Free traffic in 2023: truth or fantasy of beginners?

In this world, everything has a price, and we should pay for everything. But let's hack the system and get traffic for free! Well, almost for free… If ingenuity and time are the price you are willing to pay for traffic instead of $, then this article will be interesting and useful for you. Here the Aff1.com team shares relevant sources of conditionally free traffic.

Traffic costs money, and good traffic costs even more. If you agree with this approach, then you know too little about free traffic. More precisely, conditionally free traffic, because you still have to invest. But not with money, but with time, effort, and creativity. Do these conditions suit you? Then welcome to the free traffic hunters club!

An attentive reader will tell us: “Stop, but all of the above does not grow on trees, which means that it is not free.”

Absolutely, dear reader, you are right. As defined above, free traffic comes from SEO, referral links, or the eternal so-called “bush telegraph”. Reddit, TikTok, Twitter, and even dating sites can drive traffic. All this takes time, gadgets, inventing and creating attractive content, link building, and other costs. But it's a matter of priorities. It is easier for someone to pay for advertising, and who cannot or does not want to immediately spend a couple of thousand dollars can get traffic from other resources. We will talk about them.

Free traffic from Reddit

Reddit is a site that combines the features of a social network and a forum where users can post links and discuss various topics. One of the most popular sites in the world.

In simple words, Reddit is like a huge forum with an endless number of subreddits - topics, branches, and users. Everything in the world is discussed here, from culinary recipes to UFOs, if you're interested. So, your task is to interest other users.

• Find subreddits of a suitable subject and the desired target audience.
• Communicate actively and interested, like everyone else.
• Develop your personal rating, because here they do not trust newcomers with a weak reputation.
• Participate or create viral, vibrant threads. Follow the trends, stay up to date with current discussions.
• Reddit users are never at a loss for words, and you won’t take them with banal advertising. Be creative and useful to your audience.

To get free traffic from Reddit, you need to be an active member of this community. On the one hand, it takes time. On the other hand, you enjoy communication and can recoup the time spent many times over.

Reddit effect - a surge in site traffic after a link to it is published on Reddit. The effect is so strong that its consequences are comparable to a DoS attack: it can lead to the collapse of small sites due to the unavailability of such volumes of traffic (the so-called Slashdot effect).

Free traffic from TikTok

TikTok, along with Facebook and Instagram, is one of the key sources of social media traffic. But it’s easier to get free traffic from TikTok. If you want to run ads in TT, please read our special article with instructions and examples. And now let's move on to conditionally free "perks".

• A big plus of TikTok is a young audience, greedy for beauty, glamour, trends, and attractiveness, and ready to buy relevant products. Cosmetics, hair care, weight loss, dietary supplements - in a word, Nutra. And everything that is connected with the image and the fan.
• You can get huge organic reach without spending a single cent. If your video gets featured, several thousand organic views are guaranteed.
• You can't be lazy in creatives to make this audience like the video. There is an opinion that content is not as important on TikTok as a bright picture, filters, or video cover.
• Just like on Instagram, you can add a link in the profile header and write a selling offer.

Proven ideas of creatives — celeb lost weight (before and after results), anti-aging products (before and after, you can do it right on one face), car tuning, life hacks on any topic.

At first glance, TikTok is full of meaningless and useless content. However, proper targeting detects publications on any topic, including quite serious ones. The main thing is to find your audience and reach out to them in a language they understand.

Free traffic from Twitter

Twitter enjoys a reputation as a free-spirited social network. At least it doesn't get hysterical when it sees women's breasts, like Insta, and doesn't tighten the screws, like FB.

• To get free traffic from Twitter, you need an account with the most targeted audience, a large number of retweets and subscribers. The older and more active the account, the more tweets and retweets it has, the higher the post will be when ranking.
• Twitter is mostly content-friendly, but it doesn't hurt to create a pre-lander.
• To avoid censorship of “sensitive” content, refrain from provocative images, but clearly hint at the content and include a link. Only links may be visible in posts, but users understand what is meant.
• Use tags to distribute tweets.
• Be creative and witty.
• On Twitter, it is important to remain active, quickly respond to comments and reposts.

Stand-up humor works best on Twitter. If you know how or learn to formulate ideas in a funny and witty way, use suitable memes and hype topics, the local audience will appreciate your content.

Free traffic from chatroulettes

Chatroulette allows you to communicate anonymously via video and text chat. The site visitor sees a randomly selected Stranger and starts an online chat with him. At any moment of communication, the user can leave the current chat and look for a second random interlocutor.

Chatroulette appeared back in the early 2000s, but the wave of their popularity has only now begun (it is believed that this happened due to the isolation of people during the pandemic). The number of users continues to grow. It's time to master this source of conditional free traffic.

• Text chatroulettes are rare, they are mostly video chats. This gives room for promotional creativity, from obvious dating to Nutra and White Hat.
• No one will forbid you to place an advertising creative in a frame, place it on a background, or just talk about a product.
• Free access. Most anonymous video chats do not require any usage fees. Although some sites have additional paid features and premium access.
• Chatroulette pranks and trolling have become part of this culture, but you can try to play it ironically.
• You can’t choose the interlocutor yourself, which makes it difficult to target the audience.
• Official statistics say that the majority of users are between 18 and 35 years old.
• Anonymity led to the spread of pornography. With many complaints, the user may be blocked.

The Chatroulette program (the first one created) selects interlocutors absolutely randomly, the Omegle program allows you to specify your age, gender and interests, Chatrandom - gender and geolocation, CooMeet - to communicate only with the opposite sex, and Shagle has a minimum of inadequate users. So the audience for different programs is different, and this can also be taken into account and used. 

Free traffic from dating sites and dating apps

From chatroulettes, we naturally move on to dating. Dating sites are a thematic source with quality traffic that is already warmed up and ready to go and sign up on another site.

• It is believed that such traffic sources cover a predominantly male target audience. In fact, no one bothers you to come up with a way to promote your offer among women.
• Dating apps and websites are segmented by audience. For example, the target audience of some applications (Bloomy, Inner Circle, TinderSelect, Luxy) is wealthy men, a real find for dating offers, because for them, buying bonuses and gifts in the application is not a significant expense.
• Dating sites are usually protected from mass mailings and take active measures to combat spam, and mass registration of accounts. That's why tests are important.
• You need a creative to interest the user. After that, you can write a personal message and ask “how are you?”. After the answer, offer your product. More precisely, let a specially configured bot do it (no more than 4–5 phrases). The shorter, the easier it is to predict the scenario of correspondence.
• When it is not possible to send a message, you can like, send friend requests, and comment.

The most common system for getting leads from a dating site is to make a fake page on behalf of an attractive girl and be active (likes, comments) in groups where they can be seen by men who want to meet. After attracting attention, men will write personal messages to you, they will be redirected to the site via a link, under various pretexts. And even better - first in Telegram, as a pre-lander. 

Don't forget apps for business dating, car enthusiasts, travel buddies, event sharing, language learning, sports, and even fishing (LinkYou, Firstep, Wakie, Connect+, Tourbar, etc.).

Free traffic from marketplaces

Traffic from marketplaces is gaining popularity almost on par with social networks. Moreover, the choice of goods (respectively, offers) of marketplaces is very wide: household chemicals, clothes and shoes, jewelry, gadgets, dietary supplements, products, and even services.

Marketplaces are a win-win option. Buyers can find everything they need on one site, and sellers get access to a multi-million audience and effective promotion tools. The task of the arbitrator is to place an ad for a warm audience and collect your bonuses. Neglecting such an audience is a big omission.

• You can post announcements for free or for an inexpensive subscription.
• Speed and convenience - you can create your own "store" in 5 minutes.
• Depending on the site, you can place a link in contacts or in the text of the announcement.
• The importance of reviews. For example, on AliExpress, 91% of orders are made taking into account ratings, while 21% are solely because of them. And only 1% of users do not pay attention to reviews when buying. Therefore, their quantity and quality directly affect not only the issuance, but also sales.
• From time to time, marketplaces run marketing promotions, such as seasonal sales. This also includes local events where certain products are promoted. This is a good chance to increase sales and get good grades.
• Marketplaces have many advantages: audience trust is much higher than in an unknown pre-lander, and the product fully complies with all the rules of advertising platforms.

Given the habits of the audience, Nutra and White Hat remain the best niche for marketplaces: gadgets, cosmetics, creams, pills, and ointments.

Free traffic from maps and navigators

We are talking about attracting customers to the business by placing labels on the maps that the user follows and performs the target action.

The niches for working with cards are diverse: Nutra and White Hat (online stores), betting (placement of bookmakers), travel (booking hotels and tours), etc., as far as your imagination can go.

• To create a label on Google maps, you only need to register in Google My Business, create a company and provide contact information.
• On the map, you can place phone numbers, instant messengers, and website addresses.
• If there are no photos of the office (in the case of online stores), use photos of goods.
• Respond to comments whenever possible.

Instead of conclusions

The desire to attract traffic without investing money distinguishes truly passionate affiliates or newbies without big budgets. Free promotion methods have the right to exist but require diligence.

For example, promotion through Reels is effective and free of charge, but you need to come up with an idea, write a script, shoot and edit a video. And every day is the same. Even if the video goes viral, targeting doesn't work here. And the results of this method can neither be scaled nor predicted. The same applies to commenting on Telegram. But there are proven methods that we have covered in this article.

Speaking of something free, you need to remember that in our world there are two universal values: money and time. We pay for paid traffic with money, we pay for free traffic with time. And it is up to you to decide which of these resources to invest in traffic arbitrage.

At the same time, you need to constantly test and invent. So we wish you inspiration, cool ideas and, of course, profit!