Get ready to be a part of a story. It won’t be the most incredible story you’ll ever hear, but it will be a good one – the story of how I’ve been kicked out of HARO and Source Bottle for spilling out their secrets. Ah, the things I do for my readers…. (JUST JOKING!!! hahaha)

There are two services online that you can use to get a LOT of traffic to anything.

It works for your Covert Commission pages, ShopABot stores and niche blogs – and is especially powerful when using it combined with the Real Specific software to REALLY crank up some incredible results.

Here’s what I am trying out and seeing some killer traffic numbers.

• Create a niche blog (preferably self hosted/Wordpress blog … SO many more options available to you)
• Connect Real Specific and get that automated to have content added to your blog and social accounts
• Finding an article that is trending/great content/interesting and unique
• Tweaking the start and end of the article with a paragraph or two of my own info (and leaving attribution for original content of course)
• Monetize it with a banner, link/sentence or some kind of mention of either your ShopABot giveaway and/or store – or one of your Covert Commissions missions.If you’re using Covert Commissions we’ve got a collection of banners and promotional materials you can just add directly into the post

  Or… better still, Covert Commissions has a (free) WordPress plugin you can use to automatically add in banners or exit pops for you.

• Submit to HARO and Source Bottle

NOTE: This works for ANYTHING – so if you haven’t got Covert Commissions or ShopABot don’t be too sad… lol, just work with what you currently have.  If you’re making your own giveaways, or have affiliate blogs or pages then you can still use this method.

Just remember that content is important.

Make sure you’re delivering value – the sales are an important side dish to the main meal.

So let’s start with HARO. The name is an acronym – Help A Reporter Out. It’s a platform created some years ago by Peter Shankman, a PR expert.

What he figured out before anyone else is that journalists from all over the word get out of editorial staff meetings with the task to write about things they know nothing about, so they need an expert’s input. Finding an expert can be easy, finding an expert willing to be quoted in your piece is harder, especially when you have a tight deadline.

That’s why HARO was born – to help journalist connect with various experts looking to be mentioned in their articles. Ten years later from its launch, the platform looks a bit different. Now you have to wait in a queue to have your call for an expert sent out to their network or sources and you don’t really have to be a reporter to use their service, you just need to have an audience.

Using HARO to get free traffic

For us, the online marketers of the world, the best way to get free traffic from HARO is to become a HARO Source. As a Source, you’ll receive email digests with calls for sources from various bloggers and journalists looking for comments or ideas. You can pitch them a quote or your product, depending on what they’re looking for. If they use your quote or decide to include your product or company in their piece, you’ll receive a link and the free traffic associated with it.

The reason why you’ll get traffic is also the reason it’s difficult to become a Reporter (someone who asks for ideas or quotes or any other type of input) – your website needs to have an Alexa.com ranking of one million or less. When you have a popular website, that’s easy, but when you’re just starting out, it’s difficult. Also, the Reporter’s website can’t be subscription based, so if they mention you and link to your website, you’ll get that traffic.

Here’s an example. Julie Bawden-Davis who writes for Open Forum (the American Express content hub) used HARO to find veterans who started a business.

And here is the final article. All those mentioned received a link and free traffic.

Besides HARO, there’s another service you can use, one created by an Australian entrepreneur – Source Bottle. Source Bottle works just like HARO, but it’s less restrictive about who can be the ‘reporter’. You can also be a blogger that’s just starting out, you don’t need to have a certain Alexa ranking. So, if you’ve just learned how to set up your own free WordPress blog, or just want to drive traffic to a webpage you have, pay attention!

Using Source Bottle to get free traffic

You can use this platform in a couple of ways – to get in contact with experts for your content marketing or to submit a call for an expert’s opinion and expose your website to a new audience in the process or to answer calls from other bloggers and journalists.

Once you have an account on their platform, you can browse featured experts and reach out to them. They’re there because they want to be quoted in various articles or be a guest on podcasts or TV shows.

You can also select what sort of calls from journalists you want to receive (niche, location) and you can start answering those, just like you’d do on HARO. If they’ll quote you, they’ll also include a link back to your website in their article, always for free.

You can also submit your own requests, especially if you have a blog, and use the URL of the website you want to promote as the name of the Organisation (Media outlet/Publication).

It’s not as complicated as it now looks. Just sign up for HARO or Source Bottle (or both, LOL) and let the first emails roll in. You’ll see what others are asking for an how they formulate their calls for sources and you’ll soon figure out how to use these platform to your advantage.

If you have any questions or suggestions, you know what to do – use the comments section below because I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.