When visitors come to a site for the first time they look for fresh, useful content and they appreciate getting something, anything for free. Of course people realize that nothing is really free so they expect that it will have a catch. The catch is that you will have the opportunity to brand yourself. Here’s how:

1. Consider adding a widget from www.widgetbox.com, with over 43,000 widgets to add to your website, you’ll find plenty to choose from. Whether you want news, weather, quizzes, count-down timers and assorted widgets on all subjects you’ll find something here. Freesticky.com also has plenty of options to choose from.

2. Offer free consultions to your visitors. You could provide answers to people’s questions via e-mail or telephone. As consulting fees can be very expensive, a free consultation can be a powerful incentive to contact you and provide you with a good way to introduce your products and services to potential customers. Additionally you can then post the questions and answers on your site as interesting content for others to read.

3. Create a unique online club and provide free membership. People enjoy belonging to something exclusive. Therefore create a “members only” club. Restrict membership to those people who truly qualify for your product or service. Then publish an e-zine for your club members. This will keep them in the loop and bring them back to your site.

4. As almost everyone is publishing an e-zine nowadays in order to induce more subscribers offer a free gift when people sign up.

5. Offer a free online directory. The directory could be full of interesting ebooks, e-zines, websites etc. If people find your directory to be a valuable resource they will view your entire website including your products and services in a very positive light.

6. Give your visitors free ebooks related to your products or services. You don’t have to author them. Plenty of people have written ebooks on a variety of topics and they offer them at no cost simply to get their names and ideas out to the general public.

7. Hold free online classes or seminars. They  could be held in your web site’s chat room. The  idea of “live” information will definitely entice  people to visit your web site. You will become  known as an expert on the topic.

8. Give visitors a free entry into your contest or sweepstakes. The prizes should be something of  interest or value to your visitors.

9. Let your visitors download software related to the theme of your website. For example of you sell toys on your website then offer shareware, freeware and demos of game related software.