How to Drive Free Traffic to Your Blog or Website When You Don't Have a Budget - Hernan Vazquez

Hey guys, what is going on? Hernan Vazquez here again with you. I just wanted to really thank you for being part of my YouTube channel, for watching this video right now. If you're watching it on YouTube or Facebook or wherever I'm posting it, I just wanted to thank you for giving me a couple of minutes of your precious time to be here and to share some time together where I'll try to share techniques with you that really helped me grow my business and take my business to the next level. And today I wanted to address a question that came from one of my subscribers on my email list. And I really try to deliver a ton of value to my email list on a pretty much daily and weekly basis. So if you haven't done so, all of the techniques that I'm going to show you today will be broken down in a gift that I have prepared for you, and you will have a link to jump into that gift and grab that gift and also get access to my email list where I share— again, I share a ton of value over there, so you can subscribe by clicking the link below. And this question again came from one of my subscribers, and I was being asked How do I get free traffic to my website when I'm starting out? Okay, so you're starting out, you do not have any money, you do not have a budget, you just want to focus on free traffic initially to see if your product will kickstart and see if your product will work. And today I wanted to share with you 2 or 3 really good sources of free traffic that have brought me a ton of results. So if you want to get results and if you want to send free traffic to your website and you're starting out and you do not have a budget, this is the video that you want to be checking out. Now, a discretion guide regarding free traffic. The truth is that I do not believe in free traffic, and there's a reason for that. Um, free traffic doesn't really mean that you're not paying, because if you're not paying with money, you're paying with your time. And when you're, when you're an entrepreneur, when you're wanting to start your own entrepreneurship career, you will get to know that time is money and some activities that you are making right now, that you're performing right now, that they do not exactly take money, they do take your time. So at some point in your career, you will want to outsource them and pay for those activities instead of be paying for your time. Now there will be a point on your career that your time is more valuable than the money that you're making. So have that in mind, guys. Start and use these strategies to kickstart a business, and then you can outsource these strategies and these techniques that I want to show you today. And you can outsource them to use your time in a more effective way, like closing a new deal or delivering new content to your audience, or, you know, adding new features to a product, etc. So have this in mind, guys, that I do not believe in free traffic. The techniques that I'm going to show you here, you will, you will not be paying with money, but you will be paying with your time. So have that in mind. Now, on the other hand, free traffic is non-scalable. And by scalable, I mean you cannot know exactly how much traffic the techniques that I'm going to show you today will generate for you. You can generate a ton of traffic, don't get me wrong. But on the pay-per-click, on the, on the paid traffic spectrum, you can know exactly how much traffic you can get by adding, by incrementing, let's say, 20% your ad spend or paying less per click, etc. Don't get me wrong, guys, I love free traffic, and these are the techniques that I'm using day in and day out to kickstart my business. And it doesn't really mean that you shouldn't be using them, but just so you know they do take time, they are not immediate, and they are non-scalable. You cannot know exactly how many people you can take from these strategies to your website. Now with that being said, let's dive right into the meat and potatoes and the techniques that I want to share with you today. The first really, really good source of traffic that I recommend to pretty much everyone out there that's starting their business and is starting their website and they want to bring free traffic to that website are forums, discussion forums, discussion boards, the forums that are engaged with the topic that you're marketing and that are engaged with the market and the niche that you are pointing to. And just so you know, forums— there are forums like for pretty much everything. If you can think of a subject, there's most likely a forum about it already. The good things with forums and why I like them so much— I used to spend a lot of time in forums when I was younger. I do spend some time on forums today helping people out and, you know, discussing new ideas, etc. The great things with forums is that people that do like forums, they will spend a ton of time every day in those forums helping others placing their opinions, etc. And not only that, they will be really engaged with the topic. And in some cases, the, the, the relationship that these people have with the forum is kind of symbiotic, okay, kind of thing. Because if you, if you land on a forum and you're trying to spam it and you're trying to sell your products right off the bat and you're trying to sell and to send people from your blog post— from your forum post, sorry, to your website, you will get in trouble and you will get a ton of heat from these people that they are really thinking that their forum is like a second home. Okay, have in mind, guys, that forums— there are forums that have been around forever and there are forums that are enormous. They have 100,000, I don't know, threads per topic, and there are 500,000 active users per month or some crazy thing like that, and you can grab a piece of that pie and bring really targeted traffic to your audience. Now forums— I also like forums because they will allow you to leave a link on the signature, and in some cases for SEO purposes that also counts as a backlink. But let's not focus into that, let's focus on how you can use forums for your marketing purposes. As I told you before, if you want to get into a forum— and I'm gonna leave a link below so that you can download a guide that will show you the footprints, that is the queries that I use on Google to discover new forums about the niche that I'm into. Let's say that I'm into internet marketing, which I am, particularly entrepreneurship and sales funnels and conversions. Those are the main topics that I usually you know, have products around and I like to discuss about because I'm really passionate about. Now, using the footprints and the techniques that I show you on the guide below that you can download and it's completely free, you will uncover a ton of forums that you can open an account and you can start participating right off the bat. Now, the best practice to do that and the best way to do this in my opinion and what I usually do when landing on a new forum and I have zero posts, zero experience, and it's like a brand new account. Now what you want to do is to have a fully optimized profile, and by profile I mean you need to have a good avatar that's telling that you're for real. You need to have a good bio. You need to have links to other social media profiles whenever possible, like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. That will tell the forum that your profile is for real, and the forum moderators are really on the lookout for spammy accounts. For example, tools like GSA Search Engine Ranker or tools like Extramur, they will open fake accounts on forums, so they are really on the lookout. So, you know, if you open an account with a fake name and you start posting, you will get deleted and banned, and you will be banned for life and banished from the dead, you know, and those kind of things. So you want to be really, really careful. So the first step is to go into the forums, optimize your profile, have a picture, have a bio, you know, be really, really specific on why you're there and why you want to help other people out with your content, and then you can leave a link on the signature whenever possible. Side note, guys, forums sometimes they will not allow you to put a signature. You'll need to wait a couple of weeks or even months to put a signature to make sure that you are for real, or you have to be on a certain level and have been posted, I don't know, 100, 200 posts before you're actually given the opportunity to place a link on the signature. So that's important to have that in mind. Now the second step, now that you have your entire profile optimized, the second step is to actually start posting. Now the first thing that I usually do is to actually introduce myself, telling them that I'm here to help. You know, I'm Hernan Vazquez from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I'm I'm 28 years old. I've been, you know, working with internal marketing, SEO, etc., etc., for the past 10-13 years of my life, and I'm really eager to help people out. That will set, you know, some— on some forums, that's mandatory. You need to post on the introductions section before you can post anywhere else. Step number 3, once you have, you know, your profile optimized and then you have posted and you have said, hey, I'm a real person, I'm here for real, I'm here to help, Step number 3, and what I usually do that usually, you know, makes or breaks this technique, is to actually go out there and post something useful. Let me say that again: go out there and post something useful. Post a nugget, post a golden nugget, a pearl, you know, post something that you would be charging for, post something that you will, you know, ask an email address for. Post something there that's exclusive for that forum only because usually people that are on forums, they are on more than one. So if I post something, for example, on Warrior Forum and then I replicate that on several other internet marketing forums, pretty much the same people will see that, okay? And you do not want to look like a spammer right off the bat. So what you want to do is to post something useful and exclusive. Take the time to really approach people and to really help people with your post, with your first thread on your forum. That will pretty much make or break your entire strategy. So pay close attention. Pay the same attention that you would with a blog post on your website. Pay close attention to that, okay? Spend a couple of hours thinking about what was the best thing that you can You know, share with your colleagues, share with the people on the forum. That will give you some good reputation right off the bat. Now, when you have some good reputation, you can start helping others and other people will start checking out your forum profile. And that's where you can get traffic back to your website and you can start getting some traction from the forum. Okay, so have that in mind. Be active, be helpful. That's rule number 1, and the keyword here is being helpful. So go out there, download the link, the guide below where I leave a list of footprints that I usually use when searching for forums. Source number 2 that I really, really love and I really, really like are communities. Communities, they behave a lot like forums, but they are on platforms and social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, for example, Reddit. You know, those are communities that are really engaged with the topic. So for example, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, and subreddits. I'm gonna leave subreddits, you know, as a third source because that's a universe in and of itself. But the first 2, Facebook communities, Facebook groups, and LinkedIn groups, those are really, really powerful ways to drive traffic when you're not actively— when you do not have a budget and you want to generate free traffic right off the bat. And you need to follow the same guidelines and the same rules that I'm posting, that I was saying on the forums. You need to be really, really helpful. Now have in mind that, guys, that on Facebook, for example, on the internet marketing space, there are huge, huge Facebook groups. And also for the LinkedIn, on LinkedIn on the internet marketing space, there are huge, huge, enormous Facebook groups, okay? LinkedIn groups and Facebook groups. Now what you need to have in mind is that these communities are heavily moderated, and there's a reason for that, and that's completely fine. There are some people that are actually, you know, making money from these communities, and there are some people that are actually earning a salary just for moderating those communities, the same as you have moderators in the forums as well. And these groups, Facebook and LinkedIn groups, they are hammered every day, every hour with spam posts. So try to forgive those moderators that will confuse your, you know, your good intentions, your intentions of actually sharing value with spam. That can happen, that's normal. You can get banned just for sharing value. Believe me, I've been there. That's why I'm telling you this. Now, on those cases, what do you do? Well, you basically said, and you contact, you can contact directly on Facebook. It's easier than on LinkedIn, but you can use the same strategy Either way, you can go out on Facebook and contact the moderators or the Facebook group owner and tell him, hey, I got this post deleted, would you please reinstate it? And they will tell you, hey, you were self-promoting, or you were blah blah blah, you were doing something wrong. And it's not necessarily that you were, but they are confusing your post with spam. And that could happen, you know, it happens to pretty much everyone that I know. Now you need to reach out to them and tell them, hey, sorry about that, you know, I can make the tweaks that you need for me to keep the post up over there. And then be active on the post, answer the questions, answer the comments, you know, because you will get a ton of comments and questions and you will get a ton of traction if your post is helpful and you are giving away value. Again, the keyword here is give away value. Value. Give away value with your threads on the forums and give away value on the Facebook groups and the LinkedIn groups as well. Now you will be saying, okay, but if I give away value, how can I get people to my website? Well, that's a byproduct of you being helpful. Trust me, when you are being helpful on those areas, people that come to your website will be far more engaged. You will be positioning yourself as an authority and the sale will be much, much easier. Okay, so be really specific with the value that you're providing because otherwise you will be banned and you will be losing time. Now the third source, as I mentioned earlier, is Reddit. And Reddit, guys, it's a monster. Reddit, you know, if you, if you can tame the Reddit beast, you can pretty much, you know, mount a business around Reddit leaks as it's called, Reddit leaks in and of itself. Now what you wanna— what you really want to share on Reddit is again real, real true pure value and only the most valuable blog posts that you have on your website. If you do not have a blog, go ahead and start blogging and start promoting real good quality content on your website. And Reddit, you can post only the most popular blog posts on your website on Reddit. Now, the key to have a successful Reddit campaign is to know that Reddit will sometimes, you know, be a pain in the ass to actually get something approved, and that's fine. You need to understand that that's the way it is. It's Reddit. But if you get something that's really upvoted and that's really popular on Reddit, you can pretty much ride that wave for as long as It's possible on Reddit itself, and you can get a ton of traffic from Reddit, from Reddit itself. So make sure that you're posting good quality content and go ahead and share on those subreddits. Which brings me to the main point of Reddit itself. The secret is not only value, but to post your post where it belongs to, okay? To post your link where it belongs to. Let's say that you can find a marketing Reddit, Okay, probably marketing, it's a tad broad for what you're trying to post. So why don't you try finding an internal marketing subreddit? And even better, if you're trying to— if you find a traffic subreddit, okay, or website traffic subreddit, it doesn't really matter how many people are on that subreddit, but the main thing here is that you get as specific as possible with the subreddit. So go ahead, open an account on Reddit, you will need to age that account. You will need to comment and be helpful. As with any other of these traffic sources, remember you are spending time, not money, and you need to spend quite a bit, quite a bit of time on these cases. But try to be helpful, try to elevate and stack that karma the way that Reddit is saying, the way your reputation is managed on Reddit is by karma. The more helpful you are, the more upvotes you get for your comments, the more karma you get, and the more, uh, you— the more you're able to, you know, to post links and whatnot. So on some subreddits, you will need to have, um, an X amount of karma to post on those subreddits, and that's completely fine. Now what you want to do is to age your profile. Be really, really careful with what you post on Reddit because again, Reddit can make or break your entire business. And I also have 2 more sources of traffic. The guide is called 5,492 Visitors in 30 Days for Free, and that's the amount of visitors that I brought to my blog using the techniques that I'm talking about here and the tactics that I'm talking about here, and also the techniques, because there are 2 more techniques that you can download by clicking on the link below. The guide below will show you the extra 2 techniques. And also the footprints that I'm using to find forums and a bunch of other really cool things that you can leverage and use as resources for your business. Okay, so click on the link below, download the guide, it's completely free. It will uncover 2 additional traffic sources and also explain you in much more detail than I'm doing here. Okay guys, so I hope you have enjoyed this video. Leave me a comment wherever you are watching this video. Leave me a comment below. I'm pretty active on Twitter. You can follow me on Twitter over here. And also you can join the Facebook group, which I try to deliver a ton of value as well. Thank you guys for watching, and I'll see you on the next video. Bye-bye.