# What do you do to attract traffic?



## MJCaan (Jul 19, 2012)

What does everyone do to attract traffic to their website, blog, twitter...whatever?  Getting the word out about your novel/ work of art is much harder than actually writing it.  How do you begin to get word of mouth and get people buzzing about your work?


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## Trilby (Jul 20, 2012)

You could try putting a link to your website etc in your signature - I believe it is allowed on this site and other writing sites.

What I need to know is; how do you go about starting websites etc, and what do you talk about once you have them up and running?


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## garza (Jul 20, 2012)

Trilby - There are many free website services available. Of course they offer the service first to get you to pay for a site, but you don't have to. I've got a site with Yola that I've had for a couple of years and would be a much better site if I were to remember to update it more often. My site is *here*, and the home page for the service is *here*.

Yola and some of the other similar services offer a great deal of advice about how to build traffic on your site. Also, they offer a lot of options in making your site as attractive as possible. Mine is plain vanilla with none of the page-building options on offer, so don't judge what you can have by what I have. Even though it is so plain, and even though I do nothing to promote it, I get a little bit of traffic. That tells me that if I spiffied up the site, updated it regularly, and followed some of the promotion suggestions, I could have a fair amount of traffic at the site. 

The services such as Yola offer complete setup instructions and you can have a free site up and running in minutes. Then you have the option of converting it to a paid site for a small fee each year. You should give it a try. You can google for free websites and find many companies offering free websites.


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## Bloggsworth (Jul 20, 2012)

Try and cross the road - That always seems to attract a roadful...


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## The Backward OX (Jul 20, 2012)

Bloggs, you beat me to it...


Anyway, with respect, garza, and others, I think the question was about how to attract traffic, not about how to create a website.


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## garza (Jul 20, 2012)

garza said:


> Yola and some of the other similar services offer a great deal of advice about how to build traffic on your site. Also, they offer a lot of options in making your site as attractive as possible.


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## MJCaan (Jul 21, 2012)

Thanks for all the help so far.  I am researching just creating a basic website to introduce myself and my writing.  I think I found a format I like.  I'll add the link to my signature line.  I have a Tumblr blog, but I'm not sure that is working.  Maybe I'll explore the blog feature available with my website.


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## rebekahmichel (Jul 21, 2012)

I just started but I've been getting some hits from twitter as well as this board. I have a website I created through tripod. I love them, they are very easy to use and they've been around for a long time (I remember creating my first website with them when I was still a teenager and they have improved 100% since then). 

I would suggest once you have a website up and running you sign up for google analytics, it's totally free and you can see what's working for you and what's not.


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## Trilby (Jul 21, 2012)

The Backward OX said:


> Bloggs, you beat me to it...
> 
> 
> Anyway, with respect, garza, and others, I think the question was about how to attract traffic, not about how to create a website.



I believe Garza was answering my Q

#Garza - thank you for the info. I have just visited your site, well seen that you're a reporter (double columns), they work well. I doubt I'll be able to figure out how to do that.
 I looked up yola and I am keen to start one, over the next couple of days I'll think about what I need to put out there.


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## garza (Jul 21, 2012)

Glad I could help, Trilby. 

You and MJCaan both remember that the free website places have many ideas about building traffic. It's to their advantage for you to have many people see your site. The more visitors you have, the more people are exposed to what is offered by the service you are using. Take advantage of that free promotional advice.


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