After you decide on a contest that compliments products you sell and also wets appetite of your target audience, get busy submitting your contest to leading freebie, contest, and sweepstake directories. These directories will bring you good traffic. One such place to start is The Freebie Directory (http://freebiedirectory.com). From directory you can submit your contest to 100 or more freebie, contest and sweepstakes sites. Keep in mind that many of these sites will request a reciprocal link from you. Create a link page before you place your submissions so you can complete process of submitting your site to 100+ contest directories in less than a few hours. Once you're in, you'll notice immediate results!

At http://www.chistell.com we recently ran 1st Annual Chistell Poetry Contest. The response was overwhelming!

http://www.everyone.net/main/html/community_tour.html Create a community

http://subportal.iboost.com/subportals.html Offer free stuff

http://www.atomz.com Add search to your site

http://contests.about.com/shopping/contests/mpboards.htm Offer a prize or competition

http://www.hi2.com Let visitors play games

http://web-source.net/write.htm Write an article (or three)

=> OR DO IT YOURSELF!

The web is literally brim-full with free website building tools that can really improve your website. Again, you are only limited by your own imagination (or creative combination of other people's imagination!). I recommend you visit all of these sites, and get thinking...

- http://www.bignosebird.com (script called birdcast) - http://cgi-resources.com/Programs_and_Scripts - http://reallybig.com - http://www.zdnet.com/developer/ - http://www.builder.com - http://www.web-source.net/web/ - http://buildit.sitesell.com/shopping101.html

=> READ MORE...

Think for a while about sites that *you* really like, and think why it is that you like them. And always be on look- out for good ideas, both online and offline.

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Make your site a "wow!", and get everyone talking about (and visiting) your site. Sounds simple, doesn't it! It isn't, but there are lots of tools and resources on Internet to help you. Just add your brain... then create a buzz!