Knowing how to get customers without spending any money is tough yeah? Is your money tight?
Most people would answer yes … especially when it comes to spending money on advertising!
The fact is, no one can guarantee results with advertising. So your money is at risk. And not many of us have “risk cash” just laying around the house.
So what is a well-meaning entrepreneur like you going to do?
- You innovate.
- You adapt.
- You overcome.
- And you never surrender to circumstances!
You were born to win so let’s take a look at FIVE ways you can overcome the “no money for ads” problem and drive some real traffic to any website or affiliate link you want to promote.
PERSONAL NOTE: I well remember what it’s like to want to drive traffic only to find out that you just can’t afford it.
It’s not a great feeling.
But I can also tell you that YOU CAN OVERCOME this and not only survive but thrive. I know because I’ve been there. I’m living proof.
You see, around the year 2011 I was going through some very difficult times.
I remember driving through an ATM once and discovering that I had $100 to my name. Not a happy memory.
I was about 27 years old still in college, an ill parent to care for and two kids to provide for at the time.
Talk about pressure!
I had to work online because I could not work anywhere else or take a job. I did not have time for a 9 to 5 and my bills were piling up.
I say all of that only to say I understand a limited budget.
Now let me share five specific methods to help you to get customers without spending any money. These methods have helped me and I hope they will help you too.
Some of the websites have changed but the techniques are the same.
Most of these methods take effort and lots of it. But if you use them consistently I believe you will build multiple streams of highly-targeted traffic.
And that really is the key. Not one large source of traffic but instead many smaller flows of traffic that can’t be stopped.
METHOD 1 – SOCIAL MEDIA
Social media is free to use and more powerful than any of us imagined it could be.
The big five seem to be …
Some will disagree with that list and that’s okay. But Facebook is the 800 pound gorilla whether we like it or not. No matter which platform you choose, you need something valuable to say.
This is the stopping point for most people. Happily, you don’t have to be a writer to have good things to say! Here’s why … social media is about being social AND about doing business too.
You can lead with being social and then work your business into the conversation.
So if you have ever been to a restaurant and then called a friend and shared a few reasons why you liked (or didn’t like) that particular restaurant then you have what it takes to succeed with social media.
I believe the key to social media is what I call “sharing with a strategy”. None of us is going to be able to compete with Taylor Swift or the Kardashians when it comes to number of followers (unless you know certain tricks of the trade).
But we can compete when it comes to the quality of what we share. We can compete when it comes to providing value.
One key with social media is to share often and spontaneously. Are you reading a book and found a great idea? Tweet it out or post about it on Facebook. Don’t wait. Do it the moment the impulse strikes.
Technology like the Kindle (or Kindle app) actually let you do this with one click! Another key to social media is to tease readers into joining your list by providing helpful information that leaves them wanting more.
One actionable idea is this – buy a Private Label Rights product that you can give away and create a Facebook page that gives the product free to people who “like” you. This one method alone can unleash a viral avalanche and help you build your email mailing list at the same time.
After all, how many PLR reports and products do you have on your hard drive right now? Let’s put ’em to use! A win-win!
METHOD 2 – ANSWER QUESTIONS
It has always been true that people have questions. This is why Ask Me Anything (AMA) podcasts and Facebook Live events almost always draw a big crowd. What is different now is that they ask “the cloud” instead of asking family and friends.
And so question/answer websites like Quora exist to fill the need. The good news is that anyone (that means you too) can answer questions on websites like Quora.
The key is this – find ONE area where you can answer questions and become known as an expert.
Once you do that, you can easily convince people who read your answers to follow you on social, visit your blog, join your mailing list and buy the products you recommend.
Remember that process because it’s important …
Follow … Visit … Join … Buy
Another benefit – you build trust with an audience that Quora pays to gather for you. They do the work of getting the traffic and you harvest the crop with your hard work.
Other websites like Reddit provide similar opportunities. One word of warning – some of these websites can contain “adult” posts and strong language. Here is a brief video on how to get customers without spending any money from Reddit.
METHOD 3 – COMMENT ON BLOGS
Commenting on blogs in your niche is perhaps the easiest and fastest way to get backlinks from high traffic sites. And it works! Drop My Link is a free resource that you can use to find blogs to comment on and build high quality back links to your web pages.
The key here is a to make a comment that shows you have read the article and one that extends the conversation. That’s the key – extending the conversation.
While it’s fine to say “I love this post”, short comments like that (even if they are affirming) are often seen as spam and are deleted. So to make your comment stick, make it relevant and useful to the reader, and feel free to ask a question too.
Much like social media, commenting on blogs is all about the conversation. One major mistake is trying to “automate” the process.
Don’t use software that sends out 9,000 comments to different blogs. You never read the posts. You’re just commenting on them. Those things don’t work.
I rarely say to NOT automate but this is one area where automation can make you look like a spammer so be careful. That’s cotton candy short-term stuff and not for you. You are building a real business. Finding blogs in your niche is easy. In fact, even Google has a blog search feature, such as Google Alerts.
METHOD 4 – SHARE YOUR KNOWLEDGE
While answering questions and making comments is good, sharing from your knowledge and experience is even better.
The good news is that you can start on a free platform like Medium if money is tight. Medium is an incredible website that allows you to post your content for free.
They then show, and even promote, that content to their massive audience. I have even seen articles rank really well on this platform. If you want to get some free search engine traffic, put some really good content on Medium!
And massive it is. According to Alexa it is one of the top 250 sites in the WORLD!
This is very good news for you! It means you have a chance to find an audience of your own, in almost any niche you can imagine, and develop a relationship with them without spending a dime!
And that is power, especially when money is tight and you need to drive traffic to your affiliate offers without spending any money!
Once you have been posting a while, and after you have a blog or sales funnel of your own, you can invite them to visit! And visit they will!
METHOD 5 – ESTABLISH A BLOG
This is my favorite as you can see. I enjoy writing🙂
This is the thing that turned me around. I love article marketing so much that I actually decided to write and build a blog of my own.
When I could not afford paid advertising methods I wrote articles and sent them to the online ezines in my niche and other article directories. I have even used FaceBook Notes. FaceBook Notes also does very well in the search engines. It can create a strong flow of traffic to your business.
What I did not know at the time is that article marketing would be so fun and interesting to me. My readers felt like they knew me, and wanted to know more. That was an empowering thing at a time when I needed something good to happen.
In a few short weeks, I went from no one reading my writing to hundreds of people reading my writing. This can happen for you too if you are willing to put in the time and effort.
Today, I would have done the same thing but sent them to my blog to get more free content. That’s because content marketing works! Why is having your own blog important? I believe there are three reasons.
1. It gives you a “home base”, somewhere to send all visitors so they can learn more. Having one website to which you send people matters, especially if you are an affiliate marketer who might promote a variety of products over time.
Sending all traffic to your blog makes your advertising and promotion evergreen. I have curated a video tutorial on how easy it is to create your very own website for your business.
2. It empowers you to build a list of your own. Using tools like Aweber’s list building widget or a pop up form like POP Up Ally can build a list from your blog visitors quickly.
3.Blogs create high-quality free traffic from the search engines. Search engines exist to do one thing – provide people who search relevant content. When your articles are relevant to what people are searching for search engines will send you traffic for free. Cool beans, yeah?
One key to article marketing is to write useful but incomplete articles. What does that mean? It means your article helps people but does not try to be an entire course.
I’ll give you an example. Let’s say you’re promoting an autoresponder. You could write an article that says, “The three best ways to use an autoresponder are to sell things, to follow up with customers and to recruit affiliates.”
Those would be the three points of the article.
That’s useful but it’s incomplete because there are actually MANY ways to use an autoresponder. That is the basic method of writing an article that is useful, but incomplete.
Here is why this method works so well…
- It’s useful and they appreciate it.
- They want to reciprocate.
- It’s incomplete and they want to learn more.
- Now they’re clicking your link.
There are many more ways to drive traffic or to get customers without spending any money of course.
You can actually drop your affiliate link right here for free to get more eyeballs on your offer!
If you consistently use these methods I believe you will build multiple streams of highly-targeted traffic to your site. And when that happens your sales will become automatic and your income will become reliable.
And that is a profitable thing indeed!