Bloggers and website owners are always looking for new sources of traffic.  All the major sources are covered in depth elsewhere.  It should come as no surprise to learn that Twitter is great for generating traffic, eh?  Chances are good that you’ll know a few of the traffic sources on this list, but you probably won’t recognize them all.

1. Email Notices

Your newsletter is important, but not just in the way you think.  Create a secondary mailing list and allow people to opt in to notices for new posts.  Whenever you upload a new post, on your site or as a guest post elsewhere, send a notification out to people on that list.  You can automatically opt-in your current mailing list and send them a notification allowing them to unsubscribe, if they don’t want to see so many updates.  You can also create a weekly or monthly digest of posts you’ve made, for people who want to stay up to date but don’t want daily messages.

2. RSS Feeds

Pick an RSS service of your choice and set up a list for notifications whenever you publish a new post.  This will work in much the same way as the email notifications above, but aggregates in one location along with anything else the RSS user chooses to follow.  It’s a little more intimate than an email inbox.  Feedburner is one good option, run by Google.

3. Guest Blogging

Guest blogging is still perfectly viable, with one caveat; don’t shoehorn your link into every post you make.  Typically, the owner of the blog will point a link your way to inform their users about where you come from, and that’s really all you need.  If your content stands up on its own, it will serve the purpose of getting people to click through to read more from you as the author.

4. Industry Forums

You might be surprised at the niche sites you can find online.  Every industry has enthusiasts, and enthusiasts create forums to gather like-minded people in the same place.  Locate these forums and do what you can to find a place within their ranks.  Some will have strict rules about posting your links, while others will be happy about your presence and will allow you to get away with nearly anything.

5. Reddit

Reddit is primarily populated by a younger audience but it serves as something of a microcosm of the above point.  Virtually anything you could think of has a subreddit, and there are very likely several subreddits of varying sizes for you to find a place within.  The kicker is the harsh rules against advertising.  You need to put forth your best public face and use the site as a user, not as an advertiser.  When you post links, it should be for the good of the community, not just for the business.

6. Industry Aggregators

Many industries have blogs that, while they don’t produce a lot of quality content themselves, have turned into very good aggregators and curators of external content.  Your goal with these sites is to get a place in their lists.  When you post something new, these sites should pick it up and run with it for you.

7. Commenter Links

No, not comment links.  You shouldn’t be going out and seeking comments sections to throw your link into.  Instead, build a community around your blog comments.  At least some of the people who comment on your blog will be bloggers themselves, and some of those bloggers will be willing to post your link on their site.  Your goal is to identify these people and build relationships with them.

8. Video Hosts

YouTube is one great video host and social profile in one, but it’s not the only site.  Daily Motion, Vimeo and more all exist.  Experiment with posting videos on sites other than YouTube, either in conjunction with a YouTube post or in place of YouTube.  You should probably avoid eliminating YouTube from your marketing entirely, but other video hosts can be very good supplements.  It gives users options if they don’t like one site or another.

9. Photo Hosts

Sites like Flickr and Imgur allow you to host images with comments attached.  When you host an image, comment on that image with a link to the post you used the image in.  If you’re using someone else’s image, particularly a creative commons image, feel free to comment on that image with a link to your post.  This allows the photographer – and anyone who comes after – to see where you used the image.

10. Squidoo

Squidoo doesn’t give you a lot of space to work with, but that space can be used in a similar manner to a landing page.  Squidoo itself then works like an aggregator, selecting a handful of pages on the site to promote each day.  If your page comes up, you’ll have an instant flow of traffic.

11. Quora

Quora can be considered something like a cross between Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers.  It’s a valuable resource for questions and discussion, with a higher threshold for quality than YA but with a lower barrier to entry than Wikipedia.  Participate and answer questions, take part in discussion and put your link where it counts.

12. iTunes

If you create podcasts – and really, it’s not hard, so you probably should – you can use iTunes as a way both to charge a nominal fee for those podcasts and to refer traffic to your site.  Put your voice and your discussions to use, put them on iTunes and share them across the Internet.

13. Slideshare

Slideshare is a way of presenting information in the form of a slide presentation, like a PowerPoint.  Imagine if this article took each separate point and converted it into a single slide.  Add in a title slide and a credits slide with additional links and you have a perfect entry for SlideShare.

14. Scribd

Scribd is a huge source for potential traffic with over 80 million users monthly.  It’s an aggregator for ebooks and articles, ranging from high profile publishers to individual users contributing the kind of content you’d see on eHow.  Establish yourself as a content provider and drive traffic to your site.

15. Craigslist

If you have anything you sell, at all, even just your own consulting services, you can create an ad on Craigslist to sell it.  You don’t need to deal with individual contacts; just refer people to your site for the typical sales funnel.

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