I've found after trying to run at least a FAIRLY successful website over a number of years that the most effective advertising for me has been word of mouth.

I've been thinking, now, of just finding my niche community online and then taking down IMs and going from person to person. Kind of like the equivilent I'd think of handing out flyers.

Now, I know it wouldn't be effective for getting 1000 people a day to my website, but at this point I would be satisfied with about 50 people a day. And if I got enough IMs together it would only take about an hour or so to do I'd think.

I'm not talking about a quick way of just spamming out a huge amount of IMs. That would be ineffective, I'd think, for getting good quality friends to your website.

I'm talking about starting a conversation with a bunch of people on IM and befriending them. You could really potentially get loads of niche return visitors to your website really fast this way.

I would guess it's like door to door sales kind of...

In a sense, I guess you could say that everything is essentially door to door sales, but the problem for me with any other kind of advertising has been low quality traffic that doesn't return again and again to view your project or product.

What are some things to look out for with this strategy? Anyone have anything to say on the subject?

I'll put it this way

If you "IMmed" me and started some sales pitch, the second word from me would be "OFF"
I'll let you decide what the first might be.

I should clarify that I don't mean advertising a product that you sell. I'm talking more about a method of advertising a service to people who would actually be interested.

When some people start a website sometimes they tell their family and friends. To me that's advertising. This is what I'm talking about.

Why do you "want" the traffic first of all?

I just started a website called dealslipper.com and am trying to get people to post on it and need to increase traffic. Is this what you meant by talking to people? it is a really good site

You are right word of mouth is best way to promote, from this procedure you can get more and target visitors but if you will do online word of mouth marketing then it will be more use full.
thanks

I think word of mouth is not the same as going to people from door to door... same as doing it through IMS... by word of mouth, people are actually advising your site because they think that it is good and useful, by doing it door to door, you are taking chances and even how persuasive you are with it, people will say no... same as IMS, some people will still think its a waste of time and some people will still think its a spam...

Not sure if you will end up with a lot of traffic since it might be time consuming. Probably might work if you happen to join social groups related to your niche but to be realistic, most people would view it as annoying. Depends on how you establish relationship with the people in the first place and then trying to convince them.

The person to person advertising is SEO terms is called Mouth to Mouth Advertising and is a part of the Viral Marketing concept. You actually do not add people on IM's and start talking about your product. It's just the opposite way. Once you have established your website its time for viral marketing but not by adding them to your IM's. Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and Orkut are the various ways of promoting your website for Viral Marketing. People who visits your site in consideration (if they like your concept) will end up being a customer or acts as a referral traffic.

shouldn't that be mouth to mouth resucitation??

Word of Mouth is what you mean I would guess.

Other than that snogging potential customers might not be the way forward. risqué but possibly entertaining in some cases maybe, but definitely risky in others.