I certainly have! Did that experience make you less likely to take that person's advice again?

Of Course it did! Why would I want to take advice of someone who ended up wasting my time and money?

The following principle is very important for continued success online:

You must maintain a good online reputation

You can ruin your reputation with one REALLY bad recommendation or a series of highly questionable ones. For instance, let's say that I have a good reputation for recommending products that really add value to my customer base. Then a product comes along that pays a HUGE commision. I decide that I am going to make a killing if my customers buy that product. Let's say that product is really below average. It's no better than any other product of it's kind and actually has less features then a free product I know about. Which product should I endorse?

This is a dilemna for many people making money online. On one hand, you want to make money, on other hand you don't want to give out bad advice. Some people will choose to endorse expensive product, because it is bound to make them lots of money. This unequivocally WRONG CHOICE! A choice that I would not make. But for sake of argument let's assume that I did.

Now I have instantly given myself a bad reputation.

I imagined that people would arrive on my website, as if by magic, purchase goods, and perhaps come back again for more.

A week or so later I came down to earth with a big bump.

I realised that it would take a bit of time and effort to see results that I was dreaming about!

Since my reality check, I have learned all about weird and wonderful ways of internet marketing.

In this article I will tell you about my top 5 free ways of increasing website traffic. All these methods are completely free and if you spend some time on them you will find that they work consistently.

(1)Writing Articles

Writing an article on a subject related to your website and getting that article published has two major benefits:

- People who are interested in your article will read it and often click on URL in your resource box find out more. This gets you another free targeted visitor. Targeted, because that reader wants to find out more on subject of your article, which is hopefully related to subject of your website.

- Every publisher of your article must also publish your "resource box". Adding a resource box with your URL to all of your articles will increase number of links leading back to your website, which in turn helps to increase your search engine position

You will find a list of article directories to submit your articles to here.

(2)Forum Networking There are many discussion forums on internet, on every topic you could possibly imagine.

Most discussion boards allow posters to attach a "Signature" with their post containing additional information about themselves, such as their name, URL and sometimes even an advertisement.

By visiting a few forums regularly and participating in discussions, asking and answering questions, you can build up trust with other forum members, whilst at same time getting free exposure for your website.

Just try to make a useful contribution to forum - be sure to read forum rules and don't spam!

(3)Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal linking has two main benefits for you.

Firstly, more links that you exchange, more chance there is that someone will follow a link from another site and land on your website.

Secondly, your website will be perceived more importantly by search engines.

The more links you have from other sites, greater your chance of getter ranked more highly by all search engines.

Here are some Dos and Don'ts to help you get more out of your link exchanges.