There is one hard and fast rule in generating income for your website: A steady flow of website traffic. If no one goes to your site, it hardly bares a chance of generating an income. It doesn't take a lot of cash to generate website traffic for your site.

Ever wonder how the big corporates drive traffic to their web site? Most of them are spending tons of money to build the traffic, investing in many advertising campaigns and different forms of marketing schemes. This is all worthwhile because, well, they are what they are now, high earning, big hitting websites.

You don't have to do this if you don't really have their resources. There are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you don't have or can't afford. Many people have banked on high cost methods and have ended up losing their shirt over it.

Here I present to you the top five ways to generate low cost website traffic. Even if you only get a small percentage of paying visitors these methods still work especially if you maximise the use of them and generate high website traffic.

Exchange Links

This is a sure and proven method. Rarely will you see a site without links to another site. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so that they can produce more public awareness about their sites. You'll soon see and feel the sudden upsurge of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

A major prerequisite in exchanging links with other sites is having the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is continuity in the providing of service and information to what interests your target traffic. Although don't exchange links with your direct competitors, just focus on a similar niche topic.

Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking in search engines. It is common knowledge that search engines rank sites high that have inbound and outbound theme-related links. With a good ranking position in the search engines, you will generate more traffic to your website without the high costs.
Traffic Exchange

This is like exchanging links but on a higher level. This may cost a bit more than exchanging or trading links (mainly time) but you do earn credits everytime you view another website. You can use those credits to advertise your site to other traffic exchange members. You both benefit from each others efforts to generate traffic. The other sites visitors can go to your pages and know more about your site as well as theirs. Once again the public awareness of your sites existence is boosted.

Write and Submit Articles

There are many e-zines and online article directories on the internet which allow free article submission. Hiring a ghost writer to produce the articles for you is the quickest way to generate good quality articles. However, if you want to save some cash, you can write the articles yourself.

Write articles that follow or emphasise the theme or niche of your site. Write something that you have a lot of knowledge about so that when visitors read your articles you give them the perception that you are an expert in the particular field. This can only empower them to visit your site. A useful tip is to Write articles that offer tips and guidelines on the subject or niche your site is designed for.

Include a resource box at the end of your article that links back to your site. Write a little about yourself and your site. Perhaps offer a freebie to entice the reader to visit your site to collect. At the end of the day, if you provide a light, information laden and interesting article, they will go to your site for more.

The beauty of this type of traffic generation technique, is not only do you entice people to visit your site, you also gain avaluable backlink to your site, which adds to the link building process already discussed. Except these are valuable one-way links.

Produce a Newsletter.

This may sound like hard work because of all the writing you may need to do, but on the contrary, this is not so. There are many writers and sites that are willing to provide free articles as long as they can get their name in on your newsletter. This will also provide free advertising for them as well.

As your newsletter gets passed around, you can widen your public awareness and build an opt-in list that you can market to time and time again. (Don't overdo it though or people will un-subscribe.

Join Online Communities and Forums

This only requires your time and nothing else. You can share your knowledge and expertise with many online communities as well as advertising your website at the same time. You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche as your site.

Share your two cents and let them see how knowledgeable you are with the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site, making it a reputable and honest business that could be frequented and trusted by many people.

Don't forget to put your site link in your signature. Again another backlink every time you post!

I hope you enjoyed reading this article, and I hope you realise that building web site traffic does not have to cost the earth.