New to startups or just looking for ways to drive traffic to your website? Here are 18 tried and tested growth hacks for driving traffic, for free, to your site.

1. Old School Hacks for New Startup Founders That Still
DRIVE TRAFFICFor Free

2. Here are 18 tried & tested ways of driving traffic, for free, that still work.
New to startups?

3. Quora.com is a Q & A site.
You can create a profile, ask questions, upvote existing answers and answer
questions. If you’re an authority on a specific subject matter (i.e.: you’re an
expert in the problem that your startup solves) you can answer questions and
post links to your site or blog.
Keep in mind the idea here is not to be spammy or to look like you are
advertising. You need to offer real advice and position yourself as an expert. If
you do people will click on the link you place in your answers.
Quora

4. news.ycombinator.com is a community site for interesting links.
While the word ‘hacker’ is used HN states that the links you post don’t
necessarily have to be about hacking but they must be interesting.
Keep your target audience in mind though. People on Hacker News are generally
from a tech background. They are early adopters but aren’t fooled by rubbish.
Great links rise to the top as users can comment and upvote links. Links that get
lots of comments and upvotes make it to the home page. Get there are you are
bound to see a decent amount of traffic.
Hacker News

5. This is another section within HN.
This is for products, or tools, that people can play with and provide feedback on.
You simply add “Show HN” to the front of your post to place it in this section.
Don’t do this unless there is something worthwhile for people to play with. Be
prepared for constructive criticism and if you are getting comments be sure to
join the conversation.
Hacker News
“Show HN”

6. BetaList.com lists upcoming startups that are pre-beta or are in private beta. i.e.
they haven’t launched yet.
You can post your startup, if you have a landing page, on to Betalist for review. If
approved, your website will be featured for free.
This site now gets a fair amount of traffic and a large number of submission from
other startups so they’re very selective on the startups they feature. If you don’t
want to risk missing out they offer a paid service to guarantee a quick listing.
Even if you do pay, it’s a good way to get your ‘coming soon’ landing page in front
of thousands of eyeballs at a low cost to help bulk up your pre-release email sign
up list.
BetaList

7. Submit.co falls under good old PR.
PR is free if you are doing it yourself, but requires time and effort. If you can
afford to pay a PR agency all the better.
If you are doing it on your own here is a very thorough list of tech news sites and
other platforms you can post your new product too. In fact some of the ideas
listed in this post can be found on this list too.
Submit

8. Good old fashioned Twitter.
Simply start by finding and following people who are in your target audience.
Start a conversation with them and try to interact with them. Don’t be a stalker
though and don’t spam people. They’ll quickly unfollow you.
If you want to add some automation try products like Socedo.com. It will help
you find your target audience based on keywords you select. You can then follow
these people and setup automated likes to like their tweets if the tweets contain
certain keywords you've pre-selected.
If after the automated ‘like' they follow you back Socedo will send them a direct
message, which you can write promoting your startup. Remember to keep it
relevant. If you send a spammy direct message to someone they’re likely to
unfollow you. Keep your DM short, keep it helpful and ensure you have a link to
your new website.
Twitter

9. This is similar to Quora.
Again you don’t want your comments to look like adverts. They must be helpful
to the readers or offer a different viewpoint on the subject.
If you find a blog post that discusses the problem your startup solves, or it
discusses the product of one of your competitors then write a comment and add
a link to your website. Tread carefully. You’ve been warned.
Blog Comments

10. Writing posts for other blogs is a great way to position yourself as an expert but
also to get your message out.
Find popular blogs that target the same audience that your startup targets and
reach out to them with possible angles on posts you want to write for them.
If you really are an expert, or just have an interesting perspective, and your post
is targeted at their audience there is a good chance of getting published.
Guest Posting

11. Medium.com is similar to Twitter but without the 140 character limit. It’s a great
place to post content.
To be honest, I haven’t really embraced Medium from a writing perspective yet
but others have (and I will).
Mitchell Harper, who co-founded BigCommerce, recently used Medium in the
build up to the launch of his new startup PeopleSpark. He wrote some really
interesting posts over a period of months and always added links to the new
products landing page in everything he wrote.
His metrics on Medium show that his posts have been viewed, and shared, by
thousands. The key to his success is that he wrote posts that were not only very
good reads but gave great insights and were helpful to his target audience. He
was fairly prolific too which doesn't hurt.
Mitchell is on Medium here - medium.com/@mitchellharper
Blog on Medium

12. Join a group where your target audience resides and then join the conversation.
Like many of the ideas here you need to be smart about this. Make sure that if
you are adding your URL to a comment in the group it doesn’t look like
advertising.
Most group admins will delete posts and comments that appear to be pure
advertising. Make sure you are offering value and helping others out.
LinkedIn Groups

13. This is similar to LinkedIn Groups. Find groups on Facebook where your target
audience resides.
Once you find a group take a look at the recency and frequency of posts in the
group as well as the number of likes and comments on each post. If the group
looks active, is large enough and is your target audience then be sure to join.
Facebook Groups

14. The type of email I’m talking about here isn’t your usual email marketing in that
you aren’t building lists of pre-sign ups or emailing existing customers (you need
to do all of that though!) and you aren’t buying email marketing lists.
If you’ve built a B2C product then email your friends, family and business
acquaintances both old and new. Tell them about the product, ask them to try it
and ask them to share it with their network.
The same applies to B2B products but you need to be a bit smarter here. Don’t
email your great uncle who is a retired jockey telling him about your startup that
makes working with API’s easy for front-end developers.
Remember, that you can also add to your email list by downloading email
addresses from LinkedIn of all of the people you are linked with. This is a once
off opportunity so craft your email carefully and send it at a time that you feel
will most benefit your product (your launch day could be a good time).
Personal Emails

15. Producthunt.com is a place for the latest and greatest web and mobile
applications followed by early adopters.
Similar to Hacker News, products only make it to the home page if they are
upvoted by the community.
There is a big asterisk on this one though in that you can’t actually submit your
own product. Plus, in order to submit a product you have to be invited by a
current member.
Product Hunt can drive lots of traffic to your products website so it’s worth
investing some time on it.
My suggestion is to go to the Meetup page on the PH site and find a meetup in
your city. Go along and make an introduction. That’s a great way to get started,
and noticed.
ProductHunt

16. There are many ways to do this and the best way to explain is by way of an
example.
For Launch Lab we made a donation to the Django core project, which gave our
logo a prominent place on their website together with a backlink (ok, so this
wasn't free but was a worthwhile donation to make for Django developers).
We also use a product called Deis.io who list their users on their home page. We
reached out to them to list our logo as we love their product and use it every day.
Think about sites where you can get free backlinks.
Logo Links

17. You must have heard of Reddit.com?
If you are launching post to the Launchpages subreddit and the Startups
subreddit.
Depending on your target audience you’ll probably be able to find other relevant
Subreddits to post and comment in.
reddit.com/r/launchpages
reddit.com/r/startups
Sub-Reddits

18. Join the conversation wherever it is happening.
This sounds really obvious and it is, but some founders ignore this.
Your target market are having a conversation somewhere online. There are
loads of other platforms and opportunities I haven’t mentioned here. Find out
where your potential customers are having the conversation and get involved.
Join In

19. Use your email signature to advertise your product or to advertise blog posts
you’ve written.
You aren’t going to get massive amounts of traffic out of this but it is free. If you
really want to put your product front and centre in every business email you
send then you can look at using products like rocketseed.com.
You can also look at products like wisestamp.com for better email signatures.
Email Signatures

20. If you are reading this on Slideshare then you already know this one.
Create a useful slide deck and share it on SlideShare.
SlideShare

21. As a final word remember that whatever you do, whether you use paid or free
marketing channels, be sure to track it so that you know what works.
Analytics tools like Google Analytics are free. You can also check out products
like Mixpanel, which offers a very good free tier.
Also check out UTM parameters to tag links that you place on other websites so
that you can track exactly where your traffic is coming from.
UTM - support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en
Analytics

22. Website - launchlab.com.au
Twitter - @Go_LaunchLab