Advertising and Traffic for a Personal Site

I may be a little nuts....

[kriskd]

I run a personal site and do not sell products/services for profit. My goal with it is to have fun, provide a diversion for surfers out there and hopefully develop a following and recognition.

Perhaps lofty goals for just a simple personal site!

Anyway, obviously I don't have much of a budget for advertising since I don't make any money off of it and making money really isn't one of my goals. But, money aside, what type of advertising is appropriate for such a site?

For example, just for fun, I tried out a few of those cheap traffic services. I may have picked up some return users (or maybe not), but I don't feel that was an appropriate place to list my site because my site is showing up with pyramid scheme site, other traffic exchange services, things I consider scams, and so forth. I really don't want to put my site on the same level as those.

So, I suppose the only answer would be to open up my wallet! Okay, so I did do an advertising run with Google Adwords -- a more well respected service. However, since I have nothing to sell, would people who clicked on my ads be leery of my intentions? Would they wonder why I'm putting so much time and money into advertising?

As the meta description says above, yes, I'm a bit nuts with the amount of time and effort I put into this project. But, for what it's worth, it makes me happy and I love exchanging ideas in this forum with all of you.

Thanks,
Kris

[Marketing Guy]

You dont need a budget if you dont want to make money - just be creative.

I run an advice site that I set up in my spare time a year ago, and its now up to 37k visits per month, with people visiting and contributing to the site from all around the world.

Get other sites to link to you - keep adding content - add new features - work on joint promotions with similar sites.....

And so on! :)

Scott

[kriskd]

Scott,

Thanks for the confidence boost!

Actually, I've done all 3 of those. My newest promotion is exchanging links with an eBay seller. She donated one of her products for my website and now links to my website from her auctions and in exchanage, I link to her auctions from my site and promote her products on my site. Pretty cool, eh?

I've gotten a bit burnt out on exchanging (or more accurately begging) for links, but I still try to make time for it at least once a week.

And I do pretty good at adding content and keeping current content fresh.

Now I just need to keep that motiviation level up!

Finally, you reassured me I'm not totally nuts for wanting to promote my site and get new traffic even though I'm not selling anything.

Kris

[Mohamed_E]

kriskd,

I also have a pure hobby site that I devote a lot of time to (I am retired, so using up time is a feature, not a bug :) ).

My site is good enough that I get quite a few spontaneous links, I no longer go around trying to do link exchanges.

The first thing I did to optimize the site was to carefully choose the wording of the title and h1 headers. Then I did a small amount of link swapping to increase SE visibilty. Then I slightly upped up the use of keywords.

Now I mainly add new content, as the more content I have the more searches will lead to my site.

No spending of any type, period.

I do not think that you are at all nuts, I find my personal site very rewarding.

[Marketing Guy]

Hang on - it is entirely possible we are all nuts, but at least you wont be alone! ;)

Just have fun with your site Kris - it's that motivation that will help you make it a success.

Scott

[killroy]

if all else fails slap some adsense on... or better, offer adnses space in exchange for SEO and link building work. Might be a new industry out there ;)

SN

[kriskd]

Mohamed_E,

Hubbie and I are DINKs (dual income, no kids) so we have a bit of time and money to burn. Thus my passion for my personal site.

I'm not too saavy with the whole keyword concept. I should spend some more time here in the right groups learning about that and use more H1 tags and optimize key words in those. Great suggestion.

I agree, my site is very rewarding to me. I think my family gets sick of me talking about it!

Killroy --

I was finally approved for Adsense earlier this month and that is humming along okay. I don't think it's going to pay for an early retirement though!

Well fellow webmasters, it's time for me to get back to work on the web page! :)

Kris

[Mohamed_E]

I'm not too savvy with the whole keyword concept. I should spend some more time here in the right groups learning about that and use more H1 tags and optimize key words in those. Great suggestion.

Kris,

You seem to have been around here for six months, so you probably know that the best place to start reading is Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone [webmasterworld.com]. Just in case you do not, I have included the link.

[nakulgoyal]

Mohamad,

I am here too but never found that tro read. Thaanks for the link. I learn here everyday and I mean EVERYDAY.