Does your website offer visitors a quick and easy way to
recommend it to a friend? If not, you're missing out on a
potential gold mine of free traffic.

The benefits:

1. Automated website promotion. You set up the program and
your visitors do the work of promoting your website for you.

2. You receive higher quality visitors. Your visitors will
refer people *really interested* in your products or
services. These people will be more likely to subscribe to
your newsletter, request your free reports, and ultimately
BUY YOUR PRODUCTS!

3. Nobody will every be insulted or upset by this promotion
technique (as long as you make it clear that the message
comes from their friend). People can only participate if
they visit your website, and email will only be sent by
people the recipient knows.

Just asking your visitors to recommend your website isn't
enough. You need to make it easy. Offer a form on your
website your visitors can fill out to recommend it to a
friend. Either put the form on every page of your website,
put it in a pop-up window, or link to it on every page.

There are many ways to do it:

1. Javascript. See the Javascript resources on my Webmaster
Resources page at http://www.busymarketing.com/links.shtml
for a website with instructions on how to use the script.

2. CGI. I really like Birdcast at http://www.bignosebird.com
- it's what I use on my website. You can find more options
on my Webmaster Resources page.

3. A service. Many remotely-hosted scripts are available.
The most popular is Recommend-It at
http://www.recommendit.com (which offers a contest as an
incentive and allows you to add recommendation links to the
email you send out). There is also a free program called Let
'Em Know at http://www.letemknow.com which allows you to run
your own contest for participants and probably offers more
statistics. Either can be set up in 5 minutes or less.

Javascript and CGI scripts have the benefit of being
completely under your control. You can customize them to
work on your website and decide if and how visitors are
notified about the origin of your script.

Services are easier to set up, but have to make a living somehow
and may use advertising or big, tacky buttons with their name
and/or logo in order to do so.

Don't delay! Set up a Tell-A-Friend system on your website
to watch the number and quality of your visitors improve
without raising a finger.

About the Author
Dawn Gray writes
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dawn@busymarketing.com