This is a guest post by James

Getting started with a blog can be fun and easy. Getting serious about your blog, and staying the course while trying to make a blog profitable, can be a lot of work though.

Not everyone is cut out for immediate blogging success. Sometimes it takes a while to learn the ins and outs of blogging, some trial and error, and a few mistakes along the way, but that doesn’t mean that with a little work, we can’t make our blogging efforts worthwhile.

For many however, we don’t have the opportunity to pick up a class or two in blogging techniques at the local community college or university. This leaves some of us largely on our own when it comes to educating ourselves about blogging and blog related subject matters. The self-education process is often the hurdle that separates those who will end up being a successful blogger and those who will choose instead to make it only an occasional hobby to be toyed with in their spare time.

If you’ve chosen the path of self-education, and you desire to be successful in your blogging pursuits, here are ten ebooks that might help you succeed in your blogging endeavors.

1.  The Zen of Blogging by Hunter Nuttall

We might all use a little Zen in our lives when it comes to blogging. This brief ebook by Hunter Nuttall takes a fun Zen, “student and master” type approach to reviewing blog related subjects such as getting started, choosing a niche, images, monetization, and other relevant topics.

2. How to Develop Money-Making Niche Sites with WordPress by Caroline Middlebrook

If you aren’t using WordPress for your blog, you may want to skip this selection, but for those who are, you could find this ebook an interesting read. Among some of the topics Author Caroline Middlebrook touches upon are “Getting and Installing WordPress”, “Setting up AdSense On Your Site”, and “Creating Your Site Content”.

3.  Beginner’s Guide to Search Engine Optimization by Rand Fiskin

For those of you not too familiar with search engine optimization or “SEO”, this could be a good ebook with which to begin your education. Brief and to the point, this guide answers questions like, “Why does my company need SEO?” It also touches upon key topics such as how search engines operate, conducting keyword searches, and increasing a site’s popularity.

4.Unleashing the Idea Virus by Seth Godin

While I won’t go into detail on this nearly 200-page ebook, let’s just say it might be a good idea to have a look at what author Seth Godin’s ideavirus.com site proclaims as the “#1 ebook in history”. Packed with a variety of case studies and tons of interesting industry information, you’ll likely find something of relevance in this ebook for you to apply to your particular blogging situation.

5. Blueprint Guide to Blogger by Joesy

While Blogger might not be the most difficult blog service with which to become accustomed, this helpful, 27-page guide might provide a little more instruction or insight if you are in need.

6. Seth Godin’s Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web by Seth Godin

Shorter than his “Unleashing the Idea Virus,” at 45-pages this is Seth Godin’s self-professed, “Incomplete Guide to Blogs and the New Web”. Even if it is “incomplete,” it’s still an ebook you might want to check out.

7. Deep Secrets of Successful Blogging by Chitika

“Deep Secrets of Successful Blogging” is a compilation of 30 industry experts. Each expert has a short chapter so you get a variety of secrets, ideas, tips, and opinions related to blogging.

8. How To Make My Blog Wordpress E-Book by Marko Saric

At 35-pages, this little ebook reviews subjects such as “How to install a WordPress blog”, “How to make your WordPress blog more secure”, and “Why you should consider getting a premium theme”. Even if you don’t use WordPress, you might still pick up a few useful tips.

9. How to Start a Business Blog by Michael Martine

While not everyone is out to start a business blog, if by chance you are, this could be an ebook resource at which you might want to take a look. This ebook offers an 11-step process to start a business blog.

10. SEO for WordPress Blogs by Carrie Hill and Mary Bowling

While not super detailed at only 14-pages, this ebook might still be worth a glance. Of course, as the title suggests, this information is geared toward users of WordPress. Among its pages are subjects such as starting a blog, how to promote your blog, as well as how to set up WordPress for SEO success.

Tom Walker blogs for an online supplier of HP 363 ink cartridges, toner and other supplies to the print industry. For more of his posts about design and media, click here

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1. Are Make Money Online Ebooks Winners Or Losers

In the past, I’ve had a few blogs and thought that traffic, money, exposure will all come once I had some content on my blog, but as you can guess I was wrong.

How could I possible get traffic without marketing my site, right?

After submitting my site to a few directories and a few search engines I waited…waited…and waited….but still no increase in traffic and money.

I used to promote my site whenever I felt like.

Until one day I thought to myself, hang on, this isn’t working for me. In order to develop a good blog I will need to continually and consistently promote my blog. So what I did was develop my own daily marketing schedule. From that point on, I’ve learned a lesson that no matter what you do, if you have the right idea for handling certain situations, you will always progress and succeed at what you’re willing to achieve.

Before I started this blog, I already made a detailed daily marketing schedule and have been following this marketing schedule from day one. Many people say content is king, although this is true I think marketing is just as important or better said I would say you need to find the right balance between marketing your blog and writing your content. Just think about this, what is the point of having a blog when nobody ever reads it?

I have created a kind of rough marketing schedule sketch so you get a idea of what I do to promote my blog. Most of the things I’ve listed here are always the minimum I do to market my blog, but if I have more time I’ll always do more things.

My daily marketing schedule below.

• Participate in 5 different forums-I personally think that this is an effective way of marketing because you get to learn from other people and you get a free back link for your blog. This mostly takes me around 20 minutes.
• Leave 10 comments on related blogs-Commenting is one of my favorite methods of promoting because I like reading other blogs and you get to leave comments with a free back link to your blog. Takes me around 30 minutes.
• Submit my blog to 10 different blog or web directories-Even though many people don’t consider this very effective any more. I still do submit my blog to as many seo friendly directories, because it helps you gain some back links and will benefit your seo rankings in the long term. Takes me about 30 minutes.
• Try to get a link exchange partner – I mostly do this to gain some nice back links. Takes around 10 minutes
• Post new fresh content- Ah, as they say content is king, probably the most important part of your blog. Without quality content you will get no traffic and that means no money. This mostly depends on how long and information rich the post is as this sometimes takes 30 minutes while other times it takes me 1 hour to write new posts.
• Read other related blogs- If I have time I mostly read other related blogs before I crawl into bed. I try to get ideas for some future posts and try to expand my knowledge. I mostly spend around 30 hour reading other blogs.
• Brainstorm-When I have a bit of time I like to relax in a peaceful environment and just brainstorm about some posts I’d like to write about. I mostly do this around bed time or when I feel lazy.
  
• Monetize my blog- Also a very important element of your blog. If I see that an advertising network isn’t doing well or isn’t earning much money, then I switch to another. I like to experiment until I find a good advertising network

These are the main things I do to promote my blog. Of course there are times I promote my blog with different methods, but I’ll make a post about that in the future.

The main reason I have a daily marketing plan is because it keeps me focused and motivated. I always know that I’ve got some work to do and that it’s got to be done. I’m pretty much sure that if I didn’t have a marketing schedule I would be playing games or doing something else, while I could be working on my blog.

So guys, do you have a daily marketing schedule as well? Why do you use one? Does it actually help you as well?

Related posts:

1. 7 Killer Ways To Get Free Targeted Traffic
2. 3 Easy Ways To Improve Google Pagerank

Happy New Year!

I know it’s a bit late, but better late then never.

I know new year was like 6 days ago, but thought I’d just make a post to wish everyone a happy new year.

I hope everyone had a great holiday and of course a fantastic new year.  I for sure enjoyed the new year and saw lots and lots of fireworks cracking in the sky. Did you do any crazy things on new year? Or was it just a boring day?

Anyway here we are in 2010.

Looking back at 2009 I had great times and especially loved to see that I have progressed with this blog.

I mostly like to look back on last year to and take a little moment to reflect back on 2009 and see if 2009 was considered a success or failure. If you didn’t accomplish your goals now is the time to set your new years resolution and work towards it.

A look back at 2009

I personally think 2009 was not too bad, as we all know this blog was launched on the 1st of September, so it makes this blog a a bit older then 4 months old. In these 4 months I’ve tried to set some goals and work towards these goals, although I did suffer a few setbacks, I’d like to think positivly and think about the things I’ve accomplished.

Build Relationships- One of my main goals was to go out in the blogging world and try to get to know as many people as possible and although at first things didn’t go my way I tried harder and tryed to build relationships and network with other bloggers and people. I’ve came to know about lots of different kind of bloggers and people. We all know that it takes time to build contacts if you’ve just launched a new blog, but untill you start getting more popular over time, you will need to put effort to try networking and contacting other blog owners and people. A good and effective way to do this is by leaving comments and doing link exchanges with other related blogs. Participating on forums is also a good way.

Knowlegde is Power- I’ve been reading and researching a lot of things and have been able to expand my knowlegde about certain topics. By reading other blogs, not only do I read because I enjoy, but I also read to expand my knowlegde, it’s like doing your homework, but instead of hating it you enjoy it. By reading other blogs, It has become much more easier to write about some topics. There’s also some topics I can write about without researching anymore which makes life much more easier.

Build Backlinks- I think building backlinks are a very importent aspect of developing  a blog as the more backlinks you have the more higher you will rank and the more traffic you will get. Over the past 4 months I think I’ve done a decent job on building back links and have been spending most of the time building backlinks for about 1 or 2 hours a day. I now just need to continue building back links and then I think it’s just a matter of time before your blog will climb up in the search engines, Alexa rank wil rise and of course your blog will get a high pagerank.

These where the main goals for me and as you can see money is not really a goal I focused on. What I actually did was set some personal targets that were realistic and achievable, because I don’t see the point of setting really high targets that are  unreachable. I like to take baby steps and work myself to a higher level.

Another point I focused on was traffic, but I decided to skip this part as getting traffic is every bloggers goal.

Get ready for 2010 and start setting your goals.

So then how did your blog do in 2009? Any milestones? What are your goals for 2010?

No related posts.

Merry Christmas everyone.

I hope everyone had a great christmas and enjoyed every part of it.

I actually myself had a nice christmas, although we had some problems cooking the turkey, christmas still ended up being fun as after a very long time we were able to celebrate Christmas as a family. Now then long story short, I woke up at 12 o’clock, yes I know it’s a bit late on a beutiful christmas day, but I was very tired and in need of sleep.  After I woke up we all decided to open the presents and to my surprise I received more then I expected.

To be more exact I received a £ 50 note from my parents and I also got a £ 50 Amazon gift card, my grand parents bought me a new Ipod Touch and a £ 25 note and £ 200 to buy new clothes. I know grand parents love to spoil their grand children.

Anyway the main thing was we all were happy. After opening all the presents we watched Hancock and Ironman as these movies were the Christmas special that were shown on TV.

After the movies we started to cook turkey and that was a bit of a funny and pain in the ass experience. Well, the problem was that we lost the turkey, I know it sounds to stupid to be true, but someone thought it was funny to hide the turkey and the silly thing is that we still dont know who did this. After a lot of time we finally found the turkey.  So we got back to cooking the turkey.  Anyway the other problem was that the oven stopped working. Thank god we were able to fix the oven and still enjoy the turkey.

Further, I hope everyone enjoyed Christmas.

Let me know how your Christmas day was and which gifts you received?

No related posts.

A blog can maybe have the best content or design in the world, but if your blog doesn’t have the right professionalism and setup you can forget about being successful as a blogger. The main priority for a blogger is to show visitors that your blog has the right structure and a interesting feel.. The best way to do that is by optimizing your blog in the best possible way, of course this would require some work, but trust me it’s worth it.

If you want to be a successful blogger, here are a few things you should consider doing.

Take your time to write a good about and contact page

One of the first things visitors do when they visit your blog is go to your about me page. If your about me page doesn’t interest them they will probably leave and never come back. On the about me page you should be like a friend for the reader. You should also list all the reasons why people should read your blog. If you want to write an interesting about page try following these tips.

1. Why Read This Blog

Your about me page should not only explain what your blog is about, but it should also give a reason on why your readers should come back. You should list down all the benefits of your blog and make sure you send out a strong message on why your readers should come back often. This way readers know you want people to read your blog and are interested in getting to know new people.

2.      Personal Relation

When you visit an about me page you will proberly expect some background or personal information about the blogger, right? Well, the problem is most bloggers don’t list personal information or lack information about themselves.

On your about me page you need an in depth overview of your back ground and personal information, ok I’m not saying you need to get too personal, but it’s good to put some personal stuff. By doing this you will open yourself to your audience and create trust and credibility. Visiter’s will get to know you better and understand you better so it will always benefit you and your readers. If you do succeed with creating a good personal relationship with your readers it is most likely they will be regular readers of your blog.

3.      Contact Information

One very important element of your blog is of course the contact page. When your readers or visitors have a question for you, what do you think they are going to do?

Yep, they are going to contact you with email, but how do you expect them to do that if they can’t find your contact information.

Imagine this scenario, a daily reader has been reading your blog for 2 weeks now and has a very important question for you. He tries to find your contact details, but after searching your whole blog he can’t find your details. He eventually gets frustrated and  leaves your blog…..hmmm, What do you think you’ve just done? Indeed you’ve just lost a regular reader of your blog. This would of never happened if you had you your contact details on your blog. Just think about it, don’t you just hate it when you want to contact someone, but can’t figure out how to get their attention.

Keep A Simple But Attractive Blog Design

You may have a great blog with amazing content, but one underestimated part of your blog is the blog design. Most people say content is king, although this is true I still think that a blog design is also very important. Some bloggers tend to pay more attention to the design, because they want the perfect design, instead of having quality content and as this occurs, you can bet your money that you will get crappy content.

The best thing to do is to find the right balance and the right blending between the design and content. The best result you can get is if you have a attractive blog design that makes the content stand out so that readers have a easy overview of the content. You may want fancy graphics, cool colors, great features and lots of pictures, but you need to make sure you don’t over do it as too many features can have a negative effect because your blog will become too crowed and have no breathing space. Here are a few things regarding your blog design

1. Simplicity is the best solution

Having a simple design is a fast and great way to showcase your content as the reader won’t get distracted and will focus on the content written. Some bloggers go for the simple design when blogging as they want the readers to get straight to the point and read the content. It’s better to have a simple design instead of having all the colours of a rainbow. Not only will  bright colors make you lose concentration, it will also make you blind and I’m pretty sure most of us would like to keep our eyesight.

2. A picture says 100 words

Your blog posts should include images at all costs. Many bloggers may not do this, but including images in your blog posts adds an extra dimension to your blog. It makes your blog look more professional and interesting. When you only have a blog with all massive blocks of texts with no images it can scare the visitor away.

3. Easy to read text

Make sure your text is easy to read with black letters. As they say the bigger the better. The typography you should choose should be easy to read. The best letter size to choose is between 12 and 14.

4. Sidebar not cluttered

Sidebars have a important function in usability and appearance. A good looking sidebar can make it easier for readers to find what they are looking for, this way they will stay at your site longer. On the dark side, cluttered sidebars can ruin your whole blog design and can create tension. Poor sidebars also lead to frustrated visitors.

Content is and always will be king

The most important part of your blog is the content. If you don’t have good content, not many people will read your blog. You need to blog about something your passionate about. Don’t forget Content is king and promotion is queen.

Here are a few tips.

1. Write how-to guides

People love helpful information. When they need help or are looking for in depth information, how-to guides will be the perfect resource. Just be sure to include useful information.

2. People always learn new things

If you pay close attention every blog actually has the same kind of content, but the only difference is that it’s written differently. Even though you see similar content on other blogs you should not be discouraged to write about the same subject, because every individual always has his own writing ability and own words to describe something. Just because a blogger in the same niche has written a specific topic, it doesn’t mean you can’t write about it as well. Readers actually like reading different blogs with similar content, because they get different ideas and always gain knowledge. They get to look at a situation from a different perspective. Everyone has their own opinion about a specific subject. Everyone always pick up new things.

Create a community

The best thing about a blog is that, not only are you controlling the blog, but your readers have a massive contribution to your blog as well. Your readers will be giving their own opinion on your blog through comments.

Here are a few tips on how you can create a community

1. Ask for a opinion

A good way to get lots of comments and feedback is by asking some open-ended questions at the end of your post. Ask questions like “what’s your opinion” or “does anyone else have any good suggestions”. When asking these kinds of questions people feel like your post is aimed at them and they feel more comfortable to leave comments.

2. Respond to most comments

This is very important with blogs. As you know, I’m almost certain you don’t like being ignored, right? By responding to every comment on your blog your readers will now that you care about them and are listing to what they have to say. This is a strong and effective way to create a community.

All I’ve got to say now is that, if you follow these tips on a consistent basis you will see some improvements. Keep up the good work and good luck.

Any other tips?

Related posts:

1. Why You Should Have An About Me And Contact Me Page
2. How Long Should A Blog Post Be?

First of all I would like to apologise for not posting for a week. The reason for this is because I have been really really busy with exams. These exams will take place on the 15e of december and I am trying my best to prepere for these exams. I’ve also been busy with creating a website for a client and the deadline is on the 19e of december.

Anyway I hope you all understand the situation.

Although this current situation, I’ve decided to start rewarding  the top commentator’s by posting a post dedicated to the top commentator’s  every month.

Last months top commentators were

1. Dana @ Online Knowledge
2.   Leighann Garber
3. Ms. Freeman
4.   Dennis Edell
5.   chandan@work at home
6.   IndianCashMaker
7.   Phaoloo
8.   Mikkel
9.   Kok Siong Chen
10. Blogging Tips

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This is a guest post by Diana

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the technical side of marketing on the World Wide Web. It helps by promoting websites and increases traffic to the particular site. Sometimes SEO or search engine optimization is also called SEO copyrighting. This is because the strategies or techniques that are used for the promotion of website are done mainly through text. However, it is important not to deviate from the basic norms that get you a good ranking for your site.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization can be of 2 types – Good and Bad. Let us see what the characteristics of good and bad SEO are.

Characteristics of good SEO

• It adheres to the rules of SEO.

• It aims at securing top rankings in the major search engines

• Although the progress is slow sometimes and can take about 6 to 12 months to get steady rankings, the results are long lasting

• It focuses mainly on long-term goals and objectives of the website.

• SEO services include link building, natural optimization, Social Media Marketing and management of Pay-Per Click etc.

• Good search engine optimization lays stress on research as well as keywords. It emphasizes on validity of content.

Characteristics of bad SEO

Just as there are traits of good or White Hat SEO, there are bad characteristics of search engine optimization too and the “bad guys” usually do it for selfish means and to deviate or hoodwink visitors. They do it for short term rankings and want to see quick results, but it by using these ways it wont take long before Google notices this and bans you or penelizes your site.

• Bad SEO makes use of hidden text, link spamming, link farming etc. They violate search engine optimization guidelines.

• Make use of Black Hat techniques that may include doorway pages, overdoing RSS, duplicate content and keyword stuffing etc

• It offers shortcuts to get rankings in the main search engines. It concentrates on immediate or short term goals and not on long-term objectives.

• It misleads and misguides visitors on the Web.

It is very important to remember that although the bad SEO or Black Hat guys may derive immediate benefits but it doesn’t sustain. Websites indulging in such practices are usually penalized there by causing irreparable damage to their image and website.

Search engine optimization is a technique of web marketing. The World Wide Web is infested with bad and good guys.

No related posts.

While visiting some blogs yesterday, it made me think why most bloggers start a blog? Although it may seem quite logical why most bloggers start blogging, I would still like to tell you guys why I and most of you started blogging?

Money-Blogging is  lucrative and offers a way to make some cash.

Fun-Blogging is fun as you can express your opinions, and the fact that you could make some extra cash makes it even more fun.

Interaction-I love surfing the internet and the chance getting to know different kind of people from different places interests me. Getting regular readers to my blog also makes me feel good.

Challenging-For me blogging is a challenge and makes me put my mind to something useful. It also makes me strive to be successful and  keeps me motivated.

These are my main reasons why I blog. All these reasons combined make me blog. Every person has different needs and reasons to blog. Some people only blog for the money, while others do it for fun. As all these reasons are different I will go into more detail .

Blogging For Cash

Oh yehe…The ultimate reason to blog. Now I’m not going to lie to every one of you, the main reason why I started to blog was because I saw that blogging was a good and steadily increasing business with a lot of potential. After reading other successful blogs time after time I decided to start one myself. Inspired by the fact some blogger´s were making some good money.

Although I don’t only think about making money with this blog, it is still a important part of blogging and definitely one of my long term goals I’ve  set for this blog.

Making money online with a blog can be a tough and long journey, but if you try and work hard it can make your job easier.

I know for a fact that every blogger would love to make a extra income from blogging, right? Would you still blog if there wasn’t any money to be made blogging? I know most bloggers would say no, but there are a few who blog purely for fun.

Blogging for fun

Ok, I admit I wasn’t the brightest student in the class when it came to writing, in fact I still ain’t, but that doesn´t stop me to enjoy blogging. Anyway, enough about my brightness, lets continue.

The thing I love about blogging is that I can get away from reality and just start blogging, it’s as if blogging opens a whole new world to me. You can express yourself and publish your thoughts. You can write about anything you want. There´s no limit on how much you can write, or what topic you can write. It’s complete freedom.

Another thing why I like blogging for fun is that other people get to read your blog and to be honest I like it when other people read my blog and give their opinion on the situation, because it gives me the energy and drive to continue blogging.

Blogging for your readers

Before I started to blog, I used to read a lot of other blogs and one question that I coudn’t figure out was

Why bloggers considered readers so important?

Well, now that I’ve been blogging for some time now, this has to be 1 of my main reasons to blog. I absolute love it when readers come over to my blog just to see what I have to say, Eventually if they like your blog they will be reading your blog almost on a daily base, just to see what you´ve written on your blog.

To be honest, the first thing I do when I wake up In the morning is switch on my laptop and look if I have any comments on my blog. Getting comments on my blog makes me feel happy, because it shows that readers also have something to say. I understand that everyone loves to get positive comments, but sometimes you will get negative comments as well, don´t get angry when you get negative comments just take it as a critic and try to improve. At the end of the day you will get negative comments or positive comments, but at least you will know that people have read your post.

Seeing my readers go up every week, inspires me to write even more posts. It simply means people like your blog and are willing to read it every day. They become your loyal reader´s no matter what.

What I also tend to do when waking up is checking my Google analytics. By checking this I get to see all the traffic my blog is receiving. I also get to see where my readers come from and which country´s my audience comes from.

Blogging is challenging

Yes, blogging is a big challenge for me. Some of you must be wondering why the heck would blogging be a challenge as there’s nothing adventures about it?

Well, before starting this blog I had already written my goals and what I wanted to achieve with this blog. By writing my long term goals for this blog I personally made a commitment to make this a successful blog.

By achieving my goals for this blog makes it an interesting challenge as I can see what I am capable of achieving. Seeing this blog progress every day, makes me feel as if I’m one step closer to achieving my goals.

After completing a goal I always set my goal even higher than my previous goal.

As I believe there´s always room for improvement. By aiming for high standards you will get a habit to always aim high in life.

The bigger the challenge, the more you will achieve.

So what were your reasons to blog? Did you achieve your goals? What keeps you still blogging?

Related posts:

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If you take a look at all the big bloggers, and ask yourself what they all have in common?  Yes, an about me page, right?

A about me page has become a popular page amongst us bloggers. A about me page lets the readers know, who you are? Where are you from? Why you have started your blog? What is your blog about? and most important, What future intentions you have for your blog. Readers want to know who´s blog they are reading. Besides looking for useful information most readers come to blogs for a few reasons, they want to build a relationship with you, they want to be able to communicate with you and they want to be part of a community.

A about me page is quite handy for bloggers, because that is the only page on your whole blog, where you will be able to express yourself. You´ve got the opportunity to connect with your readers and let them know what you are all about. A about me page is all about trust, readers will mostly likely gain trust after reading the about me page.

You don´t have to get to personal on your about me page, but it will be nice to put down some interesting information about yourself.

When I read new blogs one of the first things I do is go and visit the blog just to see who´s blog i’m reading. Mostly if I am within the same age group as the blogger i like to read some posts he´s written because I would like to see how other bloggers within my age group write and what opinions they have compared to mine. We bloggers can learn of each other.

Contact forms are also very important for blogs. Readers get the chance to interact with you and communicate with you.

Imagine this situation:

You´ve just discovered a fantastic blog and absolutely love everything about that blog. So you thought of sending the blogger a email with a few questions and tell him about how much you like the blog, so there you are looking for his contact page, after looking around you realize he doesn’t have a contact page and there is no other way to contact him. Wouldn’t that just make you mad? It sure would get me annoyed.

The good thing is that adding a contact me page for wordpress is as easy as 1+1. So head over at http://http://www.deliciousdays.com/cforms-plugin/and download that plugin if you´re using wordpress.

If you haven´t got these 2 must have pages, go add them right now.

No related posts.

No matter how great your blog design is, or how great your content is, all blogs have 1 thing in common, they all need traffic to make money online.  Without traffic you will not succeed, your blog will be an incomplete puzzle.

Every webmaster wants his site to be a success and receive lots of traffic, right?

You need traffic to make money online…..You need traffic to make sales…..You need traffic to make your blog popular.

In my honest opinion, I personally find the first month when a blog is launched to be the hardest time to get traffic to a blog. Especially since the blog is new and doesn’t have much content visitors wont really be interested to come to your blog, even though my blog is now  almost 3 months old I’m still  trying my best to get decent traffic and so far I’m not doing too bad traffic wise, but could do better.

Because many bloggers face a problem to generate traffic to their blog I have decided to list some trusted ways that are sure to boost your traffic up.

1. Commenting on related blogs

This is and will always be an effective way to gain traffic to your blog. While reading other blogs I always leave a nice little comment. I have had over 70% of my traffic by commenting on other blogs.

When commenting on other blogs keep these things in mind

• Give good interesting feedback.
• Don´t spam
• Always try to comment first
• Keep it short and  attractive
• Make a long, but valuble comment

Let´s say you commented on a popular blog that gets 50,000 uniques per day. You are the first to comment on a post, so that will be an advantage as all the readers see your comment first. Out of those 20,000 readers, let´s say only 1% decides to read and click your link and go to your website, that will be 200 unique visitors to your blog. Imagine using this same technique on 5 blogs daily, that will be 1000 unique visitors to your blog in one day and you also get a free back link from those popular blogs. Pretty good isn’t it if your just starting your new blog, huh?

2. Guest Posting

Guest posting on other blogs is also pretty effective in terms of, authority credibility and gaining trust. You try to build a reputation for yourself and try to expand yourself in that certain niche. If you head over to some of the big players in the blogging industry you will notice all of them have a gust post page or write for us page.

Although guest posting can get you some good traffic, it can also blow your reputation. If you post on a massive blog with many established readers and post some crappy post, most of the readers wont even visit your blog. So if you´re willing to guest post on someone else’s blog, make sure you write some good and valuable content.

3. Start a contest

By starting a contest, visitors will most likely participate in that contest your holding because who doesnt like to win some free prizes? And if the contest involves some good prizes people will tell other people,  this is called word of mouth. Eventually everyone in your niche will notice and come over to your blog and participate.

4. Participating in forums

Forums are a great way to get some nice traffic to your blog as well. By helping other people out on forums and by being helpful and active in forums like, Digitalpoint, V7n, Sitepoint, WarriorForums, you will attract some nice attention and people will be interested in what you´ve got to say on your blog.

I actually created a thread in Digitalpoint forums and had 20 unique visiters every day for 3 days long. Not too bad if you ask me.

5. Social Bookmarking

If you have Twitter, Myspace, Digg, Facebook, Stumble Upon, or any other social media sites, it’s time to use it to your advantage. After posting new content on your site, try to always submit them to social bookmarking sites.  Send your post to every friend or person you got on your profile. This technique may not always be successful, but you are always sure to get a few people interested into reading your blog.

6. Video Marketing

This is an newly and uncommon way to promote your blog, but it is a very handy and effective. You know that if your video ends up being popular on Youtube you will hit the jackpot. More than 1 million people visit Youtube everyday and if your video reaches the first page on an popular niche, you are sure to receive a hell lot of traffic.

7. Article Marketing

Yes, a very popular way to drive a lot of traffic to your blog. If you can write a nice article and submit it to some article sites like Ezine articles, Go articles and Articles base, you are sure to get some good targeted traffic. If your article is top notch then some people will take your article and republish it on their own site, of course with your back link included then. So you will get more exposure to your site with a free back link as well.

I haven´t tried all the methods mentioned above yet, but ive tried the most.

Oke, how about I give you a little estimate of how much traffic you can get by following this little marketing schedule

• Comment on 10 popular blogs everyday
• Post at least 5 posts on 5 different forums everyday
• Guest post on 1 popular blog every week
• Submit 5 articles to article directories every week

If you follow this little schedule, i´m pretty sure you´ll be able to hit the 100 uniques per day mark or even more if you put more effort in.

So anyways how do you promote your site?  Which way brings in most traffic?

Related posts:

1. How To Write Killer Blog Headlines
2. Teenbloggerkid.com Open For Guest Bloggers