You will feel overwhelmed before building an eCommerce website as a beginner, but after building a website, you realize that building a website is easier than marketing, and marketing is a key factor to a successful website, If you want traffic and visit, you have to do some marketing online. Most of the time, a website that earns you a good revenue can be considered a successful website to many people.
To get traffic? the first thing you may thought of is Advertisement, Google Advertisement, Facebook Advertisement, but the ads may cost you much, if your have a limited budget for the website, is there any other ways to get traffic freely or Less expensive? The answer is absolutely yes.
Where can you get free traffic resources? and how to drive free traffic for your eCommerce website or online store. Let me show you 6 methods today.
1. Natural Organic Traffic from Search Engine
What is the largest free traffic? That must be Natural traffic from search engines, like Google, Bing, and more. Google is the biggest search Engine in the world, you need to do google SEO optimization first, of course, other search engine optimization is also indispensable, for example, Bing occupies 1/3 of the market share in the United States, and the search results and data of Yahoo is also provided by Bing.
The Traffic from Search engines is direct, most of those are organic and very efficient, no website owner dare to say that they do not require search engine traffic, even if eCommerce giant like Amazon, instead, they advertised on Google. So please take organic traffic from search engines seriously.
The major search engines around the world are distributed as follows:
- Google – The largest search engine, with over 80% of the global market share, it is also an industry leader
- Bing & Yahoo – Although Bing only have about 9% global share, but it has 1/3 market share in USA, Yahoo’s search data also comes from Bing, it should not be ignored too.
- Yandex – This is a Russia Search Engine, it is definitely the biggest search engine in Russia and the regions and counties that use Russian language, if you are doing global business, this area is a big market too.
- Baidu – This is the biggest search engine in China, but it may not be easily to use for people who outside of Chinae.
- Others like AOL, DuckDuckGo…
Once your website is ready, you need to Add and submit it to Search Engines. After adding your website to the search engines, the search engines will crawl and include your web pages in the next half to one month, then you need to do SEO optimization to make the Search Engines like your website, the search engines will rank your pages, once someone searches something relevant and find your website, that’s natural free traffic, then.
if your website is installed with some CMS(content management system) like WordPress, you can install SEO plugins to improve your website’s SEO, you can also optimize keywords for pages with the plugins. Where to find keywords, there are many SEO tools for keywords, such as Semrush, Ahrefs, Jaaxy Keytool, Mangools, and more, most of these tools give free trials to beginners, so you may get some good keywords for your websites through the trial.
All SEO optimization is making your page rank high, if your pages are on the first page of Google, then the free traffic will be like a flood, one word: The higher the ranking, the more traffic you get.
2. Social Media
The biggest traffic on the internet except for Search Engines is absolutely Social Media, almost half of the traffic is from Social media, there are so many social media platforms now, I want to say a joke that most of the people can’t live without social media nowadays. Just think about it, how much time do you or your friends spend on the social media like Facebook, Tiktok, Instagram, Twitter, youtube…you can also drive some free traffic from social media.
Actually, most people started to sell or buy products or services through social media earlier than Facebook was established, and most social media platforms do not like social media, they look like a market more, you can see people shouting, advertising, and selling products whenever you open your social apps, that’s really annoyed to some people, but the fact is the daily transaction volume generated through social media is beyond your imagination.
You can’t ignore the power of social media, sometimes, you don’t need to sell goods through media directly, you just make a video or share some photos, of course, you can insert your website links, if your video or images are attractive, the free traffic is really like a flood, it will be spread one by one. you can check the most popular social media platform below:
- Facebook – the biggest social media platform, no need to say much, create a page of your website and keep updating
- TikTok – short video social media, it is evolving into a big platform, the advantage is you can take a video very easily, only 15 seconds you can share it out.
- Twitter – I call it as a short blog social platform, you can also share some interesting thing of your website on Twitter.
- Instagram – the biggest photo sharing platform, instagram allow people selling goods on the platform now in some region.
- Pinterest – Another photo social media, the difference is it is a photo collection platform, and the photos are always from websites, when you want to check photos on Pinterest, you will always need to open the link with the photo, very good platform for people to drive free traffic to their website.
- Youtube – The biggest video share platform, no need to introduce more.
- Reddit – Reddit is a social news aggregation, web content rating, and discussion website, it is like a forum, but not only for that, you may learn many knowledge from Reddit too.
- VK – the biggest social media in Russia and the region uses the Russian language, like Facebook.
- …..more
You don’t need to use all the platforms, choose two or three and keep updating every day, you can follow some people, and most of the time, they will follow back to you, when you share something interesting about your website, they may share to their friends, that’s the power of social media if your posts on your social media platform look very professional, I think you will drive more and more free traffic.
3. Email Marketing
Since the internet, email is a very important tool for people to contact with each other, I think anyone should have one or more email address, since when you create an account in any website or platform, you must use an email address.
Due to the widespread use of email, it is not only used for private contact, email marketing has also become a popular marketing method, this is a very efficient way to promote websites and drive free traffic with quality.
You need a list including a certain number of email addresses before starting email marketing, the best way to get email addresses from visitors is by using the contact form on your website to let people subscribe to the latest post or news, or anything valuable. Another way is if your website has access to let visitor register or sign up an account, like some online store, you will get the email address too.
You can create contact form with some plugins for CMS website, like wordpress, Magento or Prestashop. the popluar plugins for wordpress is Contact Form 7 or wpforms, please check our post for best wordpress contact form recommendation.
But I have to remind that you should comply with the local laws of the user when you use the people’s email, like GDPR in European Union. You must protect the user’s privacy, not just saying, you need to do it indeed. You need to make all clearly about visitors privacy on you website.
Once you have a email list, then how to start the email marketing? you can use the plugins, some plugins have the function to let users send group emails, or you can some famous SaaS tools like Mailchimp, actually, you can use Mailchimp to create contact form directly and embed it on your website.
Popular Email Marketing tools Recommended:
- ActiveCampaign — it is a toolkit, more like a CRM, that can help you analyze visitors’ activities or audience’s behavior, guide and help them learn what’s available to address their needs, meanwhile, it is also an email marketing tool.
- MailPoet — very good email marketing too.
- Mailchimp — the most popular email marketing tool
4. Affiliate Program
If you are selling some products or service, Affiliate Program is one of the best marketing method to drive free traffic and get orders. some beginners of website owner may not know about Affiliate Program.
What is Affiliate Program
Affiliate Program is a promotion system established by the merchants, There are various products in the system that need to be promoted. The promoters join the system, find the products they are interested in and promote them, and then obtain a personal affiliate link, no matter how they promote these products or services, as long as someone clicks on their link and purchases the product or service, then they will receive a commission, and the commission ratio is paid according to that set by the merchant.
This concept of Affiliate Program on the Internet was first proposed and practiced by William J. Tobin, the founder of PC Flowers & Gifts, in 1989. And today’s e-commerce giant, Amazon promotes and make it really popular. it launched an associate program in 1996. In fact, this is the predecessor of the affiliate program.
Later, many websites followed suit. This is actually a win-win business model. Merchants get free traffic and orders, while affiliate members get commissions. if you are a seller online, you don’t need to pay anything before you get orders, but you need to pay commission to the Affiliate members after order paid, I still consider this is a free traffic resource.
Start an Affiliate Program
You will know the Affiliate Program is more like a free advertisement, you just make your affiliate program, then the promoters or bloggers will join your affiliate program, they will help to promote your goods or service, since they can receive a commssion only when they bring sales. you will have 3 ways to start an affiliate program for your website.
1. Install Affiliate marketing Plugins(Free most of the time)
If you created a website with WordPress, Magento, or other CMS apps, you can install some affiliate plugins to start your affiliate program, there are some free plugins you can use at first, and you can also upgrade to paid plugins to get more features, but it seems affiliate plugins for Magento are paid one, though, the affiliate campaign you create with the plugins are free.
2. Join the Affiliate Marketplace
You can join some affiliate marketplace, and advertise your items on their platform, this would be the most effective way of affiliate marketing to grow your business since there are thousands of publishers promoting goods or services for those affiliate platforms:
- Shareasale — The most affordable and popular affiliate platform for small business.
- impact — is one of The biggest affiliate program networks currently, many famous brands have joined this network
- Awin — one of the biggest affiliate marketplace in Euro, they acquired Shareasale for the North America Market.
- Cj — one of The most popular affiliate networks.
3. Purchase software or APP to build an affiliate program
There are some 3rd-party affiliate software systems or apps, you can buy those systems to build your own affiliate programs, like Fiverr or Elementor‘s affiliate program.
Although you need to install a plugin or purchase service from affiliate marketplaces, You can get actual orders. This may not be the fastest way to get traffic, but it is the most effective way to get orders. if you build website with wordpress, you don’t even pay one penny before have orders, that’s definitely a free traffic resourse, if you don’t think so, you can ignore and go to next one.
Influencer / KOL(Key Opinion Leader)
Influencer or KOL(Key Opinion Leader) marketing are most like Affiliate marketing, because both of them are driving traffic and selling products or service and receive a commission, but influencer and KOL will always ask for a prepaid commission, but Affiliate Program is a way you pay a commission after orders or purchases. that’s obvious which one is better.
Of course, there are some influencers who will accept commission after orders, you may contact and discuss with them if you know some influencers, then they can also drive much free traffic to you, and you can pay them a sensible percentage of commissions according to the sales amount, I think you can have a long term and happy cooperation.
5. Content Marketing
Content Marketing, simply, you make and tell story or conceive usage scenarios for products and service, you can show the story by creating video, article, post or anything attractive, most of the time, these works can driving much free traffic, even earning revenue very soon.
Content marketing is often used in niche markets to the users who have specific needs, this kind of free traffic can bring direct purchases.
Blog
Blog is one of the most popular for people post their personal articles on the internet. you can write tutorials, share lifestyles, and of course, you can make stories or anything you can do. You can use blog to introduce one type of product or service, you can write different post for different product or service, Blog posts can brings much free traffic. therefore Blog is a very good tool for content marketing.
There are many methods to start a blog, you can build a blog on some blogging platform like Blogger, or you can create an individual blog website with a cms system, like wordpress.org, wordpress was created for a blog system, and that is very easy to use, you can read our article to learn how to start a blog with WordPress.
Once you have your own blog website, you can start to add content, and write posts, and articles for the niche product you are choosing, you may don’t know many people will find recommend products from Google, and many blog posts always show people how to find a good product or service. for example, if someone want to buy product for Yoga, but he/she doesn’t know where or how to find that, he/she will go to Google or Bing to search the related products. You can imagine how the free traffic from the blog now.
Medium.com
Medium.com is a website to let people share their idea, interesting thing via post or article, it is almost like a blog, but it is different, because you can’t do anything on Medium.com like your own personal blog, but it is still very popluar.
As you can write posts and articles, then you can do anything that an article can do, remember don’t insert any product or service link into the post or articles, however, you can insert links to your website at the bottom of articles, it will bring some free traffic for your website.
Video
With the 4G communication technology, Video can be spread more easily than before, so it is more and more popular for people to use video to do content marketing, the most famous and popular video platform is Youtube, everyone knows it, it brings much free traffic to many websites, and many people succeeded to share their video on Youtube.
the other video social network is vimeo, it is also free to individual account, but if you have a ton of video you may need to upgrade the paid plan, for the paid plan, you can store a large number of video and get more features.
Now the short videos are more and more popular and tiktok is the biggest one for short videos, not one of.
Watching a video is obviously easier than reading a post, that’s why video can be envolved so fast, and it is more and more popular, that is really a good chance to promote your website, and you can get a lot of free traffic. you can introduce your products directly, or you can make a content video to attract more people to follow your website, that depends on you.
Besides the above 3 major methods to do content marketing, you can also use other social media to create content too, actually, only if you have idea, you can showing it very easily on the internet.
6. Quora
Quora is a Question and Answer website from USA, not only, but they also allow people create a space to share their articles and professional knowledge or anything. People always go to Quora tofind answer for anything, it included any industry, whatever your website is, I think there are some related questions you can find for your website too, you can create a space to post your article about your website.
The above screenshot is from the blog of Si Quan Ong to tell you how Quora works and drives free traffic, though not all people can generate 1 million views if you have 1k or 10k, that’s also a good number of free traffic. try it and see your potential.
Conclusion
I listed many methods for drive free traffic in this article, actually, some of those ways are complement each other, they are different but can be worked together. although it is called free traffic, you still need to spend some time and learn some knowledge to drive traffic to your website, however, you also need to learn something and time to test if you hope use paid advertisement. The free traffic resources is very good for the beginners and the people who have limited budget.
Perhaps there are many other ways for driving free traffic to websites, that wait you to find out, and what I mentioned should be the most easy ways to start, Good Luck to everyone.
