Need Money Blog: How Do I Get Traffic To My Blog?

This very question comes up often here and on the forums I follow. There are free and easy ways to get traffic to your blog which may result in regular readers and revenue.

Generally, most blogs are started and abandoned without much fanfare. The writer has a "great idea", builds a standard form blog, writes one or two posts, finds some affiliate product to market and waits for the readers and dough to roll in. When neither happens, they lose interest and wander away to the next mindless activity.

First, I am going to assume that you have a great topic to blog about, write regular entries and enjoy writing. Further, I am going to assume that your blog is not one long list of ads and affiliate links and you live under the misguided belief that visitors can't wait to click on all your "htp://makemoneyonlinewithdietpills.com/ref=joesmithsaffilatelink" links.

Good.

So let's get some traffic.

RSS - Do you use RSS? All blog platforms I know of are optimized to include an easy to use RSS link for syndication. Many readers will not even visit your site but will follow through RSS. I have one blog which I wrote for nearly two years before checking and finding I had over 130 followers using RSS alone. Besides using your blog's built in RSS features, download and start using RSS Announcer each time you post a new article. That will load your latest posts onto blog directories and start getting some search engine results.

Friends - No, your pals from school or work, but those wonderful millions on the Internet. "Friend" lots of people with Facebook if that works for you. But I like to use these better sites because they are haunted by other bloggers..

MyBlogLog - MBL is a social networking site for bloggers which works with your Yahoo ID. Create an account, add your blog and then start friending people. The upper tab has a link marked People. That's a good place to start. Go through the vast list of people, read their profiles, maybe visit their blog or website and then put in a friend request. There is limit how many Contacts you make a day, so max it out. Within a day or so, you will start seeing some of those people visiting your blog (MBL has a neat widget for your blog which tracks visitors, what they read and what they CLICK on. Hmmmm..). Many will write messages for you on MBL asking that you visit their blog and let you know that they visited yours, what they thought and what they clicked on. Very useful and easy to do.

BlogCatalog - Same idea as MBL, but a nicer layout and more features. You can search by subject and and find blogs similar to yours. Friend those people and start following their blogs. They will probably do the same which means some more readers for you. I visit BlogCatalog and MyBlogLog every day and add friends and blogs.

Hint: For both sites, include a nice picture for your avatar which gets visitors attentions. Depending upon your subject, this is a fast way to get interest.

Bookmarks - Setup an account with OnlyWire, Social Marker and AddThis. Write a post and start bookmarking. Some of the bookmark sites will put your blog post on the first page of Google and that results in fast organic traffic. Don't forget to bookmark your site with Google! Don't use any of those "URL Submission" sites they are a waste of time.

Digg or Reddit - I have better luck with Digg, but here's the secret. Write a argumentative or inflammatory article on your blog like "Tall people are generally smarter than short people". Post a link to the story on Digg and watch what happens. Be careful with overdoing this tactic as it gets real old after a while by Digg readers and they may ban your account. I did this with an article here and the response has been huge and fun to watch.

Finally, give people a reason to come back. Write good posts. Spell check them. Grammar check them. Invite readers to leave comments. Respond to comments. Comment on other blogs and include your URL. Don't comment spam but rather concentrate of four or five blogs or forums you regularly read and leave good comments. The visitors will come.

Most of all, stick with it. Getting 100 visitors a day is not hard, but it is harder than getting the next 900 daily visitors.

Have fun,