Blogging Mistakes III: Expecting Traffic

A likely scenario that almost every new blogger to the scene will face is low traffic. You can spend hours upon hours writing some of the best material for your blog, but traffic will be abysmal if you don’t do any promotion. Never expect traffic. I don’t care what anyone tells you. If you aren’t actively promoting your blog, you won’t get any hits.

We all know you can post comments, sign up at forums, and create email signatures, but honestly how effective is this? These methods are aging, passive, and require little or no creativity. If you want to draw more active traffic, try some of these hip new trendy techniques of driving visitors. They’re the latest craze and they might just work.

As always, you can get your new blog featured here. I offer completely free advertising for any new blog that came into creation through the use of my start a blog guide. This means, you’ll be given free advertising for a week, plus a personal review of your blog at the end of a week, PLUS a chance to become the featured blog for an entire month. This is all completely free for new blogs.

If there’s one way to drive tons of traffic and see little returns in terms of revenue and visitors, it’s through social networking. Two of the best sources for quick traffic is through submissions to both Digg and StumbleUpon. Spend a few times at both sites and learn how they operate and the kind of content that pulls the most traffic. Other good social networking sites: Reddit, Delicious, and Mixx to name a few.

A more challenging way of driving traffic is through guest blogging. Find a blog you like and convince the owner that you have something to offer in terms of a post. Almost all blogs, young and old, readily accept guest bloggers given the quality of the post you have to offer. How does this drive traffic? Most bloggers will let you add a signature block to your post. From there, you’ll have recurring traffic given the popularity of older posts on that blog. (Bonus tip: Add your guest post to social network sites for even more traffic.)

Leaving comments can pull traffic, but if you can get your name on a blog’s top commentator lists, you’ll get free advertising on every page of the blog. Text links could cost a few hundred dollars per month on popular sites, but you can get a link in for free with the right amount of comments. Just do us all a favor and don’t spam. You’ll be banned from posting comments and you’re blog’s credibility can take a hit.

A relatively new way of gathering free traffic is through the use of widgets like BlogRush or Entrecard. Your headlines or banners will receive free impressions given the number of impressions the widget has on your website. This is rather passive as the widgets just sit there on your blog, but it’s a relatively new idea that can pull some extra traffic for you.

If all else fails, you can ask other bloggers outright to feature your blog or a post on your blog. If you take this approach, keep the following tips in mind. Stick with blogs that can benefit from your content as well. That means to stick to sites with similar themes. Also, don’t bother emailing big name bloggers in your niche unless you have a reputation already; they’ll most likely ignore your request.