This article was published on February 6, 2016

3 hacks to legitimately steal traffic from other sites without paying a dime


3 hacks to legitimately steal traffic from other sites without paying a dime

What’s the #1 most important thing for your website? How much traffic you’re getting. More traffic = more customers.

Most sources of traffic involve some type of investment up front in order to get more targeted people to come over to your website. Example: you pay for Facebook ads up front and get targeted people to come to your website.

This year I grew my personal blog from zero to $100,000K in revenue over 9 months and I did it with spending $0 on paid acquisition. I followed this process:

  • grow traffic
  • grow email subscribers from the traffic
  • repeat

The article linked above talks about how I grew email subscribers, in this post I want to show you how I legitimately “steal” traffic from our websites without paying a dime and grow month over month.

Ready? Lets roll!

​Babbly​: Give a share, get a share

This is a crazy simple idea but it works so damn well for any size of audience:

  • I pick a link from the Babbly network which looks like a good fit for my audience
  • I share this link on Twitter or Facebook and it gets added to Babbly feed
  • I get a credit on Babbly for others to promote my own content
  • I enter a link of the content I want promoted
  • Someone else of my caliber promotes my link the same way I did
  • The more shares I give the more shares I receive

Freaking simple and it works awesome, here is why:

1. Everyone who logs in to Babbly sees the currently trending articles so if you’re good at drumming up some share love for the article you’re promoting you’ll get in front of all Babbly users as well.

2. I can filter and only seen articles which matter to my areas of interest so that I share only articles which matter to my audience thus having a better chance of getting my audience to share.

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3. The more I share other people’s content the more I can get my content promoted, it’s addicting. I can see the credit score in upper right which tells me exactly how many credits I have to get my content promoted.

It’s a simple idea but works great and you don’t have to spend any money to get new targeted traffic.

Discover from SumoMe​: Send traffic to get more traffic

Countless tools have tried to make this model work, I find that Discover from SumoMe does the best job at it. It’s insanely simple, insanely!

This WordPress plugin actually get me more traffic by connecting my content with 150,000+ other SumoMe sites to trade traffic between my site and theirs. Other SumoMe sites promote my content on their sites and I promote other site content on my site.

The more I views I give other content through Discover on my blog the more other websites promote my content. It happens automagically.

Here is the process:

1. I install Discover and pick which types of articles I’d like to show on my website, how and where it will show up on my blog:

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2. I choose how it will look, a grid of four to 24 recommendations under the end of my blog posts on the blog or a scroll box that pops up with a “read next” article.

3. I choose my display rules, making sure it’s displayed under all the blog posts on my site only and not on any other pages:

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4. I launch Discover on my blog, here is how it looks at the very end of each blog post on my blog:

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5. I pick which content I want Discover to feature on other 150,000 SumoMe sites:

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6. I let it roll. Discover figures out where my content fits best and features the content I want promoted on other SumoMe sites driving free traffic back to me.

In return I am running Discover under every blog post on my own site promoting other people’s content which fits best with my audience.

For every view I give I get a view of my content on other websites, it’s all tracked so you can see how you’re performing:

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That’s it! The beauty is that it’s on autopilot, I never have to think about it again, I don’t do anything! I set it up and let it rip.

Share content in places most people forget and overlook

With so much content going on big name social channels like Facebook and LinkedIn, there’s a chance your post may never be seen on one of those mediums. Consider sharing your content on a lesser known site that still attracts thousands of viewers every day.

I like to promote my blog content in some of the most forgotten and overlooked places. These are sites that actually get tons of traction. Here are just a few of them:

Triberr:­ Triberr is a group of bloggers who want to promote amazing content. When I’m feeling amazing about the post I’ve just written, I visit Triberr and give this site a shot. In a matter of minutes you can have a whole lot of bloggers sharing your article as well as commenting on your content thread.

Quibb:­ Quibb is a private invite only community for professionals and entrepreneurs to share what they’re reading. The content here is high quality and if you get accepted (their acceptance rate is 43 percent!) this is an amazing place to exchange great content.

Tribepro:­ Tribepro will save you a ton of time. It’s a syndication platform of a group of like­minded entrepreneurs that gets your website massive exposure fast. If I want to spread my content quickly across a huge network of bloggers and entrepreneurs, I head over to Tribepro where the community does the work for me.

Quora: Quora is often overlooked but this is a site that lets users post questions and create conversation around a variety of topics. You can even include links to your personal content in an answer like I did here. Just by answering a question you can get your name and brand in front of hundreds of viewers with little to no effort at all.

Reddit: Reddit is great for striking up a conversation and for getting your content in front of a wide audience of like­minded people. Last month I shared an article of mine on the entrepreneur sub­Reddit and garnered 53 upvotes and 57 comments. For simply posting my blog piece on Reddit, I gained invaluable feedback and cultivated a ton of conversation around my post.

That’s it! These are the ways I “steal” traffic from other websites without paying a dime. Stop reading this and get to work implementing some of this stuff, it works!

Read next: How I grew my Facebook traffic by 200% in 60 days

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