I have a relatively good running 1 year young freeware website, clean looking layout, visitors: ~ 1300/day, I'm not complaining about the google-adsense revenue... it's satisfying. The site is daily provided with new content, has a PR5 (predicted to be PR6 ... for what the PR predictions are worth!) and has a good SERP: in G (2nd page) Y (1st page) and MSN (1st page) for a high competitive keyword. I did a lot of directory link submissions... exchanged and purchased some links. When I read here in DP some reviews of websites I sometimes cannot imagine how some sites withs some strange themes get 10K or even a lot more visitors... My question is now: how increase the (returing) visitors on a regulare base. So... not from methods like myspace bulletins or mailspam or other temporarily high peek visitor supplier websites or services. someone has some ideas...
First of all, you have to offer a friendly web site / download experience, which users keep coming back to. Secondly, employing the use of a tool, such as Constant Contact (http://www.constantcontact.com/) is a great way of adding a user sign-up box for e-mail updates and announcements. This is totally non-SPAM, and is offered as an "opt-in" e-mail list only. Users have to confirm their registrations, CC makes certain that all your e-mails are anti-SPAM compliant before you send them - you have to include your information, such as business name, contact e-mail, telephone number, and physical address in the footer of each promotional e-mail, etc. Also, you could offer a "bookmark this page" or "send to an associate" link on your pages. Constant Contact offers code for this, as well. Hope this helps!