but I'm going to focus on the five cheapest ways I know of getting traffic.

The first method I'm going to share is what are called link exchanges.

This method is usually used if two different sites want to spread the awareness of each others sites. They will exchange links and put each others links on their own sites. I like to get creative and put these links throughout my site in different places. Lets say I'm writing an article on building an opt-in list. Then I would go find a great opt-in list product that I feel passionate about and exchange links with that person.

Then I would drop the link at the end of the article as a "recommendation" to my readers. This method works great and the search engines love it.

The second method is called traffic exchanges.

Similar to link exchanges, traffic exchanges are just really the viewing of another person's website. As you view other's websites you earn credits and you can use them to display your site (impressions) to other people.

The third method is to write articles, which is my personal favorite.

Basically all you do is write an article (300-500 words usually) on a topic and submit them to the major article directories and ezine publishers. Now you want to write on topics that are relevant to your website. If your website is all about dogs, then write an article on how to train dogs.

The great thing about articles is that you are viewed at the expect and people will want to learn more. But how do they find you? Well down at the bottom of your article you put a resource box with your information and your website. This not only gets your site visibility but it also creates an inbound link to your site, which the search engines love (but that's a whole different story). Just make sure your article is extremely informative and useful and you should be fine.

The fourth method is simply making a newsletter.

True publishing a newsletter seems like a pretty big task but it can be simplified. You can go on the big article directories and take articles from there as long as you leave their resource boxes in tact. So this way you can get free valuable content for your subscribers and get the word out about your newsletter.

The last method is to join some online forums.

This last method is a little more time intensive for the returns that you receive, however if used correctly can be very effective. Many people look past forums, but the ones getting high volumes of traffic can be golden opportunities. What you want to do is go into forums of interest and just start answering peoples questions.

After a while people will start to view you as the expert and the link that you so conveniently placed at the bottom of your post will start to get some clicks. This method works great if you have the time, but don't get caught up in reading every post just answer questions.