Participate in online discussions. #Answering queries about your topic on discussion boards and e-mail lists can lure more visitors to your site. Find relevant groups on Web boards and in groups sponsored by Yahoo, MSN, LiveJournal and America Online. Add a three- or four-line signature to the bottom of your posts, including your Web address and current book title. Be sure to provide helpful information; don't post purely promotional messages. Follow the rules of the group, which sometimes preclude commercial content.

Post comments on blogs related to your topic.# Most blogs allow you to include a link back to your site in your comment. Invest the time in providing useful, thoughtful commentary, and you'll bring some new visitors to your site.

Article banks

An increasingly popular way to get exposure for your book is by contributing to online article banks. One of the most popular, #EzineArticles.com#, has more than 40,000 participating authors. Contributors aren't paid, but they figure the added exposure is worth the effort.

If your articles are accepted, they're featured on EzineArticles.com and made available for reuse on other Web sites, blogs and e-mail newsletters. Each article includes a "resource box" with links back to your site.

Although article syndication can provide great exposure, be selective about the content you contribute. Don't offer any content that appears on your site without first rewriting it. Search engines such as Google constantly filter out "duplicate content" from search results. If an article from your site appears elsewhere on the Internet, one of the Web pages probably will be deleted from search results, and chances are it will be yours. Search-engine experts call this the duplicate content penalty.