Generating traffic through methods other than advertising

[Gaz]

I run a website and am trying to grow the traffic (if you want to check it out, the links in my signature, but you can probably help me without having a look) Unfortunately most of the ways I've found to generate traffic refer to blogging in particular, which it isn't.

I would like to try and stay away from advertising, mainly because I would like to get to a point where the site can fund the advertising by itself. I realise that I may need to start this cycle by putting money in, but would like to try for a while before resorting to this method.

One of the possible ideas was to find blogs/websites with a similar theme, and write a couple of guest articles for them (the theme being humorous reviews of movies), but, haven't been able to locate anything I feel would be suitable, and haven't really had the courage to approach the webmasters of the one or two sites that I have found (Yes I know that I should be scared but do it anyway, and I'm working on this). If anybody knows of any sites I could contact/submit to, or any other ways to try and get some traffic, I am open to suggestions.

I am partially web savvy, so I know that I should be using things like web directories etc, but I am not tech savvy enough to have figured out how to submit my site to these sorts of places. If you guys have any advice on this I would also appreciate it.

Thanks in Advance.

P.S. If you do look at my site, please give me your honest opinions of how I could improve it. Thanks Again

[sbdiane]

Are you code-savvy? You can do well by cleaning up your code and using good, semantic mark-up. Writing good content with words that people will search for used within it. Making regular updates to the information, keeping the information fresh so people want to come back. Simple things like that really do help. I saw it help me.

Your link isn't in your signature as I write this, so I can't tell if you have done any of these things or not.

One way I keep my content fresh and updated is by keeping a blog. Not like the kind of blogs people here talk about, but every week or so I write something new and put it on the home page. People do seem to come by to read about the adventures I post. It's not a real blog, no comments are allowed and only one post is displayed, but I keep a log of previous entries so people can read them if they want.

I also embedded the most recent forum topics on the home page so people can see right away what is new, and I use the forum as a way for people themselves to update the static information by embedding forum posts about the static information on the pages. In other words, forum topics are scattered throughout the site, not just filed away in the forum section. That way everybody in my little home-grown community has a stake in the web site and they do a lot of the work for me by updating info, answering questions and helping each other out.

In yet other words, building a community is one way to get more traffic.

[Gaz]

Thanks for the advice. I'm not sure how clean the code is, and the content, well, that is going to be a matter of personal taste, but I have generally got good feedback on the style of writing.

I'm not sure why the link wasn't in the signature, or why the signature wasn't on that post, but hopefully it's on this one if you want to have a look.

[dave marshall]

Hi,

can I ask a couple of questions?

1. who is your target user?

2. Have you oprimized your site with them in mind?

3. Have you done a business plan?

Dave

[TonyToneTone]

Here is a method I use to use.

I would do interviews with popular well-known fighters and then post links to those interviews on large Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) forums. The result would be thousands of people going to my site to see the interviews.